Your beliefs will affect your decisions anyway, Warren says.

Question: What is religion’s proper role in government?

Warren: I get a little confused when I hear people say, “Well I have religious faith, but it doesn’t have anything to do with my politics.” And I wanna go, “What?” My faith influences everything I do. And I believe if you have a personal faith, whatever it is, to act as though it doesn’t influence your decision-making is very naïve and disingenuous. I realize people are trying to say, “I have faith, but I’m not gonna . . . I’m not gonna let anybody else tell me what to do.” I understand that, but . . . but I think that we have to really just honestly acknowledge that either your faith or your lack of faith, or your beliefs or your lack of beliefs color every decision you make. Your worldview is colored by your beliefs. My beliefs about God – the fact that I believe that God is a creator; my beliefs that . . . that He cares about everybody that He’s made; my beliefs that Jesus is the Savior of the world – those things color and shape every single decision I make. And I think then that politicians are shaped in exactly the same way – by whatever their religious beliefs are. And I don’t know how you can separate those. Neither do I think that . . . As I’ve said, I don’t think it’s the role of government to change culture. I think it’s the role of the church to change culture. So I’m not insisting that a politician have the same necessarily . . . necessarily the same belief system I do. I just want them to acknowledge that their belief system will influence their decisions, whatever that is.

Recorded on: 12/11/07