One of the hidden consequences of 300 years of Jewish assimilation into American society through inter-marriage has been that many Americans alive today have a Jewish relative in the closet (of whom they may be quite fond). As assimilation was reducing the number of Jews in America, every American was acquiring some Jewish roots. Muslim, European and Liberal talk about a “final solution” to the Jewish problem makes many Americans uncomfortable.

Allen Abel’s chronicles of his Jewish/Christian family are a great human interest story that also illuminates the inner workings of the Evangelical movement. Here are some highlights from Why my kin won’t vote for Obama.

A visit with my born-again Texas cousins and their “Steeple People” allies is a window into Christian salvation, Southern politics, and the conviction that Muslims like Barack Hussein Obama have no chance of going to heaven.

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Their faith is infinite and inflexible; an election year adds the dimension of patriotic duty and temporal influence. Trudy’s husband, Frank Hester, is the Treasurer of the Republican Party here in Fort Bend County and a Precinct Chairman in Missouri City, population 60,000. Trudy and Frank serve as Election Officials on voting day. (Back in Maryland, so do I.) Frank is likely to be a delegate to the Texas Republican convention in June. They are the Religious Right personified, with a two-car garage and a one-way view of candidates and candor.

I ask them about the African-American Democrat who is likely to be on the November ballot, and the patently false yet prevalent rumour that he is an adherent of Islam.

“I believe he could be a Muslim,” cousin Trudy says.

“You hear and you read things,” Frank nods. (My cousin’s husband is not of Jewish heritage. He was born in Mississippi, grew up in Houston, worked for IBM for 26 years, and, he says, he “received Jesus as a little boy.”)

“I don’t know if Obama’s a liar,” Trudy goes on. (She was raised as a Methodist in Tennessee, where her father, Dr. Sam Abel, had married a Gentile nurse.) “But because he’s had that background with his family and everything, I’d need more than just his declaration that he’s a Christian.”

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So we go to the stately home of Rick Miller, the county chairman of the GOP, and his wife Babs. In the 1970s, Mr. Miller served as a Navy fighter pilot under the command of John McCain. He’s a graduate of the Naval Academy, a former Olympic baseball player, a handsome, hale fellow in tasseled loafers and a buttoned-down shirt.

(Mrs. Miller’s grandmother, Henrietta Nesbitt, was Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s official housekeeper at the White House throughout FDR’s 12-year presidency. And the Roosevelts were Democrats!)

“To me,” Mr. Miller says, ” ‘conservative’ means the party of Lincoln and Reagan: less government, lower taxes, a strong defence and individual freedom; responsibility, accountability, less government involvement in our private lives. The Patriot Act is important to me. But do Muslims like it?’ ”

“Is Senator Obama a Muslim?” I ask, using the question as a test of the triumph of fervency over fact.

“I think there’s a very good chance that he is,” Mr. Miller replies. “I don’t believe him when he says he isn’t. Didn’t he swear on the Koran? There are some questions that he has to answer about the church he goes to and the pastor of that church.

“I would hope that he’s not a Muslim, because we’re at war with a certain group of those people.”

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It goes without saying that the Millers voted for our current President in 2000 and 2004, yet Mr. Bush’s latter-day push for Palestinian statehood touches a raw nerve in the Millers – and my cousins – that I certainly did not expect.

“As a man, yes, I think he gets it that his role as President is to protect this country,” Rick Miller says. “We’re stronger, our military is stronger, and we’re protected.”

But when he says, ‘We all pray to the same God,’ well, that is a very unfortunate thing for him to say. It makes me question some things. I only know that how he is acting toward Israel is not as positive as I’d like it to be.”

By “not as positive,” Mr. Miller means that, in his opinion, encouraging Israel to surrender the West Bank of the River Jordan – the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria – to the Palestinians is an offence against God. Of course, what Jimmy Carter has been writing about Israeli “apartheid” is even more outrageous.

“How can he say that?” Rick Miller gasps. “Is he off his rocker?”

“He was deceived by Satan,” Mr. Miller’s wife explains.

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“He frightens me from the standpoint that he is still an unknown quantity. If he were to take the oath on the Koran rather than the Bible, that would send a message to the whole world as to his true nature and his true allegiance.”

“Can Muslims go to heaven?” I wonder.

“No,” says Terese Raia. “They do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Their god Allah is not the same as Jesus Christ. Their god is a god of death, of murder. Our god doesn’t tell us to strap bombs to little children and go blow up other people.”

“Can Jews go to heaven?” I ask.

“I am not enough of a Bible scholar to judge that,” my dinner companion replies.