I thought I would follow up here to a comment I left over at the TPM Cafe Book Club regarding what I'm sure is Kevin Phillips' newest overwrought tome American Theocracy. I'm all for some reflection on the role of Christians in American politics, but I don't think we should get carried away.

That conservative Christians have played a vital role in GOP politics cannot be doubted. That they believe they are socially engineering America in their own image can be confirmed by polling. However, the idea that they are actually achieving their goals in any significant way through their Republican Party activism can still be doubted. How anyone can argue that America is not becoming more secular (and, unfortunately, debauched) is beyond me. They can complain that the department stores are taking Christ out of Christmas (which, of course, they have been doing since at least the invention of Santa Claus), but it ain't us workaday Democrats who own all the stocks in those stores. Take your case to your buddies on Wall Street, folks!

Anyhow, I don't revel in or celebrate these facts. I merely point them out. If anyone can conclusively show that Christianity is actually more influential on American society today than it was in, say, 1970 (without falling back on mere statistics), please do so.

My other concern here is that too many liberals/progressives are prone to believe the enemy's propaganda. If the Democrats and Republicans were two armies arrayed on either side of a no-man's land and the GOP dropped leaflets into our trenches, how would we react? What if the leaflets said, "Lay down your arms! The Christians of America are against you! You cannot hope to prevail!"

I guess the first thing we could expect would be for footsolders like Bill Moyers, Thomas Frank, and Mr. Phillips to run up and down the line freaking out about it. "We're gonna lose! We're gonna lose!" I would hope that our C.O. would tell them to shut up an get back to their posts before he ordered a court marshal for spreading discontent in the ranks.

Of course I know that can't be done in a political movement. But, I think we'd be well served to quit being so credulous. A lot of the hype about Christian conservatives is just propaganda. A lot of Christians turned pessimistic during the Cold War. We don't need those gloomy types in our ranks any more than we need the gloomy types from PBS, NPR, and Harper's magazine. Let's focus on winning the hearts and minds of the greater number of Christian optimists who seek to build the Shining City on the Hill, not those who want to lay the groundwork for the End Times.