The thinking person's case for Romney, murmured by many of his backers, amounts to this: Vote for Mitt, you know he doesn't believe a word he says.

The idea of a post-religious society is a fantasy, ultimately. Human beings are, by nature, religious in various ways.

In many ways, American evangelicalism is somewhat stronger today than it was in, say 1955 - certainly more mainstream and influential in the culture as a whole. But, the increased strength of evangelicalism hasn't increased fast enough to compensate for the total collapse of mainline Protestantism and the pretty steady weakening of my own Roman Catholic Church.

I think what you see a lot of in American religion, even in areas of American Christianity that don't go all the way with Osteen to the idea that God wants you to have this big house and so on, the nature of American religion right now, the fact that it is so non-denominational and post-denominational, the most successful churches have to be run more like businesses than ever before. I think that just exposes Christians to a constant temptation to think about the ministry more as a business than they sometimes should.

Independent of the critique I'm making, I'm just trying to paint a more comprehensive portrait of American religion than you get from a right versus left, religious conservatives versus secular liberal, believer versus atheist, binary. Too often, we just look at religion in America through that kind of either/or lens. I think it's much more complicated than that.

The thinking person's case for Romney, murmured by many of his backers, amounts to this: Vote for Mitt, you know he doesn't believe a word he says.

If you're willing to recognize the religious element in one secular ideology, you need to be able to recognize it in your own.