Quoting Christ from the Bible, he said, "My faith is grounded on these truths. You can witness them in Ann and my marriage and in our family ... our aspirations, our values, are the self-same as those from the other faiths that stand upon this common (moral) foundation."

The first time religion was an issue in a presidential campaign, Church says, was in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson ran against incumbent John Adams. Jefferson was considered an "infidel" because he questioned the creation narrative in Genesis, didn't believe in the Trinity and defended church-state separation. If Jefferson wins, predicted the editor of the "Connecticut Current," "murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, the nation black with crimes."

Religion was again an issue in 1908, when candidate William Howard Taft was criticized because he was a Unitarian. Although there had been three other Unitarian presidents (both Adamses and Millard Fillmore), by this time the Unitarians — who, as their name spells out, don't believe in the Trinity — had become an "outsider church" and thus suspect, Church says.

At that point, outgoing president Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to the country arguing that a person's religious beliefs have no place in electoral politics. "His letter served the same purpose as Kennedy's speech in Houston served: it neutralized the issue," Church says. Taft won in a landslide.

---

E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com; carrie@desnews.com