Michael Rotellini
Mrotell1@uwyo.edu
Over 50 percent of Wyoming state legislators, both senators and representatives, choose to identify their religion on each of their information pages on the legislature website.
Under the First Amendment the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause requires a ‘separation of church and state.’
Keeping religion and politics separate is an important issue and both should be kept apart Victor Hernandez, a junior psychology major and an ASUW Senator for the College of Arts and Science, said.
“My thoughts on religion and politics is that both should be kept apart. Although I am religious, I don’t think it’s beneficial to put both things together,” Hernandez said. “Of course everyone has the right to express their religion freely here in the United States it wouldn’t make sense for politics to get involved in religion. Could you imagine if law makers based their decisions on religion? All of their decision would be biased and completely unfair to the minority religions.”
According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center about 70.6 percent of people in the U.S. identify as some form of Christian, while about 5.9 percent of people view themselves as a non-Christian religion.
The remaining 22.8 percent are people with no recognizable faith.
In Europe there isn’t much religious pressure in politics because the percentage of religious people in Europe are less than that in the U.S. along with many other factors.
American politics hold major affliction with religion and even based as a standpoint for one of the major parties said Professor Paul V.M. Flesher of the religious studies department at UW.
“Religion is a major facet of American politics. One of our two political parties has established itself as a religious party, the Republican, even though there are influential people in it who are less committed than others,” Flesher said. “The other political party has established itself as a party of religious tolerance which in theory at least welcomes people of all religions and no religion.”
Regardless of whether one has a religious belief or not, both parties feed off of the religion in some way or form, Flesher said.
However, there is a wide discrepancy when looking at the general public religious view and then comparing it to Congress.
It appears Congress as a whole is more religious than the American public, Flesher said, adding that the largest disparity between Congress and its constituents in terms of religion is in the category of people who claim they are religiously “unaffiliated.” Just over 16 percent of Americans put themselves in this category, compared to zero members of Congress according to usnews.com.
When it comes down to it, it looks like religious affliction seems to play a big part in politics regardless of what religion it is than what is reflected in the United States as a whole.
Kaylee Williams, president of the Political Science Club on campus and a junior with a major in communications a minor in political science, said religion is a component to politics.
“I acknowledge that it still plays a part in the political system. Many people hold political views based on their ideologies and many candidates will try to appeal to those ideologies for their benefit,” Williams said. “If you gain potential voters based off your ideology you will also be alienating those who do not agree with that particular ideology.”
