PEOPLE are surprised when they discover that I am a Christian,
because I don't look Christian. I am an academic with the typical
tribal features: socially liberal, politically leftist, feminist,
pro-choice, and gay-friendly. When they find out that I am a
Christian, they assume that I hold strange views about issues
including the post-mortem fate of non-Christians and the origin of
species.
Americans in the aggregate are very religious, but American
religion is unevenly distributed across regions, classes, and
ethnic groups. In the South, when you meet someone for the first
time, a polite opener, after details of name and family ties are
established, is: "Where do you go to church?" Yet in urban-coastal
areas, among upper-middle-class "knowledge workers", God is not
done.
Churchgoing is rare among educated professionals, and has become
unmentionable. If you let slip that you have attended a church
event, however social and secular, people worry that you are
preparing to proselytise. Employers worry that churchgoers will
offend coworkers and clients. A recent study by sociologists at the
University of Connecticut reported that job applicants who
mentioned any form of religious affiliation on their résumés were
26 per cent less likely to be contacted by employers than those who
did not.
It is not hard to see why. Since the rise of the Religious
Right, conservative Evangelicals have become highly visible and
noisy. Their campaigns to promote conservative social agendas are
always in the news, and politicians on the Right loudly proclaim
their support. Employers are wary of applicants who, they worry,
may have axes to grind, who might annoy colleagues by
proselytising, or offend them with their views on hot-button
issues.
So mainline Christians keep their heads down. There is also the
Great Unmentionable: in the United States, Christianity is
déclassé. Admit to it in polite society, and you will be suspected
of being a homophobic, climate-change-denying, junk-food-eating
member of the great unwashed.
Christians are not, as conservative Evangelicals claim, an
oppressed minority whose religious freedom is under threat, or, as
secularists complain, an oppressive majority. We are, increasingly,
a stigmatised group, like smokers and the obese - and like our
forebears, before Constantine made Christianity respectable. We
began as a peculiarity in a morass of syncretic Hellenistic
spiritualities, oriental cults, and self-help programmes, and were
despised as superstitious by a secular elite. And now, in the US,
in our beginning is our end.