If voters refuse to vote for people who hold the "wrong" religious and theistic views, does this mean that there is a religious test for public office? Yes, though it isn't an "official" test imposed by the government so it isn't actually a violation of law. Nevertheless, the law isn't the sole standard by which we measure bigotry or discrimination. If people refused to vote for blacks or Latinos, no one would question whether this was inappropriate discrimination — legal, but inappropriate and a sign of bigotry which needs to be addressed.

But in purely electoral terms, there is a danger for Democratic candidates in lunging too far towards the faithful, and away from the secular, non-religious voter. John Green is the senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum, in Washington DC. He said: "It's possible that too much talk of religion might drive those votes away."

On Capitol Hill, it is a sign of just how important religion is to US politics that only one member of Congress has ever admitted to being an atheist - and that admission came just a few months ago. The BBC's Heart and Soul programme visited Democratic Congressman Pete Stark, of California, in his busy ground-floor office, to find out what reaction there had been to his declaration.

He said the vast majority of e-mails he had received were from secularists around the world, praising his courage, and most of the critical response had been from Christians who said they "felt sorry" for his inability to embrace God. On the presidential race, he had blunt advice: "Who can say more rosaries than the next person in a certain given amount of time, hardly seems to me, to be a qualification. "I'd like to hear much more specifics about how they plan to get us universal health care," he said.

Source: BBC

Wow, imagine that: politicians should perhaps talk about their actual policy proposals and how they would address very political, social, and economic problems rather than what they pray, how many time they say rosary, or what their relationship with their god is like. It's amazing that we would actually have such disagreements — we're supposed to be talking about people running for public office for the purpose of governing a secular, civil society. We aren't talking about people trying to become a priest or a church deacon.

It's important to keep in mind that anti-atheist bigotry in the field of politics isn't limited to preventing atheists from getting elected in the first place. Sometimes, respected politicians are forced out simply because the fail to believe the same things as others:

Until a few years ago, the Colorado businessman Dave Habecker had served on his local town council for 13 years. One of his fellow councillors successfully introduced the reciting of the national pledge of allegiance - in response to the Iraq war - as a sign of support for US troops, said Mr Habecker. Ever since the mid-1950s, the pledge has contained the phrase "Under God" and at the height of the anti-communist era, US bank notes were also changed to include the inscription: "In God We Trust".

Mr Habecker refused to stand and recite the pledge, and after being branded unpatriotic, was forced to enter a fresh election contest to remove him from office. He lost by some 300 votes. "I don't know that anybody feels elated that I was removed from office for this reason," he told the programme. "Deep down they know that I was removed for my religious beliefs, which is anti-American. We brag about being the freest country in the world. Why do we coerce our citizens to stand and recite a pledge of allegiance? It's a paradox."

Once again, what happened with Habecker appears to be perfectly legal. I suppose that voters can recall someone for no other reason than that they dislike his hair, but just because something is legal doesn't mean that it is appropriate. Recalling someone because they won't recite a religious oath or because they are an atheist is every bit as bigoted as doing so because they won't proclaim faith in Jesus Christ or because they are Jewish. Anti-atheist bigotry in America is harmful, discriminatory, and wrong.

Unfortunately, even many religious and political liberals don't see much of anything wrong with it — they readily excuse such bigotry by arguing against all evidence that it's somehow caused by atheists not being sufficiently deferential towards religious theism. There's no basis to such allegations, but I suppose it makes some believers feel better both about themselves (because it says they deserve deference) and their bigotry (because it oh so justified and reasonable).