Under our Constitution there can be no religious test for office. Anyone is eligible of any religion or of no religion. At the same time, voters need to look at the total person they are being asked to vote for.

We care deeply about their policies; we care about their character, their integrity, and what they promise to do when they get in office. It is impossible to separate people's religious faith from their worldview, their values, and their character.

So I would advise anyone to look very carefully at the religious belief a particular candidate espouses, how faithfully he has lived consistently with its teachings, what its teachings would require him to do, and whether those teachings are directed to the common good or whether they might be seriously flawed. For example: I would have great difficulty voting for a Muslim who shared Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic vision. (I would, as I have written in one of my books, have similar misgivings about a Christian who saw it as his role to use his public office to help usher in the end times.)

While I would not want to disqualify someone because of their religious convictions, I would look hard at what their religious convictions teach about the sanctity of life, for example. I consider that one of the great overriding issues of our day, therefore the extent to which one’s religious conviction informs him or her about the sacredness of life would be a crucial issue. And I suspect this is what Senator John McCain means. He is not applying the religious test so much as he is looking at the teachings of those who share a sincere belief.