Religion has become a wedge issue in politics. Despite the silly protests that some politicians are attempting to impose a Theocracy in America, religion is becoming a more prevalent issue because its decline, not its resurgence. So argues R. R. Reno in First Things.
Citing the civil rights movement as the most important post-war achievement, Reno says that the mainline Protestant churches held sway over the opinion makers.
Mainline Protestantism had the ear of the richest and most powerful Americans, some Roosevelt Democrats and some Eisenhower Republicans. And the pastors did what they were supposed to do: They shepherded their well-heeled, influential flocks toward a consensus about civil rights, which was why Lyndon Johnson could sign a civil rights bill with overwhelming bipartisan support in 1964.
The societal consensus of mainline Protestantism exists no more.
I don’t think I’m breaking news when I report that our current secular elite invariably seems to think differently than the typical churchgoer. We see it in the divisive cultural issues of our day: abortion, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, and gay marriage. But it was already there in earlier efforts, stimulated by John Rawls (perhaps unwittingly, but that’s another story), to redefine “public reason” so as to exclude religious believers. Thus our current situation: Faith matters so much in politics because, for some, it ought not to matter at all. A secular “no” has given rise to a vigorous, religious “yes,” as the emergence of First Things in 1990 testifies.
Two kinds of views get no attention: those everybody shares, and those few believe.
When we had a religious consensus, there was no controversy.
This is no longer the case, as everybody realizes, and it is precisely because religion is less ubiquitous that it has become more controversial-and more noticed-in the public square.
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