Can't pass in template strings in ini config file

I followed the examples from
http://docs.repoze.org/who/2.0/configuration.html#configuring-repoze-who-via-config-file

query = "SELECT userid, password FROM users where login = %(login)s;"

However, ConfigParser's spilling out the following exception:
ConfigParser.InterpolationMissingOptionError: Bad value substitution:

To be able to specific template strings with ConfigParser, one has to use RawConfigParser.