Religion: Still a poor source of authority for political policy

California Moderates has criticized religion as the worst source of authority or guidance for establishing political policy. That was not a criticism of religion as it functions on other, non-political areas of human affairs. Religion is innate to humans and that is just the reality of it. On one extreme, people can choose to inject religion so that it completely dominates politics and on the other they can restrain that impulse and apply reason and logic instead. Many (most?) people, consciously or not, probably apply with some mix of religion (emotion) and logic and that likely affects political perceptions and preferences.

People who advocate for more religion, usually Christianity, in American politics have become much more vocal and aggressive in their demands over the last few years. Some Christians demand federal budgets that accord with biblical teachings. Some Christians use the bible as an authority source to advocate for liberal causes, e.g., action on climate change. Others use it as an authority source to advocate for conservative causes, e.g., less government.

Fading, more powerful and more aggressive 
but still a poor source for politics

Americans politically driven mostly by religion have become noticeably more politically powerful over the last few years, e.g., the Tea Party. Over the last few months there have been a series of situations where people demand more aspects of religion in various aspects of government and/or less government in religion. Despite all of that, demographic changes suggest that religion's influence on mainstream American society is fading at least somewhat, e.g., regular church attendance is low and decreasing. That demographic change in politics (not necessarily most other aspects of society) is arguably a good trend from a secular pragmatic point of view. Presumably, the loss of religious influence is disturbing from a religious point of view.

Demography aside, reliance on religious texts as a source of authority for political policy under a secular constitution really doesn't make much sense in the abstract. The bible provides essentially no rational basis for dealing with the complexities of modern life in a dynamic global economy, e.g., how to deal with complex internet freedom and security issues, Iran's nuclear weapons, the Israel-Palestine issue or global warming. Despite that, it is obvious that people can and will continue to insert their religion into politics as they wish. The best that can be hoped for is that religion does not become a larger influence on political thinking or policy than it already is. Religion, like two-party politics, is not an encouraging place to look for intelligent or efficient politics.