I think there is a racial component to the incongruity in the way the media has treated Obama and Romney’s faiths. To be sure, both Romney’s Mormonism and Obama’s black liberation theology-infused Christianity still exist—in the minds of many Americans—outside the religious mainstream. Yet when it comes to “10 a.m. on Sunday morning [being] the most segregated hour of the week,” as Martin Luther King Jr. is credited with saying, Mormon exclusion of blacks from full membership is certainly not uniquely Mormon. Instead, it belongs to a history that most American Christian communities have had to contend with. Wright’s powerful—and poorly understood—critique of the legacy of institutional racism was too direct, too on the nose, for many Americans—including the Americans whose votes Obama needed to become president.

–What Can Jeremiah Wright and Joseph Smith Teach Us about the American Presidency?