My only "religious" requirement for a candidate is that he or she have a thorough understanding of and respect for the distinction between private faith and the public interest. Since I never expect to have the opportunity to vote for a candidate who is not a member of some religious denomination--given the proclamations of faithiness that are required of every aspirant to the American presidency--I prefer candidates whose religious traditions emphasize the importance of freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state.

I would not vote for a Catholic like Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who believes that government power derives not from the will of the people but from a supreme being, and who has also declared that the Constitution does not require respect for the rights of atheists, deists, or polytheists. I would vote for a Catholic who agrees with President John F. Kennedy's famous statement that, "I do not speak for the church on public matters, and my church does not speak for me."

I would not vote for a right-wing Baptist who opposes abortion rights and the teaching of evolution in public schools, but I would vote for (and did vote for) a Baptist like President Jimmy Carter, who comes from the open-minded tradition within his faith that fought, along with eighteenth-century freethinkers, for a secular constitution that respects the rights of both believers and nonbelievers.

I would not vote for an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jew who wants to obtain public tax money for Jewish schools. I would vote for any Jew who comes from the historic Jewish tradition that reveres America's separation of church and state and realizes that the Jewish success story in America owes everything to that separation.

I'd vote for a Muslim like Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota but, no, I wouldn't vote for a Muslim who wanted tax funds for schools specializing in Arabic culture--or any other religious and/or immigrant culture.

I would not vote for an atheist in the moldy intellectual mold of Ayn Rand, who believed that "every man for himself" was the only proper credo for a society. I would vote for an atheist, if one were ever nominated, who believes that it is the responsibility of a rich society to help its poorest members.

I would, in particular, never vote for hypocrites who try to sound more religious than they really are in order to pander to the religiously conservative sector of the electorate.

It would be nice to have the chance to vote for a candidate who has considerable knowledge both about America's religious and secular traditions. As Steven Prothero noted in his book Religious Literacy, fewer than half of Americans in this supposedly devout nation can name the four gospels or Genesis as the first book of the Bible. Do any of them have the chutzpah to run for high office? Remembering Howard Dean's 2000 statement that the Book of Job was his favorite passage from the New Testament, I suspect that yes, the religiously ignorant do run for public office in droves.

And of course, those who are ignorant (both willfully and heedlessly) of America's proud secular traditions are amply represented at the highest levels of government. Tell them that the framers deliberately omitted any mention of God from the Constitution (because of all the trouble that governmental obeisance to a supreme being, or different ideas of a supreme being, had created in the Old World), and these ignorant people call you a liar. Some of them become quite flustered when presented with a copy of the Constitution that proves the absence of any acknowledgment of divine government power.

To return to the subject of the Episcopal Baptist John McCain, he would, I suspect, argue that a Christian is a Christian is a Christian. (Except, of course, in a state with a heavy representation of Baptist voters.) Perhaps if he campaigns in Massachusetts, he will declare himself a Catholic.