ABSTRACT
How can we account for the simultaneous presence of these diametri cally opposed viewpoints? A good beginning point is the recognition that intellectuals and political pundits largely view religion in the modern world from a perspective that is grounded in secularization theory. While often unarticulated explicitly, this perspective is nevertheless held with consid erable confidence. Secularization theory postulates either the eventual erosion of religious sentiment from the modern world or the retreat of religion to the private realm. These unwelcome and unsuited intrusions
into the political arena, thus, will eventually pass as aging cohorts of oldtime Bible believers die off. In the interim, the periodic reappearance of conservative Christians as a political force amounts to so much noxious noise that disrupts the eighteenth-century accommodation of church and state.
