How important is religion applied to a political candidate?

[fencesitter]

There was a discussion on our local NPR station this morning about this and it got me thinking. Most people link religion to morality, and if a candidate or politico affirms he or she goes attends church they assume this makes a moral person, so he must be okay. We all know about Bush's and Ashcroft's religiosity, whether we want to or not, but this gives them big points in the supposed "moral" camp. Carter was, and still is, very faith based, Kennedy was our first Catholic president and it sure helped him get elected. Lieberman stresses his faith, Gore said "what would Jesus do?" (I think). Dean has been critisized for not having religion, so he runs off to join Carter for services. I was raised Episcopal, but I'm not religious. I generally practice "tea bag" religion, so religion really is not important to me in a candidate, except for the Christian fundamentalists, those people scare and anger me and are the biggest argument for keeping religion out of politics. I feel Democrats are more inclined to to argue for the separation of church and state. Could be a complicated topic.