The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

Religion has to stay in the heart not in politics. It is private.

Most people don't want to talk about politics and religion. They say 'Let's talk about something else.'

Skip the religion and politics head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

The proper reply to right wing religiosity is not to insist that politics and religion don't mix. This is the stock response of the left.

I mean I went to a church school when I was younger and imbibed a certain amount of religion then but it was really in university that I got interested in religion and politics at the same time. I don't think as if it were one moment of conversion but my spiritual journey really began then.

Whether one believes or not religion is as real a force in the life of the world as economics or politics and it demands fair-minded attention. Even if you think the entire religious enterprise is at best misguided and at worst counterproductive it remains vital inspiring great good and sometimes great evil.

These days politics religion media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

I believe in the separation of church and state but I do not believe in the separation of politics from religion.

The enemy is not just terrorism. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion and distorts both.