I think what we have here is a cultural divide. Francis Holland is a black man, who grew up in one community and culture, and most of the rest of us are not. I have just been reading a lot about the civil rights movement in the 50's and 60's. Blacks, african americans, had no reason to trust the government in many places back then. They were all but totally disenfranchised and hated by government officials. The government was not their protector, the government was their enemy. In that culture, it was only the church that could build and hold together the community. It was the churches where you went to be safe, where you went to seek out your leaders. Those leaders were the church leaders. Martin Luther King was not an elected politician, he was a baptist minister. So churches are much more central to this day in most black communities than in white ones, because it was churches who protected them, not the government.

If you are an african american man, like Francis Holland and you, for very valid reasons, do not automatically have trust in the state, in the government, what are you going to want to see to build that trust? You are going to want to see valid connections between the one institution that has always been there for you, the church-- where blacks in Selma took shelter from rock throwing rioters in the sixties, from where Dr. King led the Montgomery bus boycott-- and the government. So it is more important for Francis Holland, as a black man, to have a president who is a christian, or who at least respects those beliefs and who would go to his church-- than it is for many of us. We need to respect that. Not hate, fear or ridicule that. He doesn't need to ridicule, hate or fear atheists either.