Ross Douthat discusses the decline of religious conservatives in America, as examined by Robert Putnam and David Campbell’s American Grace, on the one hand, and James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World, on the other.
The upshot: “Christians need to find a way to thrive in a society that looks less and less like any sort of Christendom — and more and more like the diverse and complicated Roman Empire where their religion had its beginning.” In part, this is what the Second Vatican Council was intended to do for the Catholic Church. Depending on who you talk to, and what precisely you’re talking about, it did and it didn’t do this.
