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Religion weekend in Left Blogistan
I think by now most of you should have noticed that the intersection of religious and political institutions is one of my personal hot button issues. I think it’s best for both of them if they stay as far apart as possible. That’s not to say that I think religious people should stay out of politics (though I can name a few individuals whose absence would make me very happy). It’s also not to say that I think people’s religious beliefs should or can be kept out of politics. On the average, America is the most religious of all the industrial or Western countries. Demanding rigorous secularity of all who enter the political marketplace would be a formula for disenfranchising a solid majority of our population. And I think that would be a bad thing. So I’m resigned to religion and religious people being an inescapable fact of American politics, but I’m determined to keep them from forcing their religious beliefs on me or anyone else. Theocracy is the worst form of government possible.

That is as far as John’s manifesto on religion and politics goes this blurry Sunday morning. I’m thinking about this because there seems to be an unusually large number of good posts and discussions on religion and politics in Left Blogistan this weekend.

Atrios started it last week with a series of posts taking Republican Catholics to task for their hypocrisy in trying to make a religious issue of Kerry’s pro-choice positions while giving pro-choice ( and I might add pro-death-penalty) Republicans a free ride.

Atrios continued on Friday with a post provoked by a sloppy Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times that morning. This led to a great deal of commenting to which Atrios has so far answered twice (once, twice). Atrios provides lots of links of further discussions.

Farmer over at Corrente has two interesting posts, one on Bishop Spong and one on the Taliban on the Palouse, that nicely bookend my interests.

And I always spend a lot of time reading the defenders of science education against legislated Creationism (start here and read their blogroll).

I’ve gotta go work in the yard. Read those links and I’ll be back to discuss things later.