The Democratic convention's most surprising argument: Christianity is a liberal religion [View all]

And yet representatives of the black church spoke on everything from police violence to systemic racism at the convention, often cloaking their speeches directly in religious metaphor and text. Vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine himself explicitly said the reasons for his progressivism stemmed from his time with Jesuits.

Religion was everywhere at the DNC, but it rarely felt overpowering, or even explicitly Christian. There was time for powerful speeches from Muslims, too, and a tacit acknowledgement that “faith” can mean something very different for just about everyone — including its lack.

But there was still something weird for someone who came of age during the culture wars of the 1990s to see the Democrats so aggressively displaying not only faith but a parade of speakers associated with the military at a Democratic convention — and have almost the exact opposite at the Republican convention. And I’ve already written about how the Democrats tried to position themselves as the party of family values.

In particular, the almost complete absence of the religious right was felt at the earlier convention, which was angrier and maybe even crueler because of it. Say what you will about George W. Bush, but he at least made the attempt to look like a caring Christian man in person. (Whether he lived that out in his policy is another matter.) The same was true of Mitt Romney’s expressions of his Mormonism. Trump’s convention seemed to have no religious influence whatsoever — unless narcissism counts as a religion.