Because many people see Christianity as something private, not public, they expect religion to stay on the margins of civic life. Faith is something you turn to for your own therapy, but it can’t be expected to have answers for public life. And so, in the absence of religion, political activism has grown up to take its place. So, where do we turn in times of tragedy? If not prayer, then policy. If not church, then state. If not the warmth of a common humanity, then the fire of our partisan divides.
