There’s a fascinating piece that can be read here by the always readable Heather Macdonald. For my taste, it takes rather too much of a detour through the arguments for and against the existence of a deity (a pointless discussion, I reckon: the issue cannot be resolved rationally), but these sentences, in particular, are worth considering:

“Skeptical conservatives-one of the Right’s less celebrated subcultures-are conservatives because of their skepticism, not in spite of it. They ground their ideas in rational thinking and (nonreligious) moral argument. And the conservative movement is crippling itself by leaning too heavily on religion to the exclusion of these temperamentally compatible allies.”

And so are these:

“Conservative atheists and agnostics…find themselves mystified by the religiosity of the rhetoric that seems to define so much of conservatism today. Our Republican president says that he bases “a lot of [his] foreign policy decisions” on his belief in “the Almighty” and in the Almighty’s “great gifts” to mankind. What is one to make of such a statement? According to believers, the Almighty’s actions are only intermittently scrutable; using them as a guide for policy, then, would seem reckless.”

I wouldn’t say that “mystified” is quite the word, nevertheless, amen, sister, amen.