Saturday, February 2, 2013

America’s Religious Divide. By Walter Russell Mead.

America’s Religious Divide. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, February 2, 2013.

Mead:

These days, the deep fissures in America don’t so much run between Catholics and Protestants as within each community. Conservative evangelical Southern Baptists feel they have more in common with conservative Catholics than they do with liberal Protestants — and many conservative Catholics feel the same way.

What draws conservative Protestants and Catholics together is a concern that liberals and secularists would like to drive religion out of the public square; as AI blogger Peter Berger puts it, to make religion something that consenting adults do together in private. Former religious enemies are drawing closely together at least partly out of fear of what they see as a common foe. The great divide in American religion today is no longer between Protestant and Catholic or even between Christian and Jew; it is between the liberal and the conservative versions of these great historic faiths.