In his Newsweek cover-essay, Andrew Sullivan expresses his longing for a “simpler, purer, apolitical Christianity” and anticipates that the religion will rise from its current crisis when “when politics and doctrine and pride recede.”  I’m sympathetic to Sullivan’s vision–less so to Jefferson’s, on which he builds–but as much as I think the church would benefit from a renunciation of “the things of the world,” such as power, Sullivan’s ideal Christianity cannot exist.

As I wrote in a post below, starting at the most fundamental level, the transmission of Jesus’s “simple, pure” message necessitates the exercise of power.  According to Sullivan, “if we return to what...