WaPo: “When politics itself becomes religion, it’s easy to lose track of what an authentically religious voice in public life sounds like.
This explains one of the oddities of our moment. Voters’ religious commitments (or lack thereof) are among the most powerful predictors of how they’ll cast their ballots. Yet actual religious questions mean little or nothing in our public life.
There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is the merger of religious conservatism and backlash conservatism. These have been close cousins ever since the passage of the Civil Rights Act under Lyndon B. Johnson pushed millions of conservative White Democrats, many of them devout evangelicals, into the Republican Party.
But before the rise of Donald Trump, the two brands of social conservatism had distinct voices. Religious conservatives emphasized abortion, family, old-fashioned values and the rights of the traditional people in an increasingly secular society. Backlash conservatism was harder-edged, more focused on crime, race and immigration.”