"The Idolatry of America"

Damon Linker, of "Theocons" fame, argues in this New Republic book review that, among other things, "the political ascendancy of the religious right has been bad for the United States".  The book under reivew, Charles Marsh's Wayward Christian Soldiers, contends, among other things, that "the politicization of Christianity in recent years--using the good name and moral commandments of the church to 'serve national ambitions, strengthen middle-class values, and justify war'--has been spiritually disastrous for evangelicalism in the United States."

In Linker's view, though, Marsh goes too far, and sets the bar for Christians too high.  He concludes:

Certain kinds of believers will accept with composure the compromises and the imperfections of political life. They will not be discouraged, but at once chastened and emboldened by the knowledge that on this side of eternity our saints will not be statesmen and our statesmen will not be saints. Yet others will respond differently to the tragic conflicts at the core of the human condition. With their gaze transfixed by a vision of a more perfect world, they will be tempted to turn their backs on the realm of the profane and its merely human pursuits, including politics. We should be grateful to Charles Marsh for reminding us of the nobility of the true believers. And yet those of us who do not share their faith cannot help but wonder about the moral status of their impulse to secede from the often mundane duties and responsibilities of political citizenship, all the while scolding those who freely take on those duties and responsibilities. When does the fixation on one's own purity lapse into self-indulgence? This is a question for which Marsh has amply prepared us, but to which he has not even begun to supply an answer.