A Response to Amanda Marcotte on religion’s death throes

Amanda Marcotte got the memo. Religion in America is dying, and the religion of bigotry is finding it hard to maintain its followership.

We liberal protestants have known institutional decline for about
forty years.  Since Sgt. Pepper’s and Vietnam, our communities have
slowly been devastated by all sorts of economic and social forces.

But it’s not the old order.  The old order she refers to is young. 
It arose in reaction to liberal Protestantism’s social victories,
especially around race.  Once, fundamentalism was considered by the
elites a backwater worldview held by hicks and southerners.  Its
theology was historically condemned by the church Catholic.  But after
race was confronted institutionally in private schools by the federal
goverment, Ralph Reed and his associates organized conservative churches
into their current political force as a cohesive wing in the Republican
Party.  Like Amanda, I look forward to its self-destruction.