Depending on where believers come down on such issues, their faith may or may not clash with the requirements of democratic politics.

Since the rise of the religious right in the late 1970s, traditionalist believers have actively injected faith into the political realm, pushing public figures to place their religious convictions at the core of their civic identities and political campaigns…

Every religion is radically particular, with its own distinctive beliefs about God, human history and the world. These are specific, concrete claims — about the status of the religious community in relation to other groups and to the nation as a whole, about the character of political and divine authority, about the place of prophecy in religious and political life, about the scope of human knowledge, about the providential role of God in human history, and about the moral and legal status of sex.

Depending on where believers come down on such issues, their faith may or may not clash with the requirements of democratic politics.

To help us make that determination, all candidates for high office should have to take the religious test, which would include the following questions:

How might the doctrines and practices of your religion conflict with the fulfillment of your official duties?

How would you respond if your church issued an edict that clashed with the duties of your office?

What do you believe human beings can know about nature and history?
Do you believe the law should be used to impose and enforce religious views of sexual morality?

Read More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/17/AR2010091702623.html?hpid=topnews

Damon Linker, a contributing editor at the New Republic and a senior writing fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of “The Religious Test: Why We Must Question the Beliefs of Our Leaders.”