Doug Bandow has a column today pretty much eviscerating every candidate who claims God is on their side:

Although four years ago candidate George W. Bush identified Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, Christianity’s concern with politics is only indirect. Every year the transcendent claims of the Gospel suffer the indignity of being enlisted for ephemeral political causes by partisans of left and right.

However, voters should be skeptical of any politician who claims to be acting in the name of theology. The Bible sets only general boundaries for political debate. The dominant message of the Gospel, as well as of the Hebrew writings, is man’s relationship to God and one’s neighbors. The Bible gives much more guidance on how we should treat people in our everyday lives than when we should coerce them, especially through today’s secular political order.

In closing, Bandow quotes Pope JPJII, making me respect the former Polish actor even more:In fact, believers’ most important duties lie beyond politics. Pope John II pointed to the importance of “a strong juridical framework which places [capitalism] at the service of human freedom in its totality and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious.” Government can provide the juridical framework, but the church — the world body of Christian believers — must help provide the ethical and religious core. For Christians politics is an important, but never the most important, calling.