God and Politics Shouldn't Mix

The second point that Karen Armstrong addressed is whether one's politics should be informed by, shaped by, or decided by one's religious views.

Certainly, we think, Americans know the answer to that one. We look with disdain at those countries where religion and politics overlap. We point with pride to our separation of church and state; or, at least, some of us point to that ideal with pride.

Truth be told, we know of many people in our country, just like millions more in countries around the globe, whose political understandings and religious understandings are one and the same. The current GOP candidate for governor in Virginia has a history of involvement with Christian Reconstructionism, for example. If you do not know about that movement, you should.

Armstrong's answer to the consideration of "God and politics shouldn't mix" was "Not Necessarily." In her concluding paragraph, she made this point:
Of course, the manner in which religion is used in politics is more important than whether it’s used at all. U.S. presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama have invoked faith as a shared experience that binds the country together -- an approach that recognizes the communal power of spirituality without making any pretense to divine right. Still, this consensus is not satisfactory to American Protestant fundamentalists, who believe the United States should be a distinctively Christian nation.

Obviously, if you are a person of faith or a person of no faith, that will have some bearing on your political views. That fact about you cannot not influence your perspective on some political question. Yet, the questions of how much, in what way, and what does this mean for those of other religious views continue to bedevil us. What do you think?