The Hill: Obama: Those taking religion seriously are often suspicious of others
There has been no time in my life, a life spent mostly in pluralistic institutions, where this has been even remotely true. In fact, whether the "person taking religion seriously" is a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a member of the Native American Church, or any other body, it has always been their openness to others that has marked the commonality of true people of faith.
I appreciate that those who seek the power and compensation of civic life tend only to see the world politically, with religion simply serving as another convenient tool for sectioning the population, but beyond "political Christianity" and "political Islam" and the like there are actually people who live their faith and use it to transcend the petty nonsense that so informs, distorts, and perverts the secular life.
Good Lord, the charitable giving alone of the "seriously religious" far outstrips that of the atheo-secularists, and those funds generally go to "others".