The supposed "right-wing Christian" preoccupation with secular politics is the light bulb most in need of replacement. The "religious right" wasn't right or left, either one, prior to the birth of secular attempts to quiet down religious witness in public life. The "religious right" got mad, not because it woke up one day and decided to take over America, but because the post-World War II explosion of faith ran into dogmatic, and generally successful, challenge on the part of atheists and agnostics like Madalyn Murray O'Hair, supported by "broad-minded" Christians. "Hey, who started this thing anyway?" the right is amply entitled to ask. And to add: If we didn't start this affray, might it be recognized we have useful things to say?

If it comes to that, then the "right-wing" Christian might beg leave to wonder about the brothers and sisters over on the left and their large and undeniable obsession with shaping politics. Pew tells us that, whereas 30 percent of Christians overall got political information from their churches, 50 percent of black Protestants did. Is someone getting a pass here? Hands get wrung about creation-sciencers, while hardly a word of reproach gets spoken about the black pastor who turns over his pulpit to whatever combination of Democrats. When black churches in Dallas loaded their congregants onto buses and sent them off to vote (according to individual conviction, you bet!), no yammering, no screeching, no protests came from those Christians supposedly engaged in propping up the tottering wall of church-state separation.

What topic is more complicated than religion, which speaks of origins and ends? Is there wonder in the different perspectives that different Americans bring to the contemplation of such questions? In a way, it's a pleasure to see non-evangelical Christians stepping up to the plate for their cut at the ball. They don't like the way Brother Falwell and those Catholic archbishops have been representing the faith? Let's see how much better they can do when it comes to moral direction and civic inspiration!