Religion and elections

The New york times has an interesting piece today about the rise of Mike Huckabee and how the christian rights groups. It reminded me of something I heard last week on NPR about how important religion is to elections. I think a lot of people underestimate how much clout the christian rights groups have in American elections. I remember my cousin telling me during the last presidential election that her church and the surrounding christan churches kept prompting/ promoting that president Bush should be re-elected d/t his being better morally prepared than his contender.

The one of guys on NPR having the discussion was Jacques Berlinablau and he was discussing his book 'Thumpin it' http://explore.georgetown.edu/publications/25868/
and what I think he was trying to say is that it's not possible to leave out religion in politics.

The funny thing is, quite a few caller stated that they believe in separation of church and state, and feel that religion shouldn't play a part in politics and morals should be the deciding factor. The thing is.... where do people get their morals from? They learn them at home and from the communities that they live in. Now supposing their family is religious and instills religious based morals in their children. Cann't we then suppose that religion will make it into the government any way?

Ofcourse the politians aren't sitting there saying the are making decisions based on their religious convictions... but at the same time if you think about it...they sort of are. I guess the bets thing about separation of state and shurch is that nobody in governement can sit and push their religion on you...which wouldn't matter to me if they did because I am comfortable in my religion anyway and wouldn't be mad if they wanted to sit their and talk about theirs.

Well that's my take on things.