Worthwhile column in the National Post by sometimes-NRO contributor Father Raymond De Souza:
JFK’s privatization of religious faith ran counter to the tenor of the times. It would, in due course, be a decisive factor in changing the times. For in winning the 1960 election, JFK demonstrated that one could both profess a religious creed and ignore it for political purposes at the same time.
Every time a politician says that he is “personally opposed” to something, but votes for it anyway, it is JFK talking. In fact, JFK himself adopted something like this approach on civil rights, making clear that he was personally opposed to segregation, but in his public acts only grudgingly imposed that view on a recalcitrant South.