Just cracked open EJ Dionne's "Souled Out" on the way home. Looks like a brisk read with plenty of food for thought. Still, it figures to be an odd read. Politically, I tend to be of a more-or-less similar mind to Dionne. From the tangent of faith, however, our views are more notably different ... at least in spots.

Pg. 2-3

The title of this book can be read in two ways. It speaks to our country's exhaustion with a religios style in politics that was excessively dogmatic, partisan, and ideological. It is a style reflecting a spirit far too certain of itself, and far too insistent on the depravity of its political adversaries. Linking religion too closely to the fortunes of one political party, or two one leader or group of leaders, it always a mistake. It encourages alienation from faith itself - where, after all, did Voltaire come from? - by turning a concern with the ultimate into a prop for temporal power. It distorts great traditions by requiring their exponents to bob and weave in order to accommodate the political needs of a given moment or the immediate requirements of a given politician. Thus do great traditions drain themselves of their critical capacity. I do not for a moment pretend that this tendency is unique to political conservatives. The Left is also quite capable of using, and distorting, religion for its own purposes. But for more than a quarter century, it is the political Right that has used, and I believe abused, religion. A great many people - including a great many religious people - have had enough.

They have had enough for the reason embodied in the other sense of the title: reducing religion to politics or to a narrow set of public issue amounts to a great sellout of our traditions. It is common to speak of religion as "selling out" to secularism, or to modernity, or to a fashionable relativism. But there is a more immediate danger, particularly in the United States, of religion selling out to political forces that use the votes of religious people for purposes having nothing to do with a religious agenda - and, often enough, for causes that may contradict the values such voters prize most. It is a great sellout of religion to insist that it has much to teach us about abortion or gay marriage but little useful to say about social justice, war and peace, the organization of our work lives, or our approach to providing for the old, the sick, and the desperate. Religion becomes less relevant to public life when its role is marginalized to a predetermined list of "values issue," when its voice is silenced or softened on the central problems facing our country and our government.