James K.A. Smith and Mark Mulder

During the heat of the 2008 United States presidential election, journalist Bill Bishop offered a tome that helped explain why the lines of demarcation between Barack Obama supporters and those of John McCain seemed so extreme: The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. Therein, Bishop (with statistical support from sociologist Robert Cushing) describes the differences between blue and red states and how these distinctions are becoming more and more entrenched as folks in the…