And yet I regularly see Christians eating shrimp and wearing polycotton blends. Go figure. For some reason, even fundamentalist Christians are able to compartm

And yet I regularly see Christians eating shrimp and wearing polycotton blends. Go figure. For some reason, even fundamentalist Christians are able to compartmentalize some parts of the Bible (for example, they don't stone adulteresses in Mississippi) while insisting loudly and continuously on the continued enforcement of other selected parts. This compartmentalization can also change over time, and thank goodness: as we close the boxes we put around the Bible's advice on law and morality, our society becomes progressively more humane and less barbaric and unjust. Until quite recently, for example, slavery and racial segregation were openly justified on Biblical grounds (go check it out: the Bible is extremely bullish on slavery, even in the New Testament); yet today, not even the most ardent American fundamentalist conservative would dare speak openly in support of overturning the Thirteenth Amendment and reintroducing slavery. Notwithstanding the counterswell of sporadic backslides into morally repugnant Biblical morality - like "Stand Your Ground" laws that fundamentalist Christians justify on Biblical arguments - the trend across industrialized liberal democracies has been away from Stone Age morality and toward a realization of Enlightenment values. Even in America, the country is split between the more liberal, progressive northern and coastal states and the retrograde South. It remains an open question whether the two opposing strains can somehow converge on the international norms of liberty, rationality and fairness. If not, one of two outcomes seems likely: either the US will fracture into two jurisdictions, or the anti-modern South will manage to drag the country into a new cultural dark age.