Has this year’s presidential campaign become too religious? I don’t think so. Are secular ideas getting short shrift? That depends on what your definition of “secular” is. Let me explain.

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I agree with half of Gov. Huckabee’s statement. We should not “try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.” That would be as presumptuous as it would be futile. But I fervently disagree with any assertion that we should amend the Constitution so that it “embodies God’s standard.” Although raised in the context of a debate about the nature of marriage, his remarks on their face raise the specter of more wide-spread mischief.

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It’s ironic that the season during which many celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace often comes with a manufactured “War on Christmas.” This yearly battle in the culture war is fought against an enemy that simply does not exist.

Of course it’s fine to celebrate Christmas, and Christ is indispensable to its proper celebration. Christ should not be crowded out of Christmas either by fussy sensitivities or grubby consumerism. Christmas is Christmas, and a tree is a tree, and a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree.

That said, I offer two important principles.

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Governor Romney said some good things in his speech. The Constitution bans any religious test for public office. He is right: his Mormonism should not disqualify him, legally or politically, from running for the highest office in the land.

He is also correct that faith is an important part of our country and culture. But he was too quick to debunk the separation of church and state.

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In a world torn by religious, ethnic and geopolitical conflict, we can be thankful this Thanksgiving that, for the most part, our country has been spared that kind of strife.

A dedication to religious liberty for everyone, a passion for welcoming pluralism — not just tolerating it — and our constitutional construct that separates church and state have allowed us, for the most part, to avoid religious conflict and wars.

This is not brought about by accident, or even entirely by Providence.

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First, an important disclaimer: I am not a scholar of world religions. Though I work daily to help ensure religious liberty for all faiths, I am most familiar with the Christian tradition. But, yes, I believe the major world religions — at their best — embody the principles of love, compassion and forgiveness.

To this general acquiescence in the Dali Lama’s observation, I offer several caveats.

Acknowledging that the major world religions incorporate these basic values — love, compassion and forgiveness — is not to say that all religions are the same or to gloss over significant differences among them. A watered-down, lowest-common denominator view of religion to support the idea that one religion is about as good as the next is a mistake. To concede similarities and commonalities among religions should not lead us to obscure the differences.

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Sen. McCain’s unfortunate comments reflect a common but wrong belief (shared with about 55 percent of the American public) that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation.

The Constitution is a decidedly secular document. Yes, many of the Founders were men of faith and mostly Christian, but they opted to ensure religious liberty for all, not ensconce their own religious views in the nation’s founding document. When it comes to religion, our Constitution is not a religious document but a religious freedom document. The U.S. may be a Christian nation sociologically, but not constitutionally. That fact is easy to demonstrate. Living up to the religious freedom values embodied in the Constitution and not giving preference to the Christian majority is more difficult.

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Dean Kelley, religious liberty executive for the National Council of Churches for more than three decades, used to say that a cult is what you called the church down the street! My religion is never a cult; it’s a term we use for someone else’s.

To employ the pejorative term “cult,” instead of “religion” or “church,” sets up a false and prejudicial dichotomy between good and bad religion. Indeed, my Baptist forbears — in London, Amsterdam, Boston, and Culpeper, Va. — would have been tagged a “cult” by popular religionists of their day. Heaven forbid we should repeat that error today.

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Every religious tradition has the capacity for both good and evil, suggests Charles Kimball in his work, When Religion Becomes Evil. Indeed, the passion and truth claims associated with religious belief make religion susceptible to extremes. This week, as we remember the events of 9/11, we cannot escape the stark reminders of the dangers inherent in religious extremism and the dire consequences that emerge when religious zeal fuses with coercive power.

We all — male and female, Democrat and Republican, the religious and those who choose no religion, the religious extremists and those who express their faith differently — would do well to hear and digest the principle of robust and genuine religious liberty for all.

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