Take the list. I believe in 1, 2, I have no opinion on 3 and don’t care, I don’t believe 4 (I think that was a metaphor) and I do believe 5, which makes me a pretty bland Christian.

Believing in creationism, however, would put me as part of a fringe percentage of Christians who adopt views squarely contradicted by widely understood science. In fact, if you’re a Catholic like myself, creationism is pretty much heresy. John Paul II’s “Faith and Reason” opens: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” All mainline Christian denominations have similar beliefs about faith and reason functioning together.

From a purely practical perspective, your comment that “Belief in an invisible omniscient ruler of the universe and his dark underworld counterpart is a requirement of office. … Too emphatic a belief, though, and you’re a trogolodytic right winger who will force-feed America’s children poisonous lies.”, despite the needlessly contemptuous rhetoric, is true. When you’re a politician brandishing Christian faith purely as a vote-getting device, you have to walk a fine line (in the past, some politicians have used their secularism in the same way). But on the actual merits, the case is much more clear cut.

She strikes me as a pious pragmatist. She believes in a Christian God and the moral code He set down – just not in the austere literal manner of a John Ashcroft.

Male politicians like Regan, Clinton, Obama, Biden, and McCain have all been accused to using faith as a political tool to their advantage it seems to be because their actions have run counter to their professed faith often enough to warrant scrutiny.

She just seem to have a track record long enough to warrant that same suspicion on a political level and her personal life is pretty consistent. I doubt it’s any kind of sexist condescension.