Over the past three years, Sen. John Kerry has had a lot of time to think about his God, and at a meeting with journalists in Washington earlier this month he shared those thoughts. He grew up in a Roman Catholic home before Vatican II; though devout, he prayed in private behind his closed bedroom door, as was the custom at the time. In Vietnam, he prayed to God to save his life, and when he came home some of his foxhole promises no longer felt so pressing. Kerry, a divorced, pro-choice Democrat with a foreign-seeming wife, ran for president in 2004 against an incumbent whose personal Christian-conversion story was intricately woven into his public persona. Yet, out of principle or stubbornness, Kerry chose not to expound upon his own faith until late in the race