Church ISN'T State.

     From the AP:

     Senator Barack Obama has resigned his membership in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which he attended for nearly two decades, following months of controversy about pastors and their political views.

     Jesus Christ.

     From Thomas Jefferson:

     " Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity."

     This, too:

     "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

     I admire Jefferson's open-mindedness; it seems he may have seen religion as an ever-changing hologram. 

     I have no sense of faith, but I, too, know that my pocket hasn't been picked, nor has my leg been broken by those looking inward or skyward.

     (But I remember a lady with swollen ankles dropping quarters in a Methodist collection plate before I quit church for cigarettes and Genesee.)

     Viewed through a political prism--as invariably it is--I see religion as fences, walls, swords and fire. I sense nothing but the exploitation of differences, and wonder to where faith's unifying promises slipped off. 

     So Barack Obama quit his church?

     I have no quarrel with another's quest for comfort.

     I can't speak to anybody's private feelings toward their god. But if he (or she) is in public office, and running for president, I can say: 

     "Keep it to yourself." 

     Where it belongs.