frankie, that may be true that religious people support politicians that support their religious beliefs. But there are many people without any denominational bent or without any belief in a creator or sacred writings who have strong beliefts that can be divisive.
yet
I have seen many of the same dynamics that divide people with religious backgrounds. May be it is that politics becomes a sort of religion for those people, perhaps?
Having ideas and trying to live by them is one thing; making everyone else live by them creates problems. Thinking there is only one way to approach a situation is found in many groups of people as well as individuals.
I remember once hearing in a lecture at college that so much time is spent on talking about the differences between men and women when in reality they have more in common that differences, let's say 95% in common, compared to 5% differences. Yet the tendency is to concentrate on the differences rather than to see the commonality.
I think people do that with religion and politics as well, besides gender and race, concentrate only the the small percentage of differences.
The solution to dealing with the divisiveness that springs up in those areas, is to consistently and regularly concentrate on the common areas and recognize that the differences are things to rejoice over, not to fear.
Love, Blondie