Can Politics and Religion Mix? (Poll & Forum)

[giddyboy]

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Can politics and religion mix? explain your answer...

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Little sect is big player in Philippine politics
AFP, France,May 3,2004,Cicil Morella, www.inq7.net

Iglesia ni Cristo, a small but well-connected sect that votes as one, is set to reprise a familiar role as kingmaker in the closely contested May presidential elections.

The Iglesia, literally Church of Christ, has in the waning days of the campaign reportedly distributed sample ballots to its voting members, estimated to number at least a million, instructing them to choose President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Theologically, the Iglesia ni Cristo is a cult of Christianity due to its rejection of core doctrines of the Christian faith

Her main rival Fernando Poe had been courting the Iglesia voters because their total is roughly equivalent to the theoretical number of votes that the movie star needs to catch up with Macapgal-Arroyo, based on the results of the latest opinion surveys, which have him trailing the incumbent by 4.5 percentage points.

Ms Macapagal-Arroyo describes herself as “a good customer of Iglesia ni Cristo� and says she consults with its reclusive chief minister, Erano Manalo, whenever she has problems.

She says the sect helped her top the senatorial elections in 1995 and win the vice presidency in 1998.

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El Shaddai: "Some believe that El Shaddai plays a major role in Philippine politics. They assert that former President Fidel Ramos won the 1992 Presidential elections because of El Shaddai's votes, although this has never been corroborated with an actually tally of votes correlated with El Shaddai membership rosters. Some counter this claim as well by stating that El Shaddai members vote independently."---wikipedia

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The Ecleos: In the 1995 PCIJ book "Boss: Five Case Studies of Local Politics in the Philippines," PCIJ investigated how politics and religion combined into a potent, if not deadly brew, in the Ecleo family's fiefdom in Surigao. Much of it still holds true, though PBMA now boasts an even bigger and more fanatical following.

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If politics and religion do not mix, what of politics and cults?
source: archbishop cranmer blogspot

When the issue of the Catholicism of Senator John F Kennedy was emerging as an issue in his quest to become President of the United States of America, he made a speech, in which he said:

"But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured - perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again - not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me - but what kind of America I believe in."

He was struggling to persuade the sceptical American people that the White House would not become an embassy of the Vatican, and neither would the US President do the Pope’s bidding, but, for a nation born out of the struggle for liberation from religious tyranny, his words frequently rang hollow. Yet the prejudices were overcome by his oratorical skill. At times, the communication of his dreams and visions were redolent of Martin Luther King Jnr:

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote - where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference - and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."

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Can politics and religion mix?
source: telegraph.co.uk

Tony Blair has said that his religious beliefs were central to his premiership but that he was reluctant to discuss them because “people think you’re a nutter.�

Mr Blair told BBC television in The Blair Years: “Of course it was hugely important. You know you can’t have a religious faith and it be an insignificant aspect because it’s profound about you and about you as a human being.�

Should politics and religion be kept separate?

Why are American political leaders so open about their religious views, whereas British leaders are reluctant to discuss their faith?

Would you prefer an elected leader with a strong faith or a secular approach?

[cebu-future]

Let us not allow these priests to control our lives!

[eax]

Just remember during Spanish times. Na ang religion and government are not separated.

[godsaint]

Separate man gyud unta ni sila.ang nakalisod ang mga leader aning mga kulto mangwarta man gyud sa politiko.para kunuhay sa simbahan diay para sa tiyan.Maglagot gani ko makahunahuna ko sa rally ni Velarde katong naa si Gloria og Erap.Ingon si Erap ai "marami akong nagawang kasalanan pero ang pagnakaw sa kaban ng bayan kailanman ay hindi ko ginawa at hinding-hindi ko gagawin'ingon daun ang mga taga El Shaddai..AMEN!!!hahaha uto-uto

[taga_ipil]

"I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth."
- Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967)

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.�
-Mahatma Gandhi

[taga_ipil]

Religion almost necessarily makes absolute and uncompromising demands on a believer. Politics, on the other hand, requires that a person be willing to negotiate, compromise, and to give up on some of what they want in order for the process to work. This, in a nutshell, is why religion and politics cannot mix in a liberal democracy.

Jonathan Sacks writes in the Times:

Democratic politics — the worst system ever invented apart from all the others — is more than the rule of the majority. That, as Alexis de Tocqueville rightly said, can lead to the tyranny of the majority and the loss of rights on the part of minorities. Its virtues are that it allows for the non-violent resolution of conflict. It makes possible a change in government without revolution or civil war. Most importantly, it safeguards the free expression of dissent.

Politics turns into virtue what religions often see as a vice — the fact that we do not all think alike, that we have conflicting interests, that we see the world through different eyes. Politics knows what religion sometimes forgets, that the imposition of truth by force and the suppression of dissent by power is the end of freedom and a denial of human dignity. When religion enters the political arena, we should repeat daily Bunyan’s famous words: “Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the gates of Heaven.�

Fortunately, most people avoid a direct confrontation with the absolute demands of their religion. Those who take these demands most seriously usually end up as fanatics — this, sadly, is the logical outcome of any system that makes absolute and uncompromising demands on someone. Only by ignoring these demands and living in two worlds, religious and secular, are most people able to function sanely and without fanaticism.

The more overt religion that is injected into politics, the harder it is for politics to function as it should. The absolute demands made by religion make it difficult, if not impossible, for people to compromise on the political issues being debated. Indeed, religion often insists that some issues aren’t political to begin with because God has spoken and, therefore, there is nothing for humans to debate.

This is not to say that there is no place for religious people in politics. A religious person who allows their religious beliefs to influence how they approach issues shouldn’t have any significant problems. There is a big difference between a person saying “my religious commitment to the value of life leads me to vote X� and a person saying “God has spoken and only X is acceptable.� In the former case, a person can compromise on the details of X because they don’t assume that they are enacting God’s specific will; in the latter case, it’s difficult to imagine compromise even been considered.

http://atheism.about.com/b/2005/12/1...s-cant-mix.htm

[gareb]

veiled theocracy? only for the hell-and-brimstone types.

[The_Child]

well that really depends on how one's politics is founded. Pero karon, its the fad to separate state from religion. The term Politics is quite ambiguous because every organization has a politics.

[brownprose]

yes in the philippines

[giddyboy]

Maglagot gani ko makahunahuna ko sa rally ni Velarde katong naa si Gloria og Erap.Ingon si Erap ai "marami akong nagawang kasalanan pero ang pagnakaw sa kaban ng bayan kailanman ay hindi ko ginawa at hinding-hindi ko gagawin'ingon daun ang mga taga El Shaddai..AMEN!!!hahaha uto-uto

that's a scenario that i don't always like...amen.