How do I deal with a candidate mentioning God twelve times in their application?
Regardless of my own faith, referring to god a dozen times in an application is highly unusual and rather unprofessional. Prospective PhD students, however, should have some understanding of the professional customs of the field. (After all, you don't go on at length about any other personal and non-work-related beliefs and preferences in applications, proposals, presentations etc..) If the rest of the application is very good, I might look past this. But it is certainly a glaring minus.