The Deseret News' Bob Bernick scrutinizes Second Congressional District candidate David Leavitt's injection of religion into his campaign to unseat Chris Cannon.

According to Leavitt's campaign "promise":

We hold a duty to maintain public belief in a Supreme Being, regardless of our personal religious beliefs. If we do not, future generations will never understand the critical role our Creator has played throughout the history of this great Nation.

The ACLU's Karen McCleary tells Bernick:

You have to say in public that you believe in God, or somehow you are not patriotic? — that you are un-American if you don't accept a belief in God?

Unitarian Rev. Tom Goldsmith says Leavitt has gotten his mythology of the Founding Fathers cockeyed. Most of them were deists who supported the separation of church and state. "To say they were near (Leavitt's) thinking on this subject is just crazy," Goldsmith says.

Leavitt's God pitch probably should not surprise anyone:

• Dave's big brother, former Gov. Mike Leavitt (now a Bush cabinet member), held seminary meetings with his staff to discuss blending "just and holy" Mormon principles into state policymaking.
• Spirituality is always a back beat in the district's races. Cannon's last serious opponent, John Jacob, told the Tribune that Satan had intervened against him.

Considering Jacob's campaign spun out after that revelation, Dave Leavitt just might want to leave God, Satan and, yes, the Easter Bunny out of the race this time around.