'If God keeps hanging out with politicians it's gonna hurt his reputation'

MOLLY IVINS:

....Some Christians seem to me inclined to lose track of love, compassion and mercy. I don't think I have any special brief to go around judging them, but when the stink of hypocrisy becomes so foul in the nostrils it makes you start to puke it becomes necessary to point out there is one more good reason to observe the separation of church and state: If God keeps hanging out with politicians, it's gonna hurt his reputation.

I've always hoped that people like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham (and Reps. Bob Ney, Richard Pombo, Dana Rohrabacher, John Doolittle and William J. Jefferson (a D) and Sens. Bill Frist and Conrad Burns) were really stonewall cynics at heart, secretly sneering at the rubes who buy into their holier-than-thou posturing. But I'm afraid they're not...

Another reason why religion and policy make such a bad mix is that religion brings the dread element of certitude into what needs to be a constant process of questioning. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh quotes a former Defense Department official who served in Bush's first term: "The president is more determined than ever to stay the course. He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'" ...

So here we sit, watching a great, stinking skein of corruption being fished to the surface of Washington, while the town is simultaneously filled with a great babble about God, prayer and morality. Corruption trails head off in all directions -- lobbyists, wives, jobs, perverting intelligence, outing agents for petty revenge -- all this and a Prayer Breakfast every day.

http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=miv