iPolitics: Random Shuffle Religion/Presidential/Race!

Oh so much about these topics, you don't need TM to sort it out for you. Just allow a random selection of quotations and sound bytes by any pastor or presidential hopeful in the news of late to bathe your semi-conscious but always critical, media-consuming mind.

Then consider the wisdom of our nation's founding members who thought some space between religion and politics might foster a better democracy. I wonder if we as a country (not simply me, but a winning majority of us) would vote for a figure like Dr. Martin Luther King? How do we understand Obama's anger as the media portrays it for us?

As we meditate on how complicated and often suspect the nexus of religion and politics seems to continue to be, here are some pieces to shuffle:

1. the opinion in the NYT, asking if we ought to judge candidates by their associations with religious leaders and also exploring some of specific statements that reflect the extreme views of a pastor associated with the R-party's front runner (4 May 2008);
2. the MJ story about Hilary's faith claims (1 Sept 2007);
3. the succinct letter to the editor written by John McBride, author of the Color of Water, about his experience as a mixed-race person dealing with the Black Church (30 April 2008).
4. and the more detached analysis by Freepress of how much media coverage was dedicated to the pastor "flap" (6 May 2008).
   

Now look at this story in the Post about new forms of Black organizing and reconsider whether this uproar about religion and politics is likely to be relevant in the ways that pollsters project.