As candidates’ faith increasingly becomes a major story on the presidential campaign trail, the man who has the job they all want has quietly dropped speaking about his own faith, according to the Houston Chronicle’s Julie Mason.

Bush is not talking about his faith anymore, Mason writes. Once a central theme to much of his rhetoric, Bush’s relative silence on the subject was brought into sharper focus Thursday by Republican Mitt Romney’s speech in College Station, detailing his own views on religion in America.

“It’s funny, because everyone and their campaign manager is talking about religion, and the president in the White House seems to have removed all of that from his speeches,” John C. Green, an expert on politics and religion at the University of Akron, tells Mason.

The absence of much movement on issues such as gay marriage, embryonic stem cells, and abortion during the president’s second term may explain the lack, according to some scholars and pundits.

More cynical observers theorize that since he’s not campaigning anymore, he’s got no need to speak evanglicalese.

The article doesn’t mention this, but I wonder how much of it has to do with the departure of his speechwriter Michael Gerson, himself an evangelical, who was known to embroider the president’s speeches with theological language?

Read Mason’s article, and tell us what you think.