Mr. Bell, I have met the kinds of people he describes. I was raised by them. While his screed is rampant sweeping generalisation and factually inaccurate in most of his points about Christians as a whole, the Dominionist Christian nationalists against whom he rails do exist. And frankly, they are often worse than what he describes – as I have personally experienced. Moreover, they inflict their perfidy on their families and their communities and on the political stage with – if not aprobation – silence and inaction from the rest of conservative evangelical Christians. Again, I've suffered it first hand.

Further, even the most silent, do nothing to intervene fellow conservative evangelicals condemn liberal and progressive believers as false Christians. I have myself been so accused for the past fifty years. When I asked how I could use my gift of empathy in the Lord's service, I was told I was being tempted by witchcraft and forcibly had them "pray the devil out" of me. I've been told I cannot be a real Christian and support women's choice. Hell… I've been told I can't be a real Chrsitian and be okay with interracial marriage; granted that was before the 21st Century. I don't believe for one moment they changed their minds on that last point. They just stopped ranting about it to me after I married interracially to a Persian in the early 1990s. In fact, given the way they (including my own kin) treat my half-Persian Christian son, I KNOW that segment of "conservative Christians" still believe such claptrap.

I'm sorry. But, my own lifetime of experience among my own kin and their community gives an astounding depth of credence to his accusations against conservative American evangelicalism. I'm sorry: That you claim to have "never met one even close to what" he descirbes, I find – at the least – disingenuous.