So Alex Salmond does God. It's a surprise. As far as I'm aware, Salmond has spent the lion's share of his political career without flagging up his religiosity.

So Alex Salmond does God. It's a surprise. As far as I'm aware, Salmond has spent the lion's share of his political career without flagging up his religiosity.

Now, in an interview in The Tablet, the Roman Catholic paper, he tells how his strong religious faith has shaped his political thinking and talks about his affection and respect for the late Cardinal Winning.

It's even more surprising since Salmond is not a regular church goer and hasn't been so since he was 18 years old. When he goes to church now, it is mostly to attend events or to read the lesson.

It is nonetheless his Christian upbringing, he says, that gives him his "moral compass" - "some idea of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable".

Now where have we heard that before?

There is a man at number 10 who has been guided by his moral compass - also courtesy of Christianity. His certainty (some might say his obdurate stubbornness) has its foundation on that same rock.

The prime minister before him, Tony Blair, didn't speak about his faith while he held office. But we all knew that in private he declared it to be his principle guide through life. He too vaunted a moral compass founded in Christianity. The longer he held office the more we heard the phrases "I believe", and "It's the right thing to do". His belief led us all the way to Baghdad.

So should we then be pleased to hear about Salmond's newly espoused moral compass - or nervous?

Like Blair and Brown he has linked it to his Christian upbringing. As with them, it could be interpreted as suggesting that those of another faith - or no faith - don't have the benefit of knowing "what is acceptable and what is not acceptable".

Yet you don't have to read Richard Holloway's excellent book Godless Morality to know that neither Christianity nor any other belief system has a monopoly on goodness. The irreligious can and do have a moral compass too.

Take a look at where both Blair and Brown's certainty of their own rectitude has led us. Tony Blair unleashed Shock and Awe with his fellow Christian George W Bush in the absence of any evidence of weapons of mass destruction. The morally principled Brown signed the cheques. He sat in the Cabinet that agreed the Iraq War. I didn't hear his protests. Did anyone?

It was Robin Cook, not Gordon Brown, who resigned on the issue.

And where was Brown's moral compass when he abolished the 10 pence tax rate? When did penalising the poorest workers in society become morally acceptable? What needle on the compass led him to praise the City of London for its greedy ways? Why, after more than a decade of Labour in power is there a yawning gap between rich and poor?

We all know these things so why, now, does that political fox, Alex Salmond think that declaring he has a moral compass is a good thing?

Alastair Campbell warned Blair the electorate would view him as a "nutter" if he declared his religious beliefs openly. The timing of Salmond's religious declaration looks more like an uncharacteristically clumsy manoeuvre to woo the Roman Catholic vote in the west of Scotland.

The First Minister is a politician to his bones. Could it be that his first tenet of faith is in the SNP and its political success? Forgive me for being so cynical but isn't he merely flicking his party's petticoat at the Roman Catholic Church in the hope of attracting its votes in the Glasgow North-East by-election?

He will not convert, as Blair did. He's a born Presbyterian who "likes its ideas of individual responsibility and democracy". But he is happy to emphasise a shared Christianity and shared values. Is mutual back scratching the prize?

The Catholic hierarchy will respect strongly held views being adhered to. But can he deliver to them policies more in line with their teachings than those New Labour offer? Should he try to?

Salmond talks, in the same article, of claiming for the Scottish Parliament the right to vote on abortion according to conscience.

He wants to see the time limit on abortion reduced to 20 weeks. It makes him the least-worst option for a Church that would prefer to see abortion outlawed.

But politics is and must remain a secular occupation. Politicians represent a population that espouses all faiths and none. Their representatives can, of course, hold private religious conviction but, in my view, politicians should not deploy their faith to persuade us of their moral rectitude.

We can judge that for ourselves; by their actions, by the way they vote and conduct themselves.

The SNP candidate in the up- coming by-election in Glasgow insists his membership of the ultra Catholic Opus Dei remains a private matter - of no significance to the electorate.

And it is a private matter - up to the point where Opus Dei's beliefs affect the social policies he will be asked to vote on. If on issues such as homosexuality and women's rights, they are in conflict with views held by the majority of his electorate, the voters should know before the election.

A first and even a second reading of The Tablet's interview suggests that Salmond has reached a new understanding of the power of prayer. I too saw its power after Obama's election to the presidency of the United States. World leaders jostled to be first to meet him.

Diplomats were dispatched, embassies rallied their lobbying forces. Would Britain be first? Would France or Germany? What about Russia?

It was Tony Blair, all grins, who broke the tape with Obama - at a breakfast prayer meeting. Praise the Lord.

The world of faith is like one of those magic pictures that used to be a weekly feature in Sunday magazines. If you tilt your world view and peer at it through half closed lids a new image appears.

Like an invisible cobweb it links people across boundaries of class, race and increasingly denomination.

The growth of secularisation and the spread of Islam have brought a new togetherness within the Christian world. Now politics seems to be bringing a new bond between Church and state in Scotland.

Please don't do God, Mr Salmond. Alastair Campbell got that one right.