President Obama's speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last Thursday serves as a reminder of the hazards of relying on easy or settled conclusions about the complicated relationships between religion and politics in the US.

Darn it, things were a heck of a lot simpler under his predecessor: George W. Bush was the standard bearer for an aggressive and corporately financed fundamentalist Christian right bent on restoring a Christian America – even establishing a "theocracy" – and rolling back the frontiers of secularism. We Europeans knew where we stood. In a single sweeping repudiation, we could set our faces simultaneously against his crass religion, his heartless economics and his militaristic adventurism (along with his stupid grin).

Of course, we then rejoiced to see the White House occupied by a recognisable European-style social liberal, economic interventionist and articulate global statesman. We thought we knew where we stood with him. But then, for goodness sake, we find the president cosying up to the religious right all over again, flattering them year after year by showing up at their annual prayer jamboree – allegedly organised by a shady fundamentalist outfit – and, worse still, talking in gushing terms about his faith in "Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour".

When we examine the actual content of Obama's speech we are plunged into yet deeper anxiety. This year it was unusually personal – a disturbing fact reported without comment by the Guardian:

"My Christian faith … has been a sustaining force for me … All the more so, when Michelle and I hear our faith questioned from time to time, we are reminded that ultimately what matters is not what other people say about us but whether we're being true to our conscience and true to our God. 'Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.'"



"My conscience before God"? Wasn't that what Tony Blair appealed to when justifying his decision (and we now know for sure it was essentially his decision alone) to invade Iraq?

Now we discover that Obama's faith is also more than a mere source of personal succour. It informs his political decision-making. He makes clear his belief that "our values, our love and our charity must find expression not just in our families, not just in our places of work and our places of worship, but also in our government and in our politics". In case you missed that, the president of the US is implying that he thinks his Christian faith can legitimately shape the way he governs the nation.

It gets worse. Obama reveals that the director of his Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership's office, Joshua DuBois, "starts my morning off with meditations from scripture". Just imagine what would happen if Obama actually decided government policy as if "one day the world will be turned right side up and everything will return as it should be".

Suppose he was even driven to the crazy conclusion that, "until that day, we're called to work on behalf of a God that chose justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable". Might that actually lead him to seek to use the law to guarantee healthcare for every individual citizen, coercing even secular healthcare providers and insurance companies to fall in line with his irrational biblical utopianism? Or to increase social welfare spending by raising taxes on the corporations on whose profits the economic growth of the whole country depends? What could be a more blatant example of "imposing religion" on a secular society?

I wish there were some relief by the end of the speech. It was bad enough when Blair hinted that he turned to God in prayer to guide his major decisions. But Obama seems to claim a direct channel to the Almighty and to see himself as God's representative on earth.

"When I wake in the morning, I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to give me the strength to do right by our country and its people. And when I go to bed at night I wait on the Lord, and I ask Him to forgive me my sins, and look after my family and the American people, and make me an instrument of His will."

It's just too much. Can't America come to its senses again and put someone in the White House we secular Europeans can make sense of?