Last week I spent three days in Cor­val­lis, Ore­gon, as a par­tic­i­pant in a gath­er­ing cel­e­brat­ing “The Sacred in Nature.” I was invit­ed by two of the con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers, philoso­pher Kath­leen Dean Moore and poet Charles Goodrich, friends of nature and writ­ers of excep­tion­al grace.

Dur­ing my life­time, Amer­i­ca par­ty pol­i­tics have most­ly turned on mat­ters of class, mon­ey, and race. This year’s elec­tion is the first where the fault line between the par­ties is pri­mar­i­ly religious.