The New Republic

Ross Douthat replies to TNR’s review of his book Bad Religion:

“But such unfairnesses are typical of hostile book reviews, and I don’t begrudge Winters the right to be obnoxious to someone he considers—wrongly, in my view, but obviously not in his—to be his political and theological antagonist on every front.

The license afforded by the genre of polemic, however, does not grant him the right to be explicitly mendacious. He clearly has a vendetta, of sorts, against Michael Novak and George Weigel and the style of Catholic neoconservatism that they represent. But they are not me, their writings are not mine, and he has done his readers a disservice by reviewing Bad Religion through the lens of that vendetta, and ignoring the book I actually wrote.”

- Ross Douthat, Bad Religion: A Response

Photo courtesy of Dawgs By Nature

Does Ross Douthat know what he’s talking about?

“My problem with Douthat’s book is not that his opinions differ from my own. My problem is that he does not seem to have any idea what he is talking about. In the West, there has been no universally accepted authoritative voice on orthodoxy since the Reformation. “What am I to do when many persons allege different interpretations, each one of whom swears to have the Spirit?” asked Erasmus in 1524. But Douthat does not see the larger picture that he aims to explain, and his treatment of his subject is so pitifully mistaken in things large and small that what we are left with is a meandering, self-serving screed. The book has the same reliance on private judgment that anyone who was really concerned with heresy would recognize as part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

- Michael Sean Winters review Ross Douthat’s Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics

Photo courtesy of Socrates58

Do Americans still cherish the separation of church and state?

“As recently as two years ago more Americans favored (37 percent) than disfavored (29 percent) “expressions of religious faith and prayer by politicians.” But the lines crossed a year or so ago and now more Americans think politicians spout too much God-talk (38 percent) than too little (30 percent) or the right amount (25 percent). The change is mainly the result of the too-muchers growing steadily from a mere 12 percent a decade ago to the current 38 percent. A decade ago the Goldilocks caucus of right-amounters nose-dived practically overnight from 60 percent to 29 percent. Apparently that’s because 9/11 increased distrust of theocratic impulses, though during the same period the devout too-littlers jumped from 22 percent to 41 percent. “

- Timothy Noah, “Voters Don’t Like God Talk”

Photo courtesy of Christian Science Monitor

How did today’s GOP become the party of Jerry Falwell?

“Before Falwell, if liberals wanted to increase the minimum wage by one dollar and conservatives did not want to increase it at all, they could compromise and raise the minimum wage by fifty cents. Before Falwell, the American public’s ambivalence about abortion could find expression in the Hyde Amendment, which does not prohibit abortion but denies federal funds for the procedure. After Falwell, such compromises were seen not as part of the art of governance, but as a betrayal of first principles. After Falwell, conservatives could not entertain differences of opinion on many issues without being accused of political heresy.”

-Michael Sean Winters, “How the Ghost of Jerry Falwell Conquered the Republican Party”

Photo courtesy of The Huffington Post

Political fumbling by Christian Conservatives has been even worse this presidential cycle than in 2008 but is it really safe to say that the Christian Right’s days of national influence have finally expired?  

“And on abortion, unlike same-sex marriage, there are few if any signs that generational trends will greatly move public opinion in a more progressive direction; voters under thirty are at most only marginally more likely to be pro-choice than their parents, and evangelical conservative youth are, if anything, more devoted to the anti-choice cause than their elders.”

- Ed Kilgore, “Reports of the Religious Right’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated”

Photo courtesy of sfgate.com

Will religion play a role in the 2012 election?

The proof is in the pudding.

Photo courtesy of the Public Religion Research Institute

Perry might have pondered, say, the reverence for the rich and the indifference to the poor, the contemporary Republican project of pushing a camel through the eye of a needle, and been rattled in the manner of the penitent. He might have worried, if only for a moment in the Austin night, that he is himself the cankerworm.

Leon Wieseltier, “Repent! Rick Perry’s Nasty Religious Doctrine of Exclusion”