I doubt if it will change it much. All it demonstrates is that religion is important to a significant part of the American population and no serious candidate for the presidency will ignore that block of voters. Hot button issues like abortion and homosexuality have been used primarily by the Republicans to bind working class Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants to their banner.
God, however, is not in the service of any party and the excessive religious claims of Republicans, particularly on such issues as Terri Schiavo, the war, and limiting the availability of approved birth control medications and attempts to amend the Constitution to discriminate against homosexual people has already convinced most Americans that they do not want either party pretending that their policies and God’s policies are identical.
I recall that in the election of 1980 each of the three candidates, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and John Anderson, campaigned as “born again” Christians. That proved nothing about the candidates’ faith, but only that being “born again,” was believed to be a positive vote getting device.
I, for one, would far rather have a thorough going secular humanist in the White House who would respect the varieties of religious experience in this nation and guarantee freedom of religious expression to all, than I would want a practicing Christian who wanted to impose a particular religious viewpoint on the entire nation. I would never vote for a Roman Catholic who announced his or her intention to make the anti-abortion position of that Church the law of this land. I would also never vote for a Protestant Christian who, on the basis of his or her religion, sought to make assisted suicide illegal, to declare homosexuality to be a sin or to oppose the teaching of science where it conflicts with the Bible. I will look at the values of our candidates far more than I will look at their religious assertions.
The quality of the questions asked on the CNN program were incredibly naïve by any competent theological standard. The answers were little more than pious rhetoric.
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