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Since the early seventies, with the Supreme Court legalized abortion in Roe v. Wade, the Christian right has been on the prowl, adding grievance to grievance, aligning themselves with the Republican Party and its Teapot wing.

The Christian right had long, of course, been gathering steam in the South in response to the Civil Rights movement—there is a dark story there, with prejudice rooting in distorted Biblical arguments—but the mass turn of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians into the realm of politics has been at full strength only in the past four decades.  Their influence on the 2016 election of Donald Trump was noteworthy, signaling a high point of hypocrisy on their part.  It didn’t matter that Trump was an unhinged philanderer, a braggart whose own life and example was a mockery of Christian values—as long as he delivered a reliably anti-abortion and anti-gay rights judge to replace Antonin Scalia.  Neil Gorsuch was their man, and Trump delivered.

The narrowness and hypocrisy of the Christian right […]