Amanda Marcotte, Symmachus and pluralism & public discourse

When Amanda Marcotte was hired by the Edwards campaign I was a bit confused. After all, John Edwards is running for president, so I assumed that he was doing this for a reason and not casually. Amanda Marcotte was presumably leaving her job and moving to North Carolina, so I assumed that she was taking this seriously. But my own first thought was that the man running for president of the United States just hired an atheist! As an atheist myself I am well aware of just how peculiar we are in the American landscape, and I don't mean peculiar in a good way, at least in the eyes of most Americans. We all know what happened. But it made me consider the nature of pluralism in a nation where the majority of Americans are of devout Christian faith, particularly when another president, Mitt Romney,comes from a relatively heterodox religious ...