In an interview with CBN News today, Donald Trump assured America that he would “never do anything negative to a Bible.” Not that anyone was saying he would. His comment came during the latest in a string of bizarre interviews over the past few weeks. But this time Trump gave his views on Christianity—a subject that he seems oddly uncomfortable speaking about. Here are some examples:

• “I believe in God. I am Christian. I think the Bible is certainly, it is the book, it is the thing.
• (On going to church): “Well, I go as much as I can. Always on Christmas. Always on Easter. Always when there’s a major occasion. And during the Sundays. I’m a Sunday church person. I’ll go when I can.”
• (On people sending him Bibles): “Well, I get sent Bibles by a lot of people. There’s no way I would ever throw anything to do anything negative to a Bible, so what we do is we keep all of the Bibles. I would have a fear of doing something other than very positive.”

Trump’s stilted responses about religion (the Bible is the thing?) indicate that he’s unversed on the subject. Since he is not somebody who is new to speaking on TV, there doesn’t appear to be another explanation for it.

But if he’s not a particularly religious person, why wouldn’t he just say so? People would respect the honesty. Instead, Trump has been trying to play a role that he thinks the Republican base wants to see him in. But the act isn’t even believable.

For example, take his changing views on abortion. “One thing about me, I’m a very honorable guy,” said Trump, during the CBN interview. “I’m pro-life, but I changed my view a number of years ago. One of the reasons I changed, one of the primary reasons, a friend of mine, his wife was pregnant, in this case married. She was pregnant and he didn’t really want the baby. . . . He ends up having the baby and the baby is the apple of his eye. It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to him. And you know here’s a baby that wasn’t going to be let into life. And I heard this, and some other stories, and I am pro-life.”

There’s nothing wrong with his story. But if he had such a major transformation, why wouldn’t he say something about it before he began looking into a 2012 presidential campaign? This seems especially strange, considering the fact that he was a vocal pro-choice supporter when mulled over a run for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination 10 years ago.

“I’m totally pro-choice. I hate it and I hate saying it. And I’m almost ashamed to say that I’m pro-choice, but I am pro-choice because I think we have no choice,’’ he said on Fox News Sunday in 1999. He even opposed a ban on partial-birth abortion at the time.

These inconsistencies (and there are many of them) raise the question whether Trump has any real views of his own. Or are even his professions about his church-attendance and Bible-reading just ruses to win over voters?