All politics is local: one of the great truisms in American public life. In the new issue of Religion in the News, Mark Silk shows that when it comes to faith and presidential campaigns, it's all regional.

Since 2001, Mark's been part of a project examining the role of faith in eight separate regions of the U.S. The series has displayed ways in which regional attitudes toward faith affect presidential races. This time around, he concludes that "every regional religious culture with the exception of New England has helped shape the outlooks of the four politicians running for national office."

Mark classifies McCain's interaction with faith as typical of the "the competing impulses that beset" the Southwest (unfocused when it comes to faith: loyal when it comes to his church yet unable to embrace the "moral values agenda). Obama, he labels a "hybrid character," whose faith story reflects his diverse upbringing and ultimately a Midwestern sense of community and pluralism.

Mark also identifies the VP candidates as products of their regions. Joe Biden comes from the mid-Atlantic, "a place where individuals understand themselves as belonging to one or another swatch of an ethno-religious tapestry made more worthwhile by the presence of others" while Sarah Palin's "public career reflects the kind of tension" that comes from practicing Southern-fried evangelicalism in a largely unchurched, frontier state.

The big question, as Mark sees it, is

How the presidential race turns out will, as in the past, open the door to regional religious influences. Will it be a libertarian/evangelical ethos out of the West, or a species of Midwestern communitarianism? And how, after eight years of George Bush’s Southern Crossroads, will the country react?

Having lived in all of these areas, I'm especially curious.