Would you like a religious politician...

...or one who lives faith values?

There has been a recent poll apparently that asked people to choose two or three values from a list of eleven that they'd like their political parties to reflect, religious faith came out bottom.

Thank goodness.

It's not exactly a sensible question anyway when the choice is from freedom, fairness, community, equality etc. But hey, aren't these 'religious' values? Personally I'd far prefer to have a politician that embeds those values in the policy choices and political decisions they make rather than, like America, have 'being religious' as a value in itself. There is no such thing as being religious on it's own. Being religious is a bag into which you put certain choices about how you live and engage with the world. There is no 'religion' that doesn't have a world view, a way of engaging with neighbours etc We may not agree with it, but being religious is not something you can do without living by a set of values such as those values people have put above being religious as important in a political party.

I worry about the three percent who did put being religious as important. What does that actually mean?