In the preface to his classic book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis discussed how the word “gentleman” had evolved in meaning. It had gone from describing a set of facts about a person to a shorthand for complimenting him as a good person. Lewis feared the word “ Christian ” might make the same linguistic journey. The term would go from describing a fact about a person in relation to God to marking them as a good (or bad) person in the minds of others.

Ryan Burge recently did a deep dive into statistics in America that says we have moved closer to that reality that Lewis feared. He shows from polling of how people self-identify that more persons simultaneously identify as “evangelicals,” find religion important to themselves, but rarely if ever go to church. Burge shows how this trend has set in most among Republicans and conservatives. The rate at which they regularly attend church has declined significantly faster than the number who no longer think religion is important for themselves.

Burge concludes, “Evangelicalism has become a cultural and political marker.” It designates a set of cultural assumptions and life choices, as well as political partisanship, he says. In so doing, it fulfills Lewis’s fear since those using the designation mean it to mark good or bad persons within our society.

Christians should take pause at these findings. They display a disordered relationship within many persons’ souls regarding the shaping of their identity. One’s identity usually combines a number of affiliations that include family, geography, athletic teams, and, of course, political and religious beliefs. Christianity claims primary and ordering status among these identities. No relationship occupies a more central or eternal place than our relationship with God in Jesus Christ. St. Paul’s epistles emphasize the unity believers possess with Christ and, through that union, with each other. This identity orders our other relationships, including our political affiliations, because it is through Christian doctrine that we best understand justice and the proper purposes of human life, individually and corporately.

One might correctly see a particular political party or ideology as best furthering Christian beliefs and practices. On abortion, for instance, Christians see the biblical witness that life in the womb is precious and seek the protection of such children by the law. In that case, political stances or cultural choices flow from one’s religious faith.

However, Burge’s research points to an inverse relationship. Too many see their religious beliefs as an application of their cultural or political values. They identify as a Republican or as conservative with a set of principles and lifestyles attending that alignment. They then see “evangelical” as another way to describe the same set of values, importing the meaning of the other terms into this one. How else could one hardly attend church, the actual body of believers, and still claim great importance for one’s religious beliefs and identity?

The result of such RINOs (Religious in Name Only) will lead to distortions of Christianity and the weakening of our society. Democrats or progressives who no longer identify as religious or no longer find it as important might seek to undermine Christianity. But for those who identify without really participating, Christian belief might increasingly conform to a partisan agenda, downplaying if not denying basic doctrines of the trinity, of human sin, and of salvation in Christ by grace through faith. Persons supposed to see their ultimate unity as brothers and sisters in the faith might fight bitterly, seeing their more essential family as one grounded in party affiliation.

These trends have already weakened our society and will only continue to. Christians should engage with society and politics, not run from it and hide. But their engagement must seek the good as their faith informs it, a perspective not entirely Republican or Democratic, right or left, that has historically helped Americans reform toward a more just society. We risk losing that call to be better. Our society loses much more besides.

Let us seek to restore terms such as “evangelical” and “Christian” to their place as markers of people of genuine, engaged faith. And let us continue to order our lives by that faith so as to make our political and cultural values better. That would be good for the church, yes. But it also would be good for America.

Adam Carrington is an assistant professor of politics at Hillsdale College.