Strangers in a Strange Land

Chaput (A Heart on Fire), Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia, has crafted a thorough response to the 2015 Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which effectively legalized same-sex marriage. Much as he used directives on insurance and birth control in to argue that Christianity is under attack in the United States, Chaput utilizes Obergefell to mark a continued deterioration of Christian values. His argument is concisely delineated, but Chaput’s sincere beliefs can come across as overblown; he includes Obergefell and the HHS mandate in the same list of tragedies as 9/11, the Iraq wars, the 2008 economic meltdown, Syria’s civil war, and the predations of Boko Haram. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal receives a scant and oblique mention. Chaput also thoughtfully argues about technology’s part in the cultural shift away from community and toward the self, which dovetails neatly with his views on democracy. But his righteous indignation on LGBTQ rights, birth control, and abortion, like his contention that religion is inherent to morality, is arguably contributing to the very “post-Christian” nation he fears. Readers of faith will find much to contemplate in Chaput’s well-argued examples of the state of Christian influence on American culture. (Feb.)