I couldn’t agree more with Phil Dirkx’s Nov. 30 column, “When politics and preaching shouldn’t mix.” Look at the grief and turmoil that Middle Eastern countries are going through now as a direct result of religious strife.

Here in the U.S., we have mixed a religious institution, marriage, with a legal institution — with predictably confusing and acrimonious results. And then there are the issues of when life begins and whose business it is what women do with their bodies, as well as what consenting adults do in the bedroom.

If the controversy surrounding these issues was truly of a spiritual nature, I would have a lot more sympathy with the positions of those who feel strongly about them.

However, as is so common in both religion and politics, it is truly about money and power — not the spiritual life so many profess, but fail to prove by their actions.