As Stephen Colbert would say: we're a Christian country! It says it right there on the dollar bill!
(except it's largely true)
[WS:] Interesting thought, but I am not quite sure if true. I think "we" are a consumerist country in which religious veneer is simply used to create a warm, homey, feel-good ambiance and to push intellectual commodity. What you take for x-tianity is really a kick-ass, shock jock intellectual product, a form of cultural elite bashing, grounded in anti-intellectualism, and appealing to the types who are uncomfortable with social economic and technological change.
X-tianity sells because it is one way of creating a feel-good homey ambiance for disillusioned grunts who love their country but cannot pay their bills and yearn for something beyond the cookie-cutter suburban house and the shopping mall. It is, however, only one way of creating such feeling. The Dems' strategy seems to be to provide a knock-off product instead looking for a different, more exciting product, or perhaps a different market niche. The knock-off approach is unlikely to work, because the main advantage of a knock-off is a brand look at a low price, whereas the Dem strategy seems to provide an inferior product (a liberal knock-off conservative religiosity) at essentially the same price as the original. Why going for a cheap imitation when you can have the real thing at the same price?
It seems that a better strategy would be to provide the feel-good homey ambiance by the means that seem more germane for Dems - social democracy, social programs, equality, progress, etc. Lula does that quite effective in Brazil, while the neo-liberal bulldozer quietly does its job behind the wall.
Wojtek