It means that there is a clear line between holding faith-based views and serving in office and getting into office to put into place a calculated, deliberate effort to revolve the nation's laws around your own particular religious ideology.
The idea that anyone would run for office and proclaim that they are a "Christian", or a "Jew", or a "Muslim", or a "Buddhist", etc. is to me violating that line. Republicans want to be a religious fundamentalist party - they want to broadcast their religion so that everyone knows that they're going to enact laws that are based on their interpretation of the Bible. What about the Christians that they represent that don't believe in those ideas, or the religious minorities, or the nones that do not have any religion at all?
I think it's so strange that we don't have the same tolerance for candidates that would go out there and put on their campaign websites: "Pro-life. Pro-family. Pro-Allah." or "Buddha and Country"... I don't believe conservative Christianity should have any kind of right to claim dominance to this nation anymore than any other religion should.
We've all been conditioned to accept that much of the country's politics revolve around fundamentalist ideas - but it's not acceptable and in my opinion it's very far from what this country is about. This is not only a Christian country or a conservative Christian country and that's the message that the Republican Party wants to constantly push.
If someone wants to say that they are a Proud Bhuddist Democrat and their values come from Bhuddism, would you allow them to speak ?
Yes. I might even vote for them, depending on what their "values" were, as well as specific issue positions.
Buddhism isn't a religion, actually; it's a philosophy. While I wouldn't encourage someone to try this, one can be a Buddhist and a Christian at the same time.
This is a common misconception in the West, one that unfortunately is enabled by a lot of Western Buddhist teachers. As practiced in most parts of Asia Buddhism is clearly a religion and, as much respect and admiration as I have for it, one whose tenets are subtly but deeply incompatible with those of Christianity.
It depends on what you mean by "incompatible", how tolerant one is of syncretism, and there's a lot lost in translation when you cross the Pacific and all that conflating terminology.
The East Asian conception of religion largely flat-out rejects the idea of exclusively drawing all of one's ideas from just one "religion". From that angle, one might in fact say Buddhism is merely a philosophy, but one would referring to the constellation of ways of looking at the Buddha and the scrolls and the numerous schools by a rather un-fitting label.
It's apples and oranges, really.
