Mr. Romney offered his evangelical antagonists a big bone when he promised judges who would protect religiously partisan, governmental acts. Yes, Romney is right -- at least since the 1950s he’s right. We do now call ourselves a “nation ‘Under God.’” But, it is no less true that this 1950s Red-Scare-inspired change abandoned the nation’s earlier motto: “E Pluribus Unum.”

The original ideal that “out of many we are one” has been conveniently forgotten in the late twentieth century effort to reconstitute the old Protestant establishment and impose it on a decreasingly Protestant citizenship. Given his church’s history, it is surprising that Mr. Romney would promise to further this establishment’s interests through “judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests.” If Mr. Romney’s political woes are any measure of it, this foundational faith is doctrinally defined and very narrowly so: Trinitarian, biblically literalist and Armageddon oriented. Sharing none of these particulars, it is no wonder, then, that Mr. Romney argued for “piety and good character” as the test for office, though this has led the impious to take issue with him and the overly pious to say the judicial bone was too small.

To give him his due, Mr. Romney eloquently and with dignified restraint articulated the nation’s historic principles, as well as its historic failures, of religious liberty. He was so eloquent that he might have pricked, as he intended, the conscience of those liberty-loving-for-themselves, zealously religious Republicans who are causing his campaign so much trouble. If this speech succeeds in bringing these Party dogs to heel, it will be the Democrats’ turn to show whether, notwithstanding their protestations of religious tolerance, even disinterest, they will engage in the same theologically based, but in the language of “weirdness,” bigotry about Mormonism. If the Right finishes Romney’s campaign before the Left has a chance to dishonor itself, then we are spared what the polls tell us is coming. Nowhere are Mr. Romney’s numbers worse than among the religiously unaffiliated, according to an October, 2007, Gallup analysis.

For now, it is sufficient to observe that, having lain with the dogs of religiously sectarian politics, Mr. Romney should check himself for fleas because ultimately his aspirations will subject him to the vetting of a much broader group than those to whom this speech was directed. If he would lead the whole and not just the many that constitute the United States, he must prove himself to be “a friend and ally” to more than those who have “knelt in prayer to the Almighty.” He must even prove himself an ally of those who pray to a variety of gods that evangelists will be expelled from the inner sanctum and outer courts of American government. From their lips to God’s ears, may it be so.