Blending Politics and Religion:

[Theophylact]

The British View.

Tony Blair, a prime minister with Anglo-Catholic conviction, is a smart enough politician to know that, in Britain, religion does not win votes.

As soon as it mixes with political air, it tends to bring with it the whiff of hypocrisy. When Mr Blair launched the 2001 election, hymnbook in hand, against a stained glass window, the press howled their derision.

Here ended the first lesson.

When an American journalist from Vanity Fair asked the prime minister a question about belief, his former communications manager Alistair Campbell stopped the interview in its tracks: "We don't do God," he barked from the sidelines. And they didn't.

As they say, read the whole thing.

[wallie_x]

Britain's Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, says we remove religion from the political landscape at our peril, because without what George W Bush once called "the vision thing", politics is reduced to short-term matters of popularity or profit.

Sounds like the Clinton/Gore years to a tee!

Interesting article, but...

Religion, he says, has at its worst been responsible for genocide, tyranny, despotism and terrorism, but always and only when it has become confused with power.

Uh..Oh!! The leftist one side only mantra rears its ugly head.

Secularism in the last century...."at its worst been responsible for genocide, tyranny, despotism and terrorism"...i.e. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc..

I read in the paper yesterday that the genocide at the hands of Saddam's henchmen maybe 1,000,000.
Was he religious? Or did he just use religion to manipulate the Iraqi people?

[J-Excel]

Absolute power, however it's obtained, corrupts absolutely. Throughout history religion has been a popular tool to achieve absolute power. It's the opiate of the masses. In modern western societies the people don't want their leaders to have that much power.

[nomaxim]

Originally posted by J-Excel
Absolute power, however it's obtained, corrupts absolutely. Throughout history religion has been a popular tool to achieve absolute power. It's the opiate of the masses.

That's been true ever since the King-priest's in Sumar first took power 5,000- 6,000 years ago.

[cyphen]

Originally posted by J-Excel
Absolute power, however it's obtained, corrupts absolutely. Throughout history religion has been a popular tool to achieve absolute power. It's the opiate of the masses. In modern western societies the people don't want their leaders to have that much power.

Then might i humbly suggest, J (not being sarcastic, here), that your true focus should not be the removal of religion from anything governmental or governmentally funded, but rather it should be ensuring nobody gets absolute power? Is the word "God" in the pledge of allegiance, or portraying the nativity scene in a school, or saying "God" in a public speech - are any of those things promoting an abuse of power? Or is this a case of fighting against the proliferation of bows and arrows?