Steve Chapman on How Religious Republicans Are Alienating an Increasingly Nonreligious Electorate

"Each year, fewer and fewer Americans identify as secular Republicans or religious Democrats," write political scientists David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. "Formerly religious Democrats (except among African Americans) have drifted away from church, and formerly unobservant Republicans have found religion." That may sound like a reasonable trade for conservative Christians, writes Steve Chapman. Who needs skeptics and scoffers anyway? But it has some side effects they may come to regret.