From time to time on this blog, we have cited Stephen Prothero of Boston University who has done some excellent work on public knowledge of religion and the intersection of religion and politics. He had an op-ed in USAToday yesterday in which he looked at the political/religious ramifications of the recent Pew Religous Landscape Survey:

The tale I take away from this study is that shifts in the political and moral winds are transforming American religion. Many believe that the Founders separated church and state in order to save the federal government from the interference of overzealous ministers. Not so. The purpose of the First Amendment’s establishment clause — which prohibits the federal government from passing laws that favor any one religion (atheism included) — was to safeguard religion against the encroachment of politics. And this new survey suggests that those safeguards are, well, going the way of the freak show.

[…]

Plainly, the Republican Party gained ground over the past quarter-century by attaching itself to family, morality and God, even as the Democratic Party lost ground by focusing on such matters as rights and reason. In the process, the Republicans became the party of God and the Democrats the party of secularism — not a good strategy for the Democratic Party in a country where 96% of voters believe in God. So Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both taking pains to pitch their party as a party of prayer and piety.

Even so, for much of the past generation, “Christian” and “conservative” have seemed to be interchangeable terms. It should not be surprising if at least some on the left who once upon a time might have described themselves as “Christians” have decided to jettison that affiliation for political reasons. Such reasons, it should be emphasized, are basically the same ones so many Europeans have divorced themselves from their country’s established churches: because the marriage of a given church with a particular political regime is never eternal, and when it ends it leaves a lot of angry children in its wake.

Let me break this down for you a bit. Essentially, what Prothero is arguing is that by making “Christian” and “Conservative” nearly synonymous, religion is losing because people do not want to affiliate with the church when its identity is primarily political, not spiritual. In the article, he cites this political-religious identification as a primary mover behind the decline of the church in Europe, and I would argue that the Founding Fathers saw that decline in its early stages and as Prothero points out, it is one of the reasons they wanted the separation.

A brief aside - that would argue for “religious” founding fathers, as interesied in preserving the church, any church, as the nation - something to think about in the great debate over whether they were Christians or not.

The real point I want to make out of this post, is that I think Prothero is essentially right - too strong a political identity for the church is bad for the church. Further, by voting on the basis of religion, whether it be positive identity attraction with Huckabee or the negative “don’t vote for a Mormon” expressed by some of my less-enlightened co-religionists, is one very concrete way of cementing that political identity for the church. If there is a one-to-one correlation between religion and vote, the identity is solid and unbreakable - and the church loses.

Prothero has, in this piece, had an extraordinary insight, and it is something that religious leaders who played the religion card in the primaries need to think about very seriously - Short term advantage with extraordinary long term costs. Read the whole thing. Right now, the Mormon stand-offish approach to politics is looking a lot smarter than the Evangelical hands-on.

Lowell adds:  I will share one anedcote that I found striking.  I was discussing this very subject with a deeply intelligent, sophisticated, believing and committed Mormon friend.  I suggested that we Mormons ought to insist on a new name.  After all, “Mormon” began as a pejorative term for members of my church, the real name of which is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Why not insist on being called “Latter-day Christians?” I asked.  Sure, some members of other faiths would find that outrageous, but it would be more faithful to our church’s name and does express what we proclaim to the world we represent.

Her response: “I’m not so sure I like that, what with the perception of the term ‘Christian’ these days — as a group of very strident, intolerant right-wing people who are vicious in their attacks on people who disagree with them on anything even closely associated with a religious belief.”

Ouch.  There is much to say in response to that statement, of course, and I am not endorsing it.  But I can see what my friend is saying; there is a grain of truth to it.

At bottom, I find that very, very sad.
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