Working across the aisle and pulpit - how religion can inform political participation?

But when we voted Obama into office, we did not vote Jeremiah Wright into office, and Obama has not held meetings of the "black . . . Ku Klux Klan" in the Oval Office, nor is there any evidence of Marxist . . . religion" emanating from the White House. So why do we hear hate speech and scare tactics from Monsoonman? What is Monsoonman afraid of?

I think it is good to know where political candidates attend church and know what their religious doctrine is. If we had a free & independent press in the United States they would have focused in on the church that obama attended for 20 years before he was elected. I think if america would have been more informed about obamas "reverend" and church he atteneded they would not have voted for him. Look up reverend jeremiah wright and black liberation theology. Prepare yourself for a hate filled, incendiary ride....It is a black version of a ku klux klan meeting, except it is hate whitey....Don't want to believe it? Spend some time and see where your president came from. A marxist based religion that advocates using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology.

At the core of American political life is tolerance, allowing others with whom we disagree to have their say and to practice their beliefs in freedom. Americans put freedom before conformity to any one religion's idea of the right way to live. It's a system that has worked well except when extremism masquerading as patriotism has gained the upper hand, as when Sen. Joe McCarthy or Fr. Coughlan won millions of followers with fiery hate speech against communism or Judaism. We are in another such era now with the far right screaming about "socialism" and worse. It's good that you ask Catholics to reach out to others, but the RC church itself must also back down on its insistence that Catholics have a duty to vote according to Catholic doctrine on hot issues such as abortion and stem cell research and barrier contraceptives to prevent the spread of HIV. As long as we have religious leaders telling their congregations to vote for or against particular candidates, we have religion undermining political freedom, and we have media filled with hate speech against the perceived enemies of the one-and-only "truth." It's time to wake up and learn from our own history. This kind of power play has happened before, and it takes a long time for the nation to recover from the rise of religious extremists. So instead of asking how religion informs political participation, we should be insisting that it is completely irrelevant where we as Americans get our political and social values from (religion, ethnic heritage, education, etc.). In the USA, every political agenda is debatable on its own merits; its origin in one religious doctrine or another gives it no special privileges whatever. It's called separation of church and state, and it's still the best way of preserving freedom.