Some in the liberal blogs are excited that a new Pew study shows a majority of the US population thinks "churches should stay out of politics," but do we want to really prevent one of the few places where Americans gather together in a broad community to discuss and debate politics? (which yes, implies being active through those institutions as well). It just seems similar to the rightwing bemoaning that unions are active in politics, since the reality is that the workplace is one of the other main places where people gather together for extended and repeated times together in our society.

Subtract the churches and unions and you leave a political landscape where the 30-second attack ad is the main conduit of political consumption by Americans. Is that really better than Rick Warren's Saddleback conversation? Sure, a lot of discussions in churches are rightwing, but other churches are where strategy for the civil rights movement was planned, opposition to wars have been articulated, and denunciations of poverty have been deepest.

We need more unions, more churches, more organizations of any kind where people gather together face-to-face, involved in politics. Otherwise, the attack ad really will be the dominant mode of politics for all but a tiny minority of Americans