re: P.S. maybe you'd get a better response...
It is an odd mindset, for reasons I have detailed in two posts. The evidence just doesn't justify it.
And yes, many liberals share it. I was watching and reading when Ashcroft was nominated. It was painfully obvious that his religion concerned his opponents far more than almost anything else, and that many of his opponents were utterly convinced that he would implement the Inquisition the second he took office. Comments about Bush have been along similar lines whenever the president's religion comes up.
I had to listen to the same stuff through eight years of Reagan, when the Left kept yammering the whole time that the Great Theocracy was only months away.