David French writes in the Times about “the God gap” in the current political landscape. His essay focuses on the Senate race in Texas, James Talarico (D) vs. Ken Paxton (R). The dark cloud obscuring the heavens is the reality that Christian evangelicals are legion, and elections can’t be won without them (either as supporters, as they have been for Trump, or as non-voters, if their latent moral enzymes begin to upset their collective stomach over the blatant badness of someone like Paxton). French describes Paxton as having all the corruption of Trump without Trump’s charisma. He says a Talarico win would be a crushing blow to the GOP nationally. But it won’t be because of Talarico’s sanctimonious preaching, French says. I agree.

It’s hard to imagine that Talarico’s liberal seminary theology has any effect on voters. It’s too liberal for evangelicals (though I hope most can tolerate it as less than “heretical”), and too Christian for the average Texas Democrat, like one of the sources that French talked to, a Marxist-Leninist in Austin wearing a kilt and no shirt.

French is an evangelical who hates Trump, but admits that religious liberals are well to his left in theology as well as politically. But he’s looking at the unpredictable trembling between an evangelical tolerance of despicable behavior like Trump’s or Paxton’s and the indifference of secular Democrats for the academic Christianity of a man-child like Talarico. Neither of these armies seem eager to get out and vote as expected by the old standards.

French mentioned my Democratic senator Raphael Warnock, the smooth pastor who beat “evangelical” Hershel Walker and still holds King’s former pulpit at Ebeneezer Baptist on Auburn Avenue.

I don’t object to the liberal Christianity of Warnock or Talarico. But I think it’s mushy. Hearing them combine their religion with their platforms makes me want to run back to reading St. Augustine’s Confessions or G.K. Chesterton’s apologetics, and double-checking the Bible against those liberal-aligned interpretations. Hearing the mush of political Christianity from liberal Democrats bothers me almost as much as hearing it from the pro-life evangelicals that gave us Reagan, Gingrich and Trump. Almost, but not really, because the preached Christianity of Democratic pols doesn’t have the dark consequences of the Republican con job.

So where do I stand as a wandering pilgrim, a displaced member of Christ’s body? Give me the blessed separation of Church and State. The Enlightenment wasn’t un-Christian, but it was a check on “enthusiasm,” a strain of the faith that bloodied Europe and tortured dissidents. Give me the Enlightened vision of Jefferson’s Declaration and the Hamiltonian Constitution and history: Checks and balances, free press, free enterprise, and democracy. I’ll take my father’s Time Map (my essay on this in Salvation South) over any form of theocracy, and will vote straight Democratic Party, like he would, until a little sanity and truth-telling is restored across the land. And I’ll take the image of Christ as a refuge from politics, a sanctuary, not a government agency.