Marco Rubio wants you to know that he’s a champion of religious liberty. He just needed an atheist to help deliver the message.

At a town hall event in Waverly, Iowa, last week, the Florida senator and Republican presidential candidate was questioned by a man named Justin Scott, who identified himself as an atheist and said he was concerned about Rubio’s professions of faith on the campaign trail. Scott said he and his non-believer friends have joked that Rubio, a Catholic, sounds like a man vying to be the nation’s pastor in chief rather than its commander in chief.

Rubio’s polite response — highlighted by his declaration that faith is “the single greatest influence in my life” — received a modest level of media coverage; the exchange, filmed by Scott and posted on YouTube, was reported by the Associated Press and picked up by other publications, though it was never treated as particularly big news or a telling moment on the trail for Rubio.

Read the article “How the Mainstream Media Missed the Boat on Marco Rubio vs. An Atheist” on washingtonpost.com.