I personally like the priest game actually. It is only as much a distraction as you let it be. These days it's also true that when you are a lord of Religion A and Religion B has 90% followers in your region it'll not make your peasants happy. It helps somewhat.
But as said before, religion is a different angle of war and it can generate war. You should make your religion nice and lively though to actually rally people. Problem is though people seem to have a strong sense of separation of church and state. Trying to change this is always fun.
