> Yes, I can, and from personal experience. I go
> to a church where the pastor is very adamant
> about his congregation voting. Whenever there
> is any kind of government election, he urges
> us to get out to the polls and vote. He doesn't
> endorse political candidates, but does urge
> us to make informed decisions. If our church
> was completely free from any sort of political
> thought, then our pastor certainly wouldn't be
> doing this.
>

Okay, I think perhaps I have misunderstood your previous points, and I did not think through my statements of "no influence whatsoever." Clearly what you have just described is not a bad thing. However, an important distinction should be made here: the church is voluntarily entertaining political discussion. The person discussing politics is a member of the church and not a member of the ruling government. Should anyone propose that the state be allowed to send representatives down to talk to a church congregation on behalf of the state, this would be a bad thing.

> Ideally, all of our public officials would always
> make decisions based on what is best for our
> country. But power corrupts, and so we have
> corrupt politicians who make corrupt
> decisions based on whether or not it will
> make their power base happy or not. I would
> like to think that religious politicians who
> believe in accountablity to a higher authority
> (whatever god they worship) would tend to
> make better decisions, based on that
> absolute system of right vs. wrong rather than
> on pleasing the masses.

I agree with you. I happen to be an agnostic who believes in an absolute system of rights and wrongs and I have little tolerance for relativists of any kind (moral or otherwise). This is a really tricky area, and I think that there is an important distinction between making decisions based upon ethics and ones based upon obedience to an organized religion. The two are sometimes at odds with each other, as religion (or at least the people who run them) are as corruptable as government. History is full of examples of religions that have gotten horribly intertwined with governments, to the detriment of both church and state.

Stephen