Overheard (September 226)

I would rather vote for somebody who has made a stand for women and children above religion.

Buster Johnson, a longtime Republican supervisor in Mojave County, Ariz., saying he wouldn’t vote for U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, who is running for governor of Arizona. In 2013, when Biggs was the state Senate’s president, he was behind stopping the passage of a bill designed to strip authority from the Colorado City, Ariz., marshal’s office, which at the time was abetting a polygamist religious group accused of sexually abusing girls in rural Arizona.

Washington Post, 7-20-26

A young person believing that religion is important is one thing, but sitting in a pew on a Sunday morning is something else entirely. It’s feigning fealty without any real devotion.

Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University and author of “The Vanishing Church,” in his column, “American is undergoing a vibes revival.”

Washington Post, 7-31-26

But there’s a big chunk of the MAGAverse for whom the pantomime of religion permits as many of the seven deadly sins as they wish to rack up. . . Mouth enough dogma, sprinkle your conversation with enough references to Christ, maybe drape a cross around your neck and all manner of cruelty and corruption is forgiven. Seems to be [Pete] Hegseth’s calculation.

Frank Bruni, in his “Conversation” column with Bret Stephens.

New York Times, 7-23-26

The danger is clear. Liberal democracy rests on the premise that citizens of every faith — and the approximately 28 percent of American adults who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” — stand as equals before the law. When government defines national identity in explicitly Christian terms, it marginalizes religious minorities, weakens constitutional protections for dissent, and transforms political disagreement into heresy.

David Wippman and Glenn C. Altschuler in their op-ed, “Inside Christian nationalists’ war on religious freedom.”

The Hill, 8-2-26