Liveblogging the last McCain-Obama debate

• Daniel Larison.
• GetReligion. The candidates’ or officeholders’ religions or lack of them don’t matter in a secular (not secularist: religiously impartial not anti-religious) constitutional republic, be it Mac’s ex-mainline (mimicking England of course, Anglicanism was once the unofficial church of America’s military officers*), now unofficial Baptist churchgoing (much like Ron Paul’s, one of the few things they have in common) or O’s secular worldview that resembles mainline (liberal Protestant) religion, which it’s sometimes politically helpful to belong to (personal and political bonus points if it gives black cred). Again I’d vote for a partnered gay atheist if he or she held to Paulian principles (like Joshua I think if not for his age Gore Vidal would probably make a fine president).

*The National Cathedral has been described as a ‘political peculiar’. It fits. (Royal peculiars are churches that canonically belong to the sovereign not the diocese in which the religion is often really state functions. There are several in England like Westminster Abbey, which the National Cathedral is based upon, and I understand at least one in Canada.)