It's important to ask candidates about their beliefs in part because politicians frequently exploit religious faith - often with the idea that voters will be more likely to unthinkingly accept certain political positions so long as they arise from religious belief.

All of my children are ideologically and politically in sync with me they all have authentic Christian faith. It's something I'm very grateful for.

Our country's political discourse and debate are enriched by discussions of the political implications of our faith traditions whether they are taking place in our communities at our dinner tables or in our places of worship.

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith our politics and our culture are in the main less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing - good for our political culture.

It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972 the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters.

You can almost see voters nodding their heads at home: The public's faith in politicians and political institutions has been on a steep and dangerous decline for decades because elected leaders fail to deliver.

I think there ought to be a strict separation or wall built between our religious faith and our practice of political authority in office. I don't think the President of the United States should extoll Christianity if he happens to be a Christian at the expense of Judaism Islam or other faiths.

It is part of my faith as a Muslim to try to help those who are suffering from poverty or economic or political injustice.

The assertion of failure coming from such persons does not mean that Mr. Mill failed to promote the practical success of those objects the advocacy of which forms the chief feature of his political writings.

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes we have poverty. But I blame the government of India the political establishment for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.

America's most dangerous diseases have developed an immunity to politics. We suffer not from a failure of political organization or power but a failure of love.

I understand the harsh feelings and sentiments from my opponents and their supporters because I myself have been defeated twice in my political life in the past and I understand very well it is hard to accept your own failure.

The failure of the White House and Congress to seriously address the nation's fiscal situation is certain to broaden the belief among many voters that the U.S. political system is broken.

Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success politically as well as spiritually and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.

Before this learning experience I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons and liberals who supported them.

I feel that the Christian experience and the Jewish one have much to give each other. If this open society continues and there is no return to political anti-Semitism then this encounter deeper than any theology may happen.

It is an axiom enforced by all the experience of the ages that they who rule industrially will rule politically.

I wish I could give you a lot of advice based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don't have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

The highest political buzz word is not liberty equality fraternity or solidarity it is service.

Earlier feminists were almost universally pro-choice and have dominated political debate until now. Having access to abortion was viewed as the only way women could have full equality with men who until recently couldn't get pregnant.

The American economic political and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity political liberty and a wholesome natural equality and this achievement is a gain not only to Americans but to the world and to civilization.

The rights of one sex political and otherwise are the same as those of the other sex and this equality of rights ought to be fully recognized.

As many political writers have pointed out commitment to political equality is not an empirical claim that people are clones.

U.N. Women was created due to the acknowledgement that gender equality and women's empowerment was still despite progress far from what it should be. Transforming political will and decisions such as the Member States creating U.N. Women into concrete steps towards gender equality and women's empowerment I think is one of the main challenges.