As Reverend Jeremiah Wright continues to scuttle Barack Obama’s chances to be the first African-American President, one thing has gone mostly unsaid, and it has nothing to do with race. It is this; religion has no place in the political process.

Over the last decade, Democrats have (mostly) decried the Right’s tendency to build a constituency based on religious beliefs, and rightly so. Religious leaders of every stripe, whether they are fundamentalist Christians or mainline Protestants or Roman Catholics, all have an ax to grind. Every one of them has some take on the current political climate and on policy. They all have something at stake. Which is to say, they aren’t just neutral players. And that is why they are dynamite for politicians.  read more »