I keep seeing this bumper sticker that says, “The last time we mixed politics with religion, people got burned at the stake.” But I am pretty sure the last time we mixed politics with religion was when Gandhi freed India from the British with his satyagraha movement. Of course, there was also the time Reverend Martin Luther King, jr., Rosa Parks, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel mixed politics with religion to fight for civil rights in the United States. But then I remember more recently Father Gustavo Gutierrez and Bishop Oscar Romero mixing politics with religion in their service to the oppressed masses in the resistance of corrupt totalitarian regimes in Central and South America. So the bumper sticker is partially right: People did get burned at the stake; the problem is that it was the time before the time before the time before the last time we mixed politics with religion.
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