Religion and Politics

I like this quote from Atrios:

"I suppose what's driven me nuts all of these years is the fact that my opposition to the religion creep in political rhetoric has probably been much more motivated by my concern that bringing the God Wars into the public square would be bad for religion than concerns about it being somehow bad for politics or policy. I don't much care if people are religious or not, but without religious freedom, which really encompasses much more than who you pray to, you don't have freedom in any meaningful sense at all."

I'm not sure I'd agree entirely with this formulation, but I've long had similar concerns about how damaging the politicizing of religion can be to religion.