Spurred by his New York Times op-ed on how religious people are ruining the GOP, John Danforth grants an interview to the lefty alternative newspaper in St. Louis, the Riverfront Times, where he despairs about the religious right ruining the Republican party over stem cells and what he twice calls “the gay thing.” And I don’t see how a so-called moderate would so divisively confuse James Dobson or Tony Perkins with Moqtada al-Sadr, but there he goes:

I think the meaning of religion has to do with holding things together, and in fact that’s why American democracy is so compatible with the values of Christianity. It’s a repeated theme in the New Testament that in Christ all things hold together. Instead of the fracturing of humanity, it’s a sense of holding things together. But religion can also do exactly the opposite. Witness Iraq, Sudan and — I’m afraid — how religion is used in American politics. When it’s done in a self-righteous way, it is fracturing. When it’s “I’m on God’s side and you’re not,” that’s very divisive.