100% agree. It's hard to fully capture how stupid religion makes people, because a lot of the root beliefs are rarely forced to surface. Gay rights vs. the church is a good example where a lot of Christians harbor pretty intense hate toward homosexuals. But, no one ever asks their opinion and we only see snippets of the hate when a flower shop refuses to provide flowers at a gay wedding or something.
The other thing this article overlooks is the role that breadth of experience plays both in liberal ideology and Christian proselytizing. If you've never had a black friend or never really talked to a women who is not content with the sexism inherent in the Bible (or any mid-evil religious text, really), you might not be able to understand why someone is afraid of the police or why anyone would ever opt for abortion. Further, if you never take the time to understand carbon dating you might never have reason to question stuff like new-earth creationism. This factor is more severe in my opinion and is grounds for keeping narrow minded individuals out of academia.
That education correlates with liberal ideology should not be ignored. It's actually one of the first things that helped me escape from an evangelical/racist/homophobic/conservative family/community. There were a lot of steps but considering my own ignorance was the first and biggest step.
Side note: I would love to see a study linking capacity for empathy with political leaning. My suspicion is that anyone with a "strong" conservative mindset has low capacity for empathy.