Liberals and Democrats are not hostile to religion and Christianity in particular.
Not all, but many are.
Can you tell me why Hillary, being a Methodist herself, did not bolster her appearance as a person of the Christian faith? Can you tell me why Obama, being a member of United Church of Christ, did not openly refute accusations that he was Muslim rather than letting people carry on forever with it?
For my money, it’s because it doesn’t target their base.
It’s actually probably because they realized that it had no relevance to their candidacies and had no bearing on their abilities as potential presidents. As for the Muslim theory, I’m assuming he didn’t refute it because it was a psychotic conspiracy theory only believed by insane people or rightwing hacks.
There’s a continuum between the minimum religious exposition deemed politically required, and the maximum deemed non-ostentatious, and nearly all Democrats and Republicans can be found somewhere on this continuum. Not all Democrats are crowded at one end with Republicans at the other, although there’s probably a gradual trend that way. Neither Clinton nor Obama made any sort of secret at all of their religious affiliation, they just didn’t trumpet it at regular intervals. All the time and effort you spend fighting insane conspiracy theories can’t be spent reaching out to sane people who may actually vote for you.
…As opposed to Republicans, who (and this is an enormous pet peeve of mine) co-opt their so-called Christianity for political points.Yes and this is worse than not pretending to be religious. The fact that liberals are accepting of candidates that leave God out of their rhetoric is more respectable than people that accept predatory and adulterous conmen like Donald Trump because he pretended to be a Christian.
I don’t really think anyone was fooled. Just look at the man – his words, his actions, his history. Some of his attempts at remedial Bible-thumping on the campaign trail were so laughably inept that Mr. Atheist over here cringed to hear them. I’m sure there’s true believers out there that think Holy Water can be wrung out of his hotel bedsheets, but for most observers, he was an honorary member of their tribe, a fellow traveler, someone with the same goals. And those goals were just an unrelated demographic overlap with his religious supporters. He was the all racism all the time candidate, and that was the only appeal he needed. IMO the Christian appeal was just a fig leaf so that his voters could add some sort of moral plausibility to their decision.