Everybody has their own opinions of this topic. According to a survey, about 85% of thirteen year olds are religious, about 27% said they were Christian, about 39% said they were Jewish, 8% said they were Catholic, 8% Muslim, 8% Atheist and the rest were unsure. But of course all of these results are from a town survey, a very small town survey. So lets take it up a notch. 

According to a national survey that asked citizens about the Pledge of Allegiance, A whopping 80% said that they agreed with the phrase “Under God.” (Should) Of course people might interpret the “God” part differently, but that still leaves the vast majority of Americans to be Christian. So now we have discussed that a large part of the nation is Christian, which leaves about 20% to be split into other religious groups like Judaism, Muslim, Atheist, etc.Upon reading this, I wondered why there were so many Christians in this nation. I got my answer rather quickly. 

America was founded on a “Christian Nation”(Newton), which means that most of the people that live in America will be descendants of their Christian ancestors. But still, America is supposed to be a place of religious tolerance right? Well it never really has been. The “church” has always been a key factor in national arguments, and there have even been laws passed to regulate their influence. In a Pew Research article, its states that “While support for the churches' involvement in politics has fluctuated, there has been consistent agreement over the years that houses of worship should not directly endorse political candidates.”(Public) This just proves that the largest religious group has had enough impact in US politics that there had to be a discussion in order to reduce their influence.

 Yet again, according to Pew Research, 29% of the public said that there was too much religious expression in politics, and 37% said that there had been too little. (Public) Of course all of the participants had different reasoning when they said their piece. But this leads to another thing. Many people don't realize how much religion has affected politics. The most prominent topics that are argued about include slavery, civil rights immigration and same sex marriage. These big issues are turned over to politicians, and when these politicians are biased because of their religion it could end badly for other people. 

You might be wondering, “What other people?” or “It isn’t that serious”. Well in Arizona, a church tried to get the governor to sign a law that would allow Gay people to be discriminated against, just because they are gay might I add (Public). But that isn't the big issue. The big issue is that there is only one thing that stopped this law from being passed, A single signature. Thats all that was left in the Arizona LGBTQ’s defense. And in order for it to get to that point, there would have had to be a majority rule to propose the law, and there would have had to have been people with positions lower than the governor that assisted the proposition and wanted it to become true.

Religion in politics is a bigger issue than people realize, and it pains me to say it. But truly, with all of the different religious controversy circulating around peoples’ heads, opinions based on these views should stay out of national arguments that affect everyone. I really do hope that these issues are made more aware. Politics are supposed to be based on personal opinions, not opinions taught by large groups of people that overshadow the rest.