A century after Max Weber identified the “Protestant ethic” at our nation’s moral spine, America has become a smorgasbord of cultures and faiths, where organized religion is fading fast (although spiritual belief is still widespread). But our public life and our popular culture remain profoundly entangled with Christian ideas about redemption and salvation, however half-baked and bastardized they have become. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our national obsession with confession and forgiveness, which extends from reality TV to the 12-step meeting in the church basement down the street. Sit alone in a bar long enough, and somebody will start telling you about how he screwed up his marriage and that time in Florida with that girl and all that coke.

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