One day, in a sardonic jibe at some conservative who was piously claiming the mantle of heaven, I told my wife, “Don’t forget, God’s a Republican.” Without missing a beat, she replied, “But his son’s a Democrat.”

Between the Old Testament Jehovah and the New Testament Jesus, a Christian can find support for almost any ideological perspective. American religion used to have room for many different political views, and American politics used to feature religious people across the entire ideological spectrum.