Mobius

Took a gander at this week’s Newsweek cover story by Jon Meacham ominously titled “The End of Christian America.”

Ina nutshell, Meacham examines how the volume of Americans who define themselves as religiously “unaffiliated” has not only nearly doubled since 1990, but spread from its old confines in the liberal Pacific Northwest to the traditionally devout New England region.

I have no one explanation for this new American distance from Christianity—specifically, the Protestant evangelical branch—but I’ll be happy to share what repels me most about it: the church’s sweaty, incestuous bond with organized politics (e.g. the Republican Party), so intertwined that I often wonder where one begins and the other ends.

This is not to say that Christians—of any stripe—should be apolitical. I am just beyond bewildered by religious conservatives who cannot separate the Christian gospel from GOP talking points, as if each were part of the same organic, slithering whole. And to great extent, that is exactly what mass market, American Christianity has been for years.

Truly, while I am religious myself to an extent, the notion of any faith sold with issue-by-issue voter guides could not—to me—be more repugnant.