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You see, today I am going to agree with Ross Douthat. (I will wait while you recover from that statement).
You see Ross, in today's Opinion piece, tries to move past Gay Marriage (Thank God!) and onto the good things about religion. Sure, he makes some silly assertions early, but to me he is trying to paper over a conflict, while allow some face-saving to the evangelicals. Fine.
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But, the big thing, the important thing, is that he gently tries to move the religious back into, what many of us believe the great thing about religion is, charity and community. Look at this snippet from the NYT Times Op Ed - Salon misses the point itby being so annoyed by what came earlier.
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Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.
Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.
We live in a society plagued by formlessness and radical flux, in which bonds, social structures and commitments are strained and frayed. Millions of kids live in stressed and fluid living arrangements. Many communities have suffered a loss of social capital. Many young people grow up in a sexual and social environment rendered barbaric because there are no common norms. Many adults hunger for meaning and goodness, but lack a spiritual vocabulary to think things through.
Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely.
The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.
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My only addition to this would be a simple one, invite your community - gay, straight, white, brown. We are on board with this given and generous form of Christianity. Many left the church because it turned into a lighthouse of hate, not compassion. Give those people a reason to embrace it again.