His own relationship with the Almighty has not always taken obvious or typical forms. Although he was brought up Presbyterian, the Manhattan church that he attended, Marble Collegiate, was best known for its celebrity preacher, Norman Vincent Peale, who marketed and monetized the power of positive thinking.

“Attitudes are more important than facts,” Peale asserted. Little Donald listened well.

And Big Donald went on to treat the Commandments as if they weren’t etched in stone but doodled in disappearing ink. He stiffed creditors, made a mockery of the truth and publicly boasted about his promiscuity. He never talked all that much about religion, not until the campaign. Even then the results were interesting.

He referred to the sacraments as if they were pets: “my little wine,” “my little cracker.” Instead of citing “Second Corinthians,” he said, “Two Corinthians,” so that Corinthians sounded like a matched set.

Questioned about the circumstances in which he might gaze heavenward for expiation, he said he didn’t “bring God into that picture.”

But my favorite of his spiritual musings came when he was asked, on the Christian Broadcasting Network, “Who is God to you?”

“God is the ultimate,” he answered. “Nobody, no thing, there’s nothing like God.”

The angels wept.

And the evangelical voters indeed came around, a phenomenon on which we’ve lavished analysis. We’ve remarked less on the audacity of Trump’s pantomime of godliness, given his core.

It illuminates perhaps his greatest gift, politically speaking, which is his readiness to strike any pose he deems necessary, no matter how ludicrous, and his certainty that he can sell it. The past is no tether. Reality doesn’t intrude. And no arena, not even religion, is sacrosanct. He will bend it to his purposes. He will claim it as his own.