Excerpt Of The Day: Religion In Politics

13 Apr, 2005 by John Hawkins

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Here’s Glenn Reynolds on religion in politics:

“Likewise, I think there’s a lot of sentiment in favor of people being able to practice their religion, and talk about their religion, without discrimination or ridicule. And I think there’s some support (though less so) for efforts to inform legislation with religious values. There’s also a commonsense attitude toward de minimis expressions of religion: Americans are not, for the most part, offended by references to God, or by things like prayers at football games.

But Americans really don’t like busybodies telling them what to do. The decline of the Left as a political force in America coincided precisely with its shift from a politics of individual freedom to that of tut-tutting politically-correct nanny-statism. I suspect that if the religious Right decides to emulate the Left in this regard, its influence will evaporate in similar fashion.

Religious, yes. But not too much.”

When it comes to politics, that’s spot-on advice although I have this sneaking suspicion that Glenn and I might have a serious disagreement about what constitutes “too much”…