TP O'Mahony: Link between religion and politics in the US is unique in the West

Unlike Europe, the USA remains an intensely religious society

Even president Donald Trump — not ostensibly a God-fearing man, regarded by his critics as the most profane, religiously illiterate president in the country’s history — knows the importance of playing the 'God card'. Photo: AP/Patrick Semansky

The weaponising of religion for political ends — which now seems to be the settled policy of the Trump administration — is just the latest chapter in the long history of the often poisonous symbiotic relationship between religion and politics.

What the contretemps that followed president Trump’s criticisms of the anti-war pronouncements of Pope Leo XIV also illustrates is the peculiar place and role of religion in the United States and the extent to which it has embedded itself in the political culture of one of the world’s great superpowers.