Of course, religion was not the problem in the marriage (it was her son telling me I would never be equal in the marriage as long as I made less money than he did), but you could never tell her that.

I.e. He is? unbalanced.

And if Bush is a Methodist and McCain a Baptist, won’t that religious difference hinder their chances for happiness? Or is this more along the lines of the Romeo and Juliet type of tragedy instead of king Lear??

Many of the movers and shakers are still Episcopalian…wonder how they feel about this?

Well, if McCain’s past record is any indication, what will happen now is that his support among Episcopalians will tank while his support among Baptists will stay completely even.

The really funny thing is that even in this moment of desperation, McCain is misreading the nature of his party’s own base. It’s not really whether you’re a baptist that matters, I think. It’s whether you’re a evangelical, which is a sort of ephermal thing that has nothing to do with religious denomination and everything to do with whether you are part of this floating religious subculture that the Real True Christians have built for themselves within America. The SBC is a big part of this subculture, to be sure, but they aren’t the subculture itself, and many of the most important people (read: televangelists) among the evangelicals are denominationally unaffiliated.

This is why it doesn’t matter that Bush is a Methodist, or whether he goes to church that often (although apparently when he does attend church, it’s Episcopal?). He knows the code words, he can convince people he’s listening to the right televangelists or read a Left Behind book once or whatever, and this is probably what defines his religious identity more than denomination.

Come to think of it, that seems to be endemic to beltway thinking, doesn’t it?