When religion becomes a mere stand-in for secular values
(This post is about politics, not religion)
There was a time when people took religion somewhat seriously as a set of beliefs about the divine, not merely a set of secular social attitudes.
It sort of mattered whether a candidate believed Jesus to be the messaih or a prophet or a well-intentioned heretic. Whether one confessed their sins directly to god or through an intermediary... and so on.
Then something funny (and not ha ha funny) happened. The Republican party styled itself as the party of religion. Not the party if Jesus, mind you... of religion. Religion is, institutionally, a guardian of traditional values. Unlike faith, religion is intrinsically conservative. It is a bulwark against modernity.
Watch how the thing went down... first, all Protestant differences were blurred. Then Catholicism was accepted as just another Chrstian sect. Then Jews were folded into some newly-minted state religion called Judeo-Christian. Republicans now actually talk about our national religion of Judeo-Christian something or another.
This has all been nessecary in building a reactionary coalition opposed to choice, sexual diversity and Islam. Had geo-politics and immigration patterns gone differently, Islam could have been part of the vast secular traditional values religion but given the history of Israel there was only room for Islam or Judaism.
The RW secular non-faith has paid a lot of dividends for the reactionaries. At the risk of sounding harsh, southern extreme protestantism has numbers and energy but lacks the intellectual traditions to fight secularism. Anti-intellectualism is a handicap sometimes.
Catholics, who were once anathema, now provide the conservative brain trust. The conservative block on the SCOTUS is almost all catholic. Gingrich and Santorum—the current leading keepers of southern baptist values—are catholic. Despite the vast doctrinal differences, the American right has come to recognize that Catholicism is a superior secular institution for the transition and maintainance of social tradition.
Mormons were once anathema, but they are superior poster children of the evangelical dream. They have lots of kids. They're good at making money. They smile all the time and say gosh-shucks. And they are sticklers for bizarre tradition for the sake of tradition. The oddities of their faith actually become an argument in their favor in the secular RW religion where adherance to any tradition is a good unto itself. (Remember all the RWers who express profound admiration for Joe Lieberman's devotion to orthodox Jewish tradtion, while simultaneously thinking he will spend eternity in hell for precisely the same highly-admirable devotion.)
So we now have the odd situation where a Republican presidential field heads into the uber-reactionary protestant stronghold of South Carolina with two mormons, two catholics, one devotee of an arch atheist (Paul via Ayn Rand) and only one southern protestant conservative (Perry) who may well finish last!
Because this stuff is not about faith, it is about a fairly newly minted secular religion that is the RW world-view as preserved and advanced by the anti-intellectualism and adherrance to antique values that are historically characteristic of religion.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I want to add that I grew up with some Catholic and Baptist kids, and it was typical that we would totally ignore religion when adults weren't around.
--imm
Edit to add: I just noticed there are formatting buttons! I had given up hope! This is great!
Smilies too! But I don't see facepalm 
It works though.
