Mike Huckabee does not shy away from the love and inerrancy he feels for the word of God, and that’s the reason he is possibly the worst thing for this country since Wal-Mart Supercenters and stadium seating.

The self-described ‘Christian leader’√ù has made no qualms about faith’s prominence in government. He has in fact made the issue tantamount in his bid for the presidency, claiming secularization is the source of recent national problems. Curious, because I do not recall Bush ever outting himself as a Zulu shaman.

Religion is perhaps the only thing this country is not hurting for, which is even more curious, as such patterns of religious fervor are in direct opposition to the values the country was built upon.

The Founding Fathers, for all their supposed fiscal hoarding and likely racial supremacy, had enough foresight to leave mention of God completely outside the Constitution. The United States is, by design, a wholly secular democracy (pun unintended) in which belief in God, Jesus, Jesus’s half-brother Escobar or Tom Cruise is reserved to personal matters.

So when Mike rolled into South Carolina earlier this month and thought it prudent to take a stand on, of all things, the sanctity of the Confederate flag, there should have been a certain disquieting in the heart and mind of the conscientious voter.

Said Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas: ‘You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole; that’s what we’d do.’

Mr. Huckabee, despite his eloquence in the face of irrelevant concern, seems to be missing the point. As if a throwback to the platitudes of a century-old war didn’t seem depressing enough, Huck’s quip points to more sinister failings in personal doctrine.

The Confederate flag has long stood as an icon of prejudice and intolerance and, despite claims that the liberty to fly the colors of homophobic separatists is a benefit of state rights, remains a symbol of veiled racism.

It’s fair to say that Mike Huckabee has no intention of honoring the long-standing tradition (and law) separating church from state. He has said, quite openly, that he would like to amend the Constitution to account for the ‘word of God.’√ù What arrogance pervades the Huckabee camp, not to mention all Megachurch-going folk, to say they themselves are savvy to the thought process of an omnipotent creator? Have we a country of latter-day Moseses behind us at the McDonald’s drive-thru, or is there perhaps a more plausible epidemic of arrogance masked as humility?

Perhaps more disconcerting is that Huckleberry Finn here is not alone in his zeal. Mitt Romney, proponent of the 2,000-mile-long chain-link fence and the leading Mormon has not only said that ‘freedom requires religion,’√ù but has characterized the United States as piety-focused, debasing European cultures as ‘too busy or too ‘enlightened’ to kneel in prayer.’√ù

While the much alluded-to First Amendment states that no law should prohibit the free exercise of religion, it also stipulates that there be no establishment of religion either, which seems to have hindered progression more than bolstered it. If these men truly are hinging their respective candidacies on ‘prayer,’ then letting them into the White House might just mean following them into the next Crusade.

Religion in politics is a distracting thing. It distracts us from the necessary questions we should be asking, and the necessary traits we should be mining for. In the end, faith is an intimate endeavor and should have no presence in the policy-making of a supposedly secular nation, nor should it hold any clout in the choosing of its next leader.

It turns out God and his son do figure less in the UK, a religiously-aligned state where Christianity is, in fact, the national observance and a link between church and state is actually provided for.

There, overall religious observance is low, only 38 percent of Britons actually believe in God, the government finds itself embroiled in less wars, is in less debt and is generally hated less per capita by the global community.

Go figure.