Forty years ago, college professors assured their students that our present moment in history would be "post-Christian" and probably "post-religious." It has not proven true. We live instead in an era of roiling religious sentiment and little reveals this as clearly as the religious themes at play in the 2012 presidential race.
In November, voters will choose between two candidates for president: a politically conservative Mormon bishop and a politically liberal president who says he has "trusted in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of my sins." Also of consequence will be a newly awakened religious left, the remnants of a religious right devastated in the last presidential election, and a new generation of voters for whom faith is made authentic by meaningful social action. Each of these are part of a broader society which is certain of spiritual realities but suspicious of religious institutions, confident of invisible truth but wary of the often self-serving nature of political religion. We are far from the secular society prophesied decades ago.
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