Even with all the attention on Wright, a recent poll indicated that 12 percent of the public persisted in believing the false rumor that Obama was a Muslim; U.S. Muslims said both campaigns treated them as political lepers, and drew comfort late in the game when retired Gen. Colin Powell condemned "smears" against their faith.

Republican John McCain, who cites religion as a source of strength but tends to keep it private, sought to improve his shaky standing with the Christian right by securing primary endorsements from pastors John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Yet McCain rejected them after sermons surfaced of Parsley likening Islam to the Antichrist and of Hagee portraying Hitler as God's tool for delivering Jews to the promised land.

McCain isn't close to either man, which invited criticism that he was merely playing politics.

Theological defenses were mounted for Wright and Hagee, but the damage was done.

GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's faith appeals to social conservatives. Yet it became a distraction when footage emerged showing the Alaska governor invoking God's will to get a pipeline built and a Kenyan pastor praying that Palin be protected from witchcraft.

In an interview with Trinity Broadcasting Network, Palin said "faith — not just my faith — faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign." She did not give specifics.

The thread linking the above stories: videotaped sermons posted online, sometimes by churches trying to reach bigger audiences but increasingly by political activists looking for toxic material.

"This year we invaded churches with cell phones and started putting sermons up on YouTube," said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown political science professor. "That's been troubling, because you would like to think a candidate would have a little privacy in church."

David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Georgia, said that more so than in past elections, religion became "a marker of identity" for candidates this year.

"It was disconnected from specific policy views and really had to do with whether this person was acceptable culturally because of their religious associations," said Gushee, author of "The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center." "All of this functioned in a pretty destructive and not terribly illuminating way in this campaign."

That was in part because the slate of candidates more resembled America's religious melting pot. For the first time, Gushee pointed out, there was a serious Mormon candidate in Mitt Romney, a serious candidate with roots in Pentecostalism in Palin and a serious candidate from an African-American church that preaches black liberation theology in Obama.

"Every time a candidate comes along who brings a religious background that is unfamiliar, the press and the culture does this digging around and trying it on for size," Gushee said. Romney, more than any candidate, experienced that.