[quote=Halo]
Arguing based on past experience is all well and good, but, in my opinion, defending something on a theoretical ground rather than simply "it didn't work last time" is always beneficial. Only one person, iirc, has mentioned the primary reason for separating church and state: conflicting interests.In the end, government in a democratic society exists only to represent the will of the people, and to act in their best interests. As soon as they are beholden/answerable to other, religious, faith-driven obligations - for example, Catholics are answerable primarily to the Pope, hence Britain's raging hate-rection for Catholic politicians - their impartiality in acting in the interests of, and according to the will of, their country's people is questionable. There's a freaking tonne of other arguments, but that one's my favourite because I get to talk about "society" a lot, and as a young and naive teenager nothing gets me off quite like talking about lofty ideals of rights, and "the people".
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In the states, a high-functioning republic, these people would presumably have been catholic when they were elected to represent their constituency, and therefore expected to remain thoroughly catholic for the duration of their term, in honor of the democratic process by which we chose him or her as the senator, or whatever. We give out democracy in doses, like a drug -- house, you get tons of democracy! Senate, you get less democracy! President, you only get ONE democracy once every four years, so try to drag it out as long as you can, savor the flavor. Everybody else, we've passed out our remaining Democracies to your state and local regulators, who will detail when and how you can get more Democracy from them. Meanwhile our House and our Senate are going to get their own better Democracy.

Complicated. But the point is, a campaign is about making people vote for you, here, not for a party or a coalition or however you handle it. Once *you* are elected in, you remain you, and your only real obligations are to the people who voted for you, to be you. So be you. If that means be christian then that's what they wanted, and it'd be a shame if they didn't get what they want.