Person of Faith

Why do we put so much emphasis on whether someone who runs for office is a "person of faith"? The obvious answer is that a significant percentage of the electorate thinks that there is something wrong with people who don't have some kind of religious faith. There is a lingering belief, for instance, that atheists are without morals. For a subset of religious people, the belief is that those who are persons of other faiths are somehow suspect. What we end up with is the sideshow that we have in 2020 where a demonstrably irreligious candidate who panders to fundamentalists deriding another candidate who is a practicing member of a Christian denomination as being "against God". I would have more respect for a candidate who declared that he would not discuss his faith than one who uses it as a campaigning tactic. I would have had no problem with Trump saying that he wasn't religious and didn't attend church than the spectacle of him trying to talk like a fundamentalist without any inkling of what that meant. 

One politician whose religious stance I do respect is Mitt Romney. He's obviously devoted to his Mormon faith and his active in his church. However, he refused to make it an issue in his presidential campaign. I had problems with some of his political positions, but his decision to keep private matters private was a point in his favor. 

As far as the 2020 presidential campaigns go, I am not impressed with Trump's pandering to the Evangelicals, or his painting of Biden as "against God", nor am I moved by Biden's religious values. 

It is for me, and should be for everyone, a non-issue.