As the Republican field begins to come into clearer focus regarding 2016, I hope that it will recognize that the United States is an increasingly secular country. That doesn’t mean religion isn’t important in people’s lives, or that it may have an effect on how they live their lives (for better and for worse). But it does mean that mixing religion and politics will alienate many voters (even religious ones) who realize these are two separate spheres.
Two things are worth noting when it comes millennarian talk of contemporary America as somehow a bastion of sinners in the hands of an angry god. First, over the same time that Christians of all denominations and other religiously minded folks have complained about increases in coarsening materialism, virtually all signs of social pathology have declined. There’s less crime, including less violent crime and sexual assault. Drug abuse is not spiking, divorce rates have declined, abortions and teen sex rates are down, and nobody is starving in America. That’s not to mistake the current world for a shining city on a hill, but we’re certainly not a 21st-century Sodom.
Where there are problems, they stem directly from awful government policies pursued by the two most-recent presidents, both of whom are god-fearing Christians. They spent too much money and regulated the hell out of all aspects of the country’s business. They have a willingness to torture people and surveil regular American citizens while flouting constitutional protections on civil liberties. Police militarization, like bank bailouts and stimulus spending, will not be reformed by appeals to god. Conservatives of all people should recognize that the state should treat citizens as individauls who are equal before the law, which is a prima facie case for accepting gay marriage.
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