“There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the U.S. Constitution,” the leader of the White House’s Religious Liberty Commission recently declared. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who sometimes preaches at Houston’s Second Baptist Church, made headlines when he made this pronouncement. It was a striking statement from a Baptist, given that Baptists have made a point of defending the fabled wall of separation since the earliest days of the American republic. In fact, in 1960, when Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy was running for president, he delivered a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, reassuring the assembled Protestant clergy, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”   Why is defense of this wall, once obligatory for a Catholic politician, now abandoned by a Baptist? Within the larger story of the rise of the Religious right, this reversal highlights remarkably different political strategies deployed by large religious minorities. Catholics, viewed with suspicion by American Protestants, presented themselves as able to blend in to the American …