They're only voting for what they feel "safe" with, Rig. They feel safe with militaristic Republicans who remind them of John Wayne and the mythical values presented in Hollywood westerns. Religion is just a small part of the deal, and it's part of the overall cultural package of a mythical "Norman Rockwell" America that may have existed once, but certainly does not anymore. In that mythical world everything was solved by a craggy, tough, heroic white guy father figure totin' a gun and a bible. He would gun down the vicious bad guys, save the town or the stagecoach, rescue the schoolmarm from the lecherous bandits and bloodthirsty savages, then read over the dead bodies of those he'd slain (if they were white) from the Bible, and everything would end happily ever after.

The people who voted for Reagan and Bush have those ancient scenes wired in the back of their brains, imprinted there by 10 billion movies and TV shows, and they foolishly imagine that Bush, Reagan, and the Republicans will somehow bring it all back. It's the middle-aged and elderly people in a society who are most likely to vote "conservative", because they are harkening back to a past that is gone.

They're dreaming! It's long gone and it will never be seen again.

You know it and I know it, but that doesn't help.

Now, look, the only reason most politicians make ostentatious public prayers and stuff like that which you are alluding to is because they think it will play well with a traditional-minded audience and get them votes. If this was 1942 and you were in Nazi Germany, you'd be seeing the politicians going through a slightly different act, because they'd be playing to a different audience, but the basic principles would be much the same.

Religion ain't the problem. Politics is the problem. Politics and the public's willingness to be fooled again and again by old platitudes and familiarly comforting images from out of a mythical past.