God-o-Meter was reading an interview today with a certain prospective vice president and was surprised to hear the candidate’s answer to a question about faith:

I haven’t really worn it on my sleeve. I haven’t been out there preaching it. I’ve always been of the mind that you [walk] the walk. You just don’t have to be talking the talk about your beliefs, so just wanting maybe my life to be able to reflect my faith. So it’s always been pretty personal…

Guess who said that? The answer’s below. While you’re at it, can you guess which presidents and presidential candidates said the following about faith?

1. “I don’t wear my own faith on my sleeve.”

2. “The prayer that I tell myself every night is a fairly simple one: I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that my sins are forgiven, that my family is protected and that I am an instrument of God’s will. I’m constantly trying to align myself to what I think he calls on me to do.”

3. “[T]he number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?'”

4. “My faith plays a big part in my life. And when I was answering that question what I was really saying to the person was that I pray a lot. And I do. And my faith is a very, it’s very personal. I pray for strength. I pray for wisdom. I pray for our troops in harm’s way. I pray for my family. I pray for my little girls.

Here’s God-o-Meter’s point: the world of faith and politics has been turned upside down in recent years. It’s hard to tell who’s a Republican or a Democrat, a Bible thumper or a secularist, a theocrat or a strict church/state separationist.

ANSWERS:

“I haven’t really worn it on my sleeve…” (from first quote
Sarah Palin in an interview this weekend with David Brody

1. 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in his ’04 convention speech.

2. Barack Obama in a Beliefnet interview last January

3. John McCain in a Beliefnet interview last fall

4. George W. Bush, in the third presidential debate during the 2004 campaign
http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Politics/2004/07/George-W-Bush-On-Faith.aspx

Surprised? God-o-Meter was.

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