Brady, Brady, God talks through Brady.

The problem I have is that after years of the religious views of others encroaching into government and legislative territory, I was really looking forward to the re-establishment of that line between the public and the private, and instead, we await the inauguration of a president who has shown signs that he's a little too comfortable with the presence of religion in the public square, is a little too preachy about it, and seems to have appointed himself the newest arbiter of the moral, complete with lectures for those of us who might not "get it."

And complete with people like Rick Warren.  

Unfortunately, I think Obama is much more a "but what if they're right?" person, someone who is so anxious to please everyone that he will lose sight of what his constitutional responsibilities in theis area are, and an already seriously weakened wall between church and state will continue to erode.  I get the uncomfortable feeling that Obama may believe that he is uniquely equipped to lead the charge to finally sorting out the place of religion in America, and will try to find a way to make America a more godly nation in ways that involve the government and legislation.

Its one thing to not care about what other people's religious beliefs are (a view I heartily endorse), but today's pervasive use of false and phony litmus tests of religiousness in American politics is extremely dangerous and should be of great concern to everyone: the religious, the faithful, and the non-participants.

The full results of the survey question are here; I find them interesting although others may not.  For example, only 57% of evangelical Christians believe someone else is getting into Heaven, and only 53% of them believe there is more than one way to interpret the tenets of their religion.  For mainline Protestants, the same numbers are 83% and 82%, respectively.

That's the rub isn't?  Because with the evangelicals, they seem to be under the impression that if you ask them not to bother you in your earthly life you are infringing on their right to practice their faith.

However it's not hard to see why people get sidetracked here. LARGE swaths of Americans have religious beliefs and religious voting blocks have non-trival ammounts of power. The whole Rick Warren phenomenon is really an outgrowth of the way in which certain power centers continue to grip the imagination of our collective psyche.

the whole function of religion (at least most) is to keep you on the righteous path, that you may enter god's kingdom upon your release from this mortal plane. it must be that religion's version of the righteous path (though all seem fairly consistent on the do's n don'ts), otherwise, you're screwed.

absent this certainty, your religion has no legitimate basis for existing.

The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide,
To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n

A modern review of the Greek & Hebrew words that are sometimes translated as "Hell" is interesting.

I've often wished that Jefferson had been in the USA, rather than France, when the Constitution was written.  Then perhaps a version of the following line might possibly have ended up as the initial part of the First Amendment:

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782