'Does God take sides in the elections? Is there a voters' guide hiding in our holy books? Should we pray for electoral inspiration? Secular people tend to answer an emphatic "NO" to those questions, as do most progressive religious folk. Because religious fundamentalists so often present an easy-to-caricature version of faith-based politics - even to the point of implying that God would want us to vote for certain candidates - it's tempting to want to banish all talk of the divine from political life.
But a blanket claim that "religion and politics don't mix" misunderstands the inevitable connection between the two. Whether secular or religious, our political judgments are always rooted in first principles - claims about what it means to be human that can't be reduced to evidence and logic. Should people act purely out of self-interest, or is solidarity with others just as important? Do we owe loyalty to a nation-state? Under what conditions, if any, is the taking of a human life justified? What is the appropriate relationship of human beings to the larger living world?'
Read more: Prophetic Politics: Charting a Healthy Role for Religion in Public Life
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