If recent history is any guide, expect the leaders of the religious right to blame the tragic shooting in Virginia yesterday on our so-called corrupt secular culture. In Adele Stan’s fantastic summary of the recent “Reclaiming America for Christ” conference, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said:

“[A]ll the pinks,” Land said, “have become chartreuse; that’s the environmental crowd.” In an America run by “secularists,” Land’s hand-out reads, “[h]uman life would become more commoditized.” There would be clone farms and polygamy, all part of “a neo-paganist triumph.”

Got that? If you’re concerned about global warming and recycle those empties then you’re just about a communist. And you probably support neo-pagan polygamy too (whatever that is). This coming from a man who was a co-signer of a letter to President Bush in 2002 urging him to invade Iraq.

Finally, consider the current national reaction to the tragedy of 33 students shot dead yesterday. On any given day in Iraq sectarian violence is responsible for about that many deaths. To put that into perspective, and given that Iraq’s population is around 27 million and the U.S. is around 400 million, imagine if the U.S. had regular shootings like yesterday with about 480 casualities for every occurrence. As horrific as that sounds, that’s what it’s like in Iraq right now.

Most Americans have turned against the war; however, evangelicals are still overwhelmingly its biggest gung ho supporters. What has evangelical Christianity become?