Can one be religious without being political?

My initial guess would be no. This stems from two thoughts. Firstly, to do with Christianity, Jesus seems to me to always speak into or about the political realities people were facing. Even when he is dealing with personal morality it is often in relation to wider cultural-political contexts from which the issues arose within. If all of Jesus' actions were then political, what kind of politics were they? Does Jesus have a politics? There are answers out there to these questions, Jim Wallis, writer of God's Politics is a pretty good start. I think there is a politics to Jesus, there is a pattern his life created/portrayed. He had opinions about things, about the way things should be, about the way we should treat one another. About the the ultimate good. From these i think we can draw some conclusions. But i'll leave that for another post. Secondly, and related to the example of Jesus, all human actions are political statements of some form. Right? Not just how i vote, or what i argue about discussing the news. But where i choose to spend my money, where i choose to worship God in fellowship with others. How i spend my spare time. How i spend my work time. What i do for work time. The way i choose to talk about things/people/ and events. All of these things are expressions of some shade of political philosophy about humans and society and how we should organise our lives. Therefore, your religious belief, your faith, is immediately political. It can't be neutral because it informs your choices, your priorities, your words and actions. It prefaces your support for things. It determines your view of the world and therefore in many ways the people in it (all doomed to hell unless someone (p)reaches to them?

I could be wrong. Just thinking. I never used to think they were intertwined in such ways, not because i didn't think religious people were political, but because i believed i could separate them when i needed, or when it was expedient too. Now i think i think that's simply wishful thinking (or self-delusional :)