Religion and Politics

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Believing in an idea that regulates your life, will influence all aspects of your life. One simply cannot live a “Christian life” solely involving religion and divide themselves when they deal with politics. Thus believing in anything shapes you as a person: creates your boundaries, defines morality, and what is just and unjust. Therefore, religion will always be tied into politics.
In politics, today, religion overlaps politics in many aspects. Considering that religion has become more open and in America, supposedly separated from church and state, one would be lead to believe that the progression has separated them entirely, at least in the United States. However, looking throughout time, one can only make the argument that religion has become less influential, but is still predominate. Such as in political factions, where people tend to agree with like-minded individuals creating parties.
Throughout history, there have been many “enlightened” thinkers who have shared their contradicting and confirming of each other’s beliefs. Philosophers have tried to explain the phenomenon of religious zeal influencing politics, where some condemned and some confirmed. Voltaire wrote in the book Candide, as a criticism of the church and the state. He ridicules the philosophy in favor of the mantra, “…best of all possible worlds” (Voltaire 144), by showing his characters experience an extreme continuous suffering. They believed that since the perfect God created the world, everything must have a divine purpose. The clergy would sit back and allow suffering to continue because it did not benefit them to change the world, while the Protestants and Catholics both held political power; the Anabaptist, who didn’t believe in holding political pos...

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...ion influences individuals to make a better law for the other religions and people who didn’t believe and how Christians could live in a society. Voltaire poked fun of the government and tried to show how the misery of the people should take precedent over their puny tribunals of religion and politics. Lastly, Shakespeare shows how hard it is to balance the two. Therefore, there are many aspects tying the seemingly two separate ideas together.
I was unaware of the severity and entirety of the consequences of combining religion and politics. Religion is supposed to be something that is held higher than anything else, because it is a person’s soul. However, society has twisted its pureness, and turned many parts of it into the corruption of human nature. Human nature does not allow anything to keep its innocence, consequently, religion has interfered with politics.

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