Paul Harvey

In Dave Ramsey’s plan, God looks an awful lot like a libertarian with a conservative American protestant streak.

More personal and less archetypical than her previous records, Welch’s new album tells stories of American religious realism and spiritual strivings both anonymously mythical and personally individual.

The issue is not Christian conservatives advocating their views in the public square. The problem, rather, is their claim (at least in places such as The Daily Show or the New York Times) that their Providentialist beliefs and readings of documents from the past represent a kind of legitimate scholarship that should have its place in the public “debate.”