Well, here's an interesting article from the Vancouver Sun, comparing the Canadian to the American electorate in terms of voting for an atheist...or an evangelist:

Barack Obama would not have been elected president if he were not Christian. Polls show the vast majority of Americans will only vote for someone who is strongly religious, with the religion of choice being Christian.

Unlike in Canada, Obama would not have had a chance to get elected president if he'd been an atheist. That's one of the reasons we heard a lot of religious oratory when Obama was inaugurated. The other reason is Obama seems to take seriously his membership in the liberal denomination, The United Church of Christ.

Still, it's off-putting that U.S. polls by Gallup show only 45 per cent of Americans would be willing vote for a presidential candidate who is atheist. When pollsters turned the question around, more than half admitted they would actually refuse to vote for an atheist. I'm not an atheist, but it seems to verge on mass bigotry.

Only three U.S. presidents have been non-religious or at least unaffiliated with a religion -- and they all lived more than 150 years ago. Surprisingly, they include two of the United States' most revered leaders -- Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. (The third was less respected Andrew Johnson.) More than half of U.S. presidents have been Episcopalian or Presbyterian. Only one president was Roman Catholic, John F. Kennedy, according to a fascinating compilation by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Canada is a different place, especially now. A 2006 Ipsos Reid poll showed 68 per cent of Canadians would be quite happy to vote for an atheist. That compares to only 63 per cent of Canadians who would be fine voting for an evangelical Christian. (Ironically, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an evangelical Christian, albeit it one who keeps it very low profile). Most Canadian prime ministers have been Roman Catholics, sometimes it seems in little more than name.

Whatever the case, Obama has been a longtime member of one of the most progressive denominations in the U.S., the 1.2-million member United Church of Christ.

Its members tend to be pro-same sex unions, which goes with their general leaning toward social justice. Some prominent United Church of Christ members have included the late, great theologians Richard Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, as well as Reinhold Niebuhr, who once graced the cover of Time Magazine.

(Reinhold is best known for writing the Serenity Prayer, used by 12-step groups. It begins, "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change / the courage to change the things I can / and the wisdom to know the difference." Good advice for a president saddled with incredibly high expectations.)

A current member is the brilliant novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping and Gilead and The Death of Adam. The contemporary theologian, Walter Breuggemann, is also a UCC clergy.

The complicating factor for Obama is he was a member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for over 20 years before resigning his membership from the congregation in 2008 following a dispute over the fiery anti-racist views of his black pastor. The Obamas are currently searching for a new church in Washington, D.C. Presumably he will stay within the fold of the United Church of Christ, which is part of the Congregationalist family of denominations within mainline Protestantism.

The UCC has a vibrant and rich tradition, with all of the above spiritual thinkers warranting a look. In his books Obama makes clear he has been among those been inspired by their Christian visions, in his case to seek the highest office in the land.

A recent Newsweek article about Obama's winding spritual path included this paragraph:

"In Chicago, Obama found that organizers and activists there (and elsewhere) were employing a progressive theology to motivate faith groups to action. Using the writings of Paul Tillich and, especially, Reinhold Niebuhr—and also Martin Luther King, African-American and Roman Catholic liberation theologians, and Christian fathers like Saint Augustine —local religious leaders emphasized original sin and human imperfection. Christ's gift of salvation was to the community of believers, not to individual people in isolation. It was therefore the responsibility of the faithful to help each other—through deeds—to respond to the call of perfection that will be fully realized only at the end of time. Adherents of this particular theology frequently refer to Matthew 25: "Whatever you neglected to do unto the least of these, you neglected to do unto me." Everyone, in other words, is in this salvation thing together."

I had to copy and paste the whole article, because the link will not work.