This week’s Joe Biden and Kamala Harris nominations are an appropriate moment to look at the religious angles that writers are encountering in the 2020 campaign.

To begin, a Wall Street Journal column by Brookings Institution political scientist William A. Galston observes that in today’s United States “the level of religious polarization is the highest in the history of modern survey research.”

Which immediately brings up the Quote of the Year. It’s hard to think of any remark by a U.S. president more invidious than Donald Trump’s characterization of Democratic opponent Biden: “No religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God.”

Reporters seeking balance, and any Republicans who were embarrassed by this, could have noted that the 2020 food fight previously featured Democrats belittling the quality of Trump’s religiosity. Biden himself joined that chorus after the president’s walk from the White House to fire-damaged St. John’s Episcopal Church to hold a Bible aloft for the cameras: “I just wish he opened it once in a while instead of brandishing it. If he opened it, he could have learned something.”