Joan Walsh says what I’ve been thinking about the bizarre sight of presidential candidates allowing themselves to be questioned by a Christian pastor:

I’m not sure why Obama voluntarily sat down for a nationally televised conversation about his private religious faith with a relatively conservative Christian leader, as though that’s a reasonable station of the cross, so to speak, for a major American presidential candidate.

I find it a thoroughly unreasonable step for politicians to take, but then I recognize that atheists like me are a tiny minority. Unfortunately, it looks like secularists are being eclipsed, too.