Better Religion Commentators, Please

Criticizing Amy Sullivan isn’t usually my beat, but really:

For decades, the Democratic Party has ghettoized religion, outsourcing it to African-Americans within the party. Democrats who give high-minded explanations for why they consider it inappropriate to mix religion and politics and why they don’t approve of wearing religion on their sleeve don’t bat an eye at politicians visiting black churches. Religion in black churches, they seem to think, isn’t really religion. It’s an ethnic characteristic of an important voting bloc.

I know that this is her schtick, but damn, couldn’t she provide some actual evidence? Did Bill Clinton give a lot of high minded explanations for why it was inappropriate to mix religion and politics? Jimmy Carter? Which “decades” is she referring to? Which “Democratic Party” is she referring to? Does she think the Democratic Party is entirely constituted by an atheist she once met at a coffee shop? The breathtaking inanity of it all makes me wonder if Mickey Kaus built Sullivan in his basement. And this is perhaps the worst:

[Kerry’s] advisers must have considered it good strategy to limit religious rhetoric to “safe” crowds, but the decision was problematic in two ways. First, by speaking about religion only when it could be politically advantageous, Kerry seemed to confirm the criticism that he was pandering and insincere. If religion was really important to him, voters might think, he would talk about it in other settings.

So… let me get this straight. By speaking about religion only when it could be politically advantageous, Kerry seemed pandering and insincere. The trick would have been to talk about religion A LOT, which wouldn’t have been pandering or insincere; as such, talking about religion more than was politically advantageous would have been politically advantageous. Just a little bit of pandering and insincerity is disadvantageous, because it seems like pandering and insincerity, but a ton of pandering and insincerity is, like, really advantageous.

I’m sorry, but why does anyone bother to read Sullivan? Even her concept of “religion” is frustratingly nebulous; you get the sense that in her mind it kind of means something like “sincere” but doesn’t have much meaning beyond that. Maybe I’m biased by the fact that I’d rather have less invocation of nebulous religiosity, but it seems to me that Sullivan herself doesn’t have much to offer other than “more and better pandering, please.”