American Christians are increasingly aware that the church has a political image problem, and are increasingly eager to repair it. Association with the Religious Right, the once-dominant political machine whose public credibility seems to be in steady decline, is quickly becoming a source of embarrassment for all but the most conservative congregations. Several studies have attributed declining participation in organized religious communities to the politicization of churches. In their 2012 book unChristian, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons report that two-thirds of young non-Christians and half of young Christians consider the church “too involved in politics.” Their research reveals that 110 million adult Americans—including half of conservative Christians—are concerned about the role of conservative Christians in politics.
The problem is not only with the Christian Right, of course. The Christian Left has also failed to articulate a political vision compelling enough to attract broad support among the faithful. As the recent Pew Research Center study reports, the religiously unaffiliated—or “nones”—have jumped nearly 7 percent over the past seven years, now forming 23 percent of the American population, many of them leaving left-leaning mainline congregations. And as political scientists Robert Putnam and David Campbell report in their book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, one of the most significant reasons that “nones” cite for not attending church is that churches are “too political.”
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