For most of my life, I considered myself a Republican and a Christian, not necessarily in that order, but they weren’t mutually exclusive either. The two ideologies happily went hand-in-hand like Adam and Eve, before you-know-who showed up and crashed the party. In my genesis story, I have to credit George W. Bush with tempting me to question my longstanding, intertwining beliefs. While I munched on the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the rose-colored Republican scales fell from my eyes. (more…)