This week, the Reverend Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, a national association of 185,000 progressive people of faith, criticized Fox News for its recent segment ridiculing Mormon beliefs. In a letter to Fox News Memphis reporter Ben Ferguson, news anchor Darrell Greene, and station manager John Koski, Gaddy expressed his concern over the way “religion” was being made an “electoral tool” in a segment that “seems simply to make a joke out of a major religion’s doctrine.”

“To the benefit of absolutely no one, your segment simply perpetuated misperceptions and misunderstandings of the beliefs of the Mormon faith,” wrote Gaddy. “Every religion, every belief system has aspects that could seem unconventional to non-adherents, and even to some adherents.”

Today, I spoke to Reverend Gaddy about the letter and the larger stakes of civil discourse about religion during the 2012 election season.

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