Like water and petrol they shouldn’t mix but all too often they do.  Some states are indeed so intertwined that it is impossible to be in Politics at all if you are not of the faith; Israel, India, Iran and Pakistan spring to mind but here in the ‘secular’ West we are not so immune either.  In America it is unimaginable for a President not to be a Christian, and a practicing one too; wearing ones Religion on ones sleeve is ‘de rigeur’.   In Germany the present Government coalition is led by the Christian Democrats, though I am not sure how ‘Christian’ you have to be to be in that party.  In Britain it is extremely unlikely that a Conservative leader would not be from the Church of England, though historically this wasn’t always the case.  I think that Neil Kinnock might have been the first leader of a British party who admitted that he might be an agnostic, and since then we have had Blair, who was almost a Catholic and Brown, a son of the manse, Milliband, a possibly lapsed Jew and now Jeremy who is almost certainly an Atheist.  Whether anyone in England nowadays votes or indeed doesn’t vote because of the religion or lack of it in the candidate is doubtful, though there is probably some resistance still to declared Muslims or Hindus.  But it is when Politicians bring religion, often as some sort of justification, into their decision making that things get a bit hypocritical.  Can you be a Christian and preside over policies which may result in people dying, or suffering any form of hardship?  And worse still is when they use their Religion, genuine or not, as a photo-opportunity.  Religion, if one is daft enough to still cling to it, should be a private matter, better excluded from Politics completely.

So whatever your Politics or Religion, let’s keep them separate and Happy Holidays or Merry Christmas to you all…