Religious Right Thrives in a Red-Hot Vacuum

Leo Ribuffo’s mild rebuke of the left’s typical response to American religiosity (“Religion, Politics, and the Latest Christian Right,” Dissent, Spring 1995)—a response of horrified incomprehension—gets most of it right. But Ribuffo doesn’t address in any depth the sources of conservative Protestantism’s resurgent grip on the loyalties of millions of our citizens. Ribuffo also doubts that the ascendancy of the “latest Christian right” is anything to be particularly exercised about, whereas I think it’s more dangerous than previous incarnations, simply because the cultural situation is more dangerous.

For progressive politics to succeed, we will need more than Ribuf...