I confess to being a bit confused by the goals of last week’s widely discussed New Baptist Covenant Celebration.

You know the one. It took place in Atlanta. Its most prominent impresario was President Carter. Something like 15,000 delegates from 30 organizations representing 20 million Baptists came to witness. It seems to have been a happy, soul-affirming and diverse affair. The New York Times describes the uplifted participants as “blacks and whites, old and young, Northerners and Southerners, Democrats and Republicans.”

Although I have never personally experienced anything soul-affirming--that's because I do not possess a soul--none of this confuses me (Though for reasons that will become clear, I think the presence of Republicans may have been overstated). What confuses me is the dogged insistence of the conference organizers that this was not in any way, shape, or form a political gathering.

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Over the past three years I have been making a variety of arguments about American secularism, nearly all of which were greeted with either apathy or derision. These arguments were made in scholarly articles and on this blog, but mostly in two books, Thumpin’ It: The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Today’s Presidential Politics and The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously.

The “On Faith” editors have asked their distinguished panelists to consider one of these ideas: the contention that secularism has become a taboo subject in the current presidential race. Before getting to their comments--most of which enlightened me, some of which induced a bout of tachycardia--let me briefly outline some of the once-unpopular positions that I advanced.

The first argument was readily visible to those who studied the results of the 2006 mid-term elections. Namely, that the Democrats were starting to “get” religion. Doing so, of course, necessitated getting rid of excessive entanglement with secular policy positions, ideas, and candidates. Accordingly, I argued that the 2008 Democrats were going to abandon their traditional emphasis on issues pertaining to separation of Church and State (at least in their rhetoric). This they have done. As we will see below, the question remains as to whether this is just a ploy.

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From videos left behind by suicide bombers to movies like Syriana, Americans have become quite familiar with radicalized Muslim youth. But last week, a remarkable Egyptian evangelist, whose influence reaches across much of the Muslim world, offered a different vision: young Muslims driven by both hope and faith.

At the U.S.-Islamic World Forum that just wrapped up in Doha, Amr Khaled was everywhere with his message that faith is a powerful force and motivator for young people in the Middle East, but that it doesn't have to lead to jihad.

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Over the past month we have witnessed the emergence of a veritable sub-genre of political reportage: the don’t-count-Hillary-out-just-yet story. With its Yes She Can! effusions this type of journalism does not lack in counter-intuitive charms. But I think prudence (and a glance at the polls) dictates that we start thinking concretely about Barack Obama’s prospects in a general election.

Any discussion of these prospects must take into consideration the good Senator’s ability to reverse trends that doomed the Democrats in the last election. In 2004 Kerry/Edwards lost nearly four out of every five votes cast by White Evangelicals. Compounding the problem was the strange fact that the majority of Catholics voted against their co-religionist from Massachusetts.

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Note to McCain operatives: Any and all attempts to malign Barack Obama as “all hat, no cattle,” "electoral eye candy," “eloquent but empty,” are doomed to fail.

Most Americans will find it difficult to reconcile those descriptions with the heady and effortlessly intelligent person they see on the nightly news. Most Americans will reject the argument that the fellow with the J.D. from Harvard who lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago is all fluff.

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