Jeff Sharlet (of The Revealer, among other things) has written a lengthy piece for Harper’s Magazine about how Christian fundamentalism views its relationship with American politics and history. You may disagree with some of his observations—keep in mind that Sharlet is writing from the perspective of a non-fundamentalist looking at the movement from the outside, trying to understand it—but the article is a thoughtful one and raises a lot of good issues.

A lot of the theology-mixed-with-patriotism that Sharlet notes is genuinely disturbing, and as is often the case when I read this sort of account, I’m left wondering exactly how widespread this sort of “Christian patriotism” really is. If it were not a fairly widespread phenomenon, it would not be receiving the sort of attention it’s been getting lately, and Sharlet is certainly not making this stuff up. But on the other hand, I have interacted with a lot of culturally conservative Christians in my life (I am one myself), and few if any of them would endorse the fundamentalist ideas described in Sharlet’s article. Am I just out of the loop?