A noisome Georgia congresswoman would have the United States disassemble into two, politically, with the so-called “red states” to the right, and “blue states” to the left, so to speak.
Now, in One Faith No Longer, we learn that, in America, this could happen to the Christian religion: the authors make “the provocative argument that ‘red’ and ‘blue’ Christians have become so different that they are really part of two different religions.” As Boston University’s professor emerita of sociology of religion Nancy Ammerman adds in her review in the American Journal of Sociology, “Religious groups whose core values diverge simply become new religions.”
And that is exactly what authors George Yancy and Ashlee Quosigk report, Lee Trepanier explains in Public Discourse: “For red Christians, meaning is found in obedience to God as described in the Bible. For blue Christians, meaning is found in the alteration of society on the principles of social justice. […] With such contrasting goals, the authors think, agreement between…[the two] is impossible. At best we can hope for [an] amicable divorce….” Indeed, the two divisions “are intractably in opposition to one another,” the evangelical theological journal Themelios critic warrants, adding, “the authors successfully argue their thesis.”
One Faith No Longer: The Transformation of Christianity in Red and Blue America
By George Yancey & Ashlee Quosigk
New York University Press, 2021
