Religion plays important role for 2012 US presidential race: Experts

Washington, Sep 4(ANI): Experts believe that religion will be an important factor in the United States presidential election of 2012.

Over 70 percent of Republicans and over half of Democrats believed that the 2012 US presidential candidate should have very strong religious beliefs, according to the Public Religion Research Institute.

It also says that US voters judge politicians by what church they attend, also by what their congregation teaches and what their pastor says on Sundays, Fox News reports.

"Candidates often have to make tough choices about their religion-whether to talk about it, what to say about it and even what to do about it-such as leaving a church," University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics Director John Green said.

"These tensions are quite strong among Republicans as the presidential nomination contest heats up, partly because of religious disagreements among key constituencies, but partly because of differences in issue priorities-economic versus social issues," he added.

The current campaign has failed to relegate two past presidential bid incidents to the background.

Among them is 2008 incident in which Barack Obama had broken ties with his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, after videos surfaced of Wright sermonizing that US foreign policy played a role in the 9/11 attacks.

In yet another instance, former Massachusetts governor and Republican Mitt Romney has struggled for being Mormon despite a major faith-and-values speech in 2007 in Texas.

Even though he commended the deep faith of the Founding Fathers and denounced secularism, polls showed Americans, especially white evangelicals were unwilling to vote for a Mormon.

Religion occupied a prominent position in 2008 presidential race to such an extent that Obama and Senator John McCain agreed to be interviewed by a Minister at a church.

American voters consider belief related to action and faith related to policymaking, Vanderbilt University researcher Kathleen Flake said.

The voting public no longer believes, as they did as late as the 1950s, that religion was about what you thought and not what you did," Flake said.

Also, the fact that country's Catholic bishops now vehemently call for Catholic lawmakers to follow church teaching, has pushed religion to the foreground.

Bishops have said repeatedly that a true Catholic cannot support any policy that allows abortion.ormer Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is perhaps the first presidential candidate who has kept himself aloof from religion claiming the "spiritual, not religious" mantle. (ANI)