Romney gets tangled up in his message on religion, and others dance around it like a Maypole, but Al Gore cuts to the chase and lays it down straight as an arrow.

Gore's forward approach on religion can be seen in the new video he added himself several days ago on CurrentTV:

I think that it is wrong for the government to try to play any kind of an official role in deciding what religious instruction should be provided to the people of this country... especially school children.

Gore continues:

And I just think that the separation of the power of government... from the effort to guide people's spiritual journey... is a bedrock principle.  And history teaches that when you allow the combination of government power with spiritual and religious leadership... it is a recipe for trouble, you're asking for trouble.  

And one of the things that led to the greatness of the United States of America is freedom of religion.  And freedom of religion very clearly means... if you're going to keep freedom of religion... means keeping the government out of religion.  

It can sound appealing saying, "Government ought to instruct our children on how to believe in G*d," but once you open that door, then you're on a slippery slope toward an official state religion and that has been a formula for disaster throughout history.

The United States of America represents something different and special and we need to keep it that way.

Adam Smith noted the importance of separation of powers several centuries ago:

"Times of violent religious controversy have generally been times of equally violent political faction... if politics had never called in the aid of religion, had the conquering party never adopted the tenets of one sect more than those of another, when it had gained the victory, it would probably have dealt equally and impartially with all the different sects, and have allowed every man to chuse his own priest and his own religion as he thought proper."

The inherent rise of social instability and conflict is precisely why this nation has adhered to a "separation" of religion and state. Supreme Court Justice Breyer wrote a dissent in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that eloquently lays out the public good in  the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses.

The First Amendment begins with a prohibition, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," and a guarantee, that the government shall not prohibit "the free exercise thereof." These Clauses embody an understanding, reached in the 17th century after decades of religious war, that liberty and social stability demand a religious tolerance that respects the religious views of all citizens, permits those citizens to "worship God in their own way," and allows all families to "teach their children and to form their characters" as they wish.

In part for this reason, the Court's 20th century Establishment Clause cases--both those limiting the practice of religion in public schools and those limiting the public funding of private religious education--focused directly upon social conflict, potentially created when government becomes involved in religious education.

[T]he Court concluded that the Establishment Clause required "separation," in part because an "equal opportunity" approach was not workable... [D]iversity made it difficult, if not impossible, to devise meaningful forms of "equal treatment" by providing an "equal opportunity" for all to introduce their own religious practices into the public schools.

The upshot is the development of constitutional doctrine that reads the Establishment Clause as avoiding religious strife, not by providing every religion with an equal opportunity (say, to secure state funding or to pray in the public schools), but by drawing fairly clear lines of separation between church and state--at least where the heartland of religious belief, such as primary religious education, is at issue.

The principle underlying these cases--avoiding religiously based social conflict--remains of great concern. As religiously diverse as America had become when the Court decided its major 20th century Establishment Clause cases, we are exponentially more diverse today...

Excerpt from Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens and Justice Souter join, dissenting. Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002).

Picture from Kate.net