According to a Gallup/USA Today poll last year, Americans would rather vote for a presidential candidate who was Catholic, black, Jewish, female, Hispanic, Mormon, thrice-married, 72 years old, or homosexual than they would one who was an atheist.

Small wonder then that both John McCain and Barack Obama have been keen to parade their Christian credentials. An interview with Obama about his Christian journey fronted Newsweek earlier this month, and both candidates are expected to end the primary campaign season with a joint appearance at the 22,000-member Saddleback Church, run by the pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren.

This kind of thing tends to leave Britons either bewildered or terrified. The US and the UK are two nations divided not so much by a common language as by a common religion. In the former, Christianity is officially absent but unofficially everywhere; in the latter it underpins the entire structure of state but usually dares not speak its name.

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