But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it's often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies.
Popular themes included love and grief, sacred pieces often quoted scripture, and as always a popular secular theme was drinking or philandering.
Why is it, then, that so many picture books on the more general or secular themes of Christmas lack fiber?
His Cancionero (1496; "Songbook") contains pastoral-religious dramatic dialogues in rustic dialect, but he soon turned to secular themes and vivid farce.
As in Egypt, the revolution has a broad social base, unified around the essentially secular themes of freedom, justice and equality.
Alamire, another British group, is notable for its sensuous style; a 2007 CD devoted to the Franco-Flemish master Josquin Desprez shows how sacred and secular themes intermingle.
The displays rarely touch on religion, returning to the same secular themes year after year: variations on "The Nutcracker" and "A Christmas Carol" have appeared for a century.
Commercial success came when they adopted secular themes; among their hits were "When I Stop Dreaming," released in 1955 the year they joined Nashville's Grand Ole Opry and "I Don't Believe You've Met My Baby" (1956).
Drama by this time was in the hands of the laity rather than the church, and the introduction of secular themes made it necessary to perform outside of religious buildings, using stages or carts.
While in recent years many traditional bar and bat mitzvah parties have centered on secular themes -- computers, baseball, shopping -- Rabbi Moshe Birnbaum of the Plainview Jewish Center, president of the Long Island Board of Rabbis, said families now often integrate Judaic concepts into the celebration.
It is instructive to note that in the course of the 15th century the progress of the three-generation lineage of Josetsu, Shūbun, and Sesshū can be described as a movement from physical permanence and relative security to a peripatetic existence necessitated by political instability and from conservative to more generalized or secular themes.
