Thanks, David. This is a really thoughtful response.

I noticed you wrote the following: “So I do disagree with the assertion that “what’s best for party/country/what’s morally right” have traditionally overlapped, but that’s not essential to the argument.” I think Russell’s point is actually that, for many conservative Christians, these three seemed to overlap. I think the three of us in the conversation all believe that this overlap was always illusory and that Trump is merely revealing (to many, but not all) a distinction between faith and party that always should have been apparent. One thing we’re all interested is whether this awareness and critical stance toward party will persist after Trump.

Another thing I would mention is that I think several of the things you said about “Christians” in relation to the culture war, etc. might better be attributed to “evangelicals.” For most of my life, “Christian” just meant evangelical to me, but as I’ve moved around and studied religion more closely, I’ve seen a huge diversity in the political and cultural leanings of Christians, whether Catholic, Orthodox, Anabaptist, Mainline Protestant, etc. This is only a minor terminological quibble, but I think the more people realize that there is a huge diversity of politics and cultures among people who love Jesus, the harder it is to equate Christianity and a specific political stance.

Thanks, DB