[quote=So Boerd]
Better question, why should there be any particular insulation from religion? Hypothetically here in the US, a school could distribute Communist Manifestos but not have a moment of silence for prayer. What exactly is the practical difference?
[/quote]

Because history. Nothing, ever, in the five thousand years of human history we have, has good ever come from uniting the thing that mandates people's physical lives and the thing that mandates people's spiritual lives. Want to know what a religiously-dominated government style was like? The Dark Ages are full of them, as are the Medieval ages. Religion was especially used to keep the people docile and to justify things that, today, would be considered heinous war crimes. Many monarchies even claimed divine providence over their people to enforce their authority. No qualifications except "God said so" and "my dad was king, so now I am too!"

Hell, look at North Korea. The government claims divine supremacy over its people, and uses it as a justification to do anything to them. Lock them up for no reason, kill them even.

Look at Tibet. The Buddhist monks that ruled as the theocracy prior to China invading them and taking them over was one of the most insanely violent and disparate rulerships of all human history: Buddhist monks nearly [i]literally[/i] rode the corpses of their people to "enlightenment."

History is chalked [b]full[/b] of examples of why you keep religion away from government. Either because government uses it as a scapegoat to do horrible things or because religion itself poisons the minds of those ruling the government with dogma that tells them not to think and obey mindlessly, it's pretty much irrelevant which way it goes, or if it always goes one way or the other.

The last thing I want to hear out of my ruler's mouth is "I'm doing X because the voices in my head told me it was a good idea", or, "I'm doing Y because this ancient book written by people who fucked their cousins and died by the age of 30 thought it was a good idea".

A politician can be religious, and that's fine, but their first job is to rule the country in a manner that benefits the people. When the first and most emphatically repeated rule of nearly every religion is "obey your God above all things" this creates a conflict of interest and a serious problem: A truly devout follower of a religion cannot actually properly represent the interests of the people unless they always coincidence with those of the ancient text he or she prescribes their lives towards.

Ergo: Religion and government cannot be fuck buddies. They have to be separated by a wall. That wall being the first amendment: That Congress shall not make any law regarding the establishment of religion: This would be either for or against religion. They have to have nothing to do with it. The spiritual lives of the people should be entirely up to them to decide, not the government. Not now. Not ever. Period.

EDIT

Jeez, and how could I forget the middle east? [i]What a wonderful fucking place to live[/i].