Rand Paul is an unlikely fundamentalist hero. He was a rebel in his days at deeply religious Baylor University, apparently forming some sort of half-sarcastic, anti-religious student group. He’s a libertarian who quotes Ayn Rand and hasn’t denied his past drug use. On culture war issues he prefers to dodge rather than charge. In many respects Paul looks like the sort of Republican that the religious right has tried to purge from the party.

Yet Paul’s 2010 primary campaign against a well-established Republican drew endorsements from Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, and even the Concerned Women for America. The lock was in late in the primary campaign when James Dobson at Focus on the Family very publicly switched his endorsement to Paul.

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A dozen years ago, another Texas governor launched a campaign for president in which religion was also a major theme. George W. Bush stressed his own Christian commitment and spoke in terms borrowed from the evangelical lexicon.

At the same time, Bush took care to avoid offense to non-evangelicals. Excluding Catholics from a state-wide day of prayer? Precipitating a debate over whether Mormons are Christians? Speaking at a Values Voters Summit scheduled on Yom Kippur–and then slyly insulting those voters who happen not to be present?

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Michele Bachmann and I grew up in the same evangelical world. We heard similar sermons, read similar books—most importantly the Bible—and we followed the same anointed leaders.

By the time we were in college our generation of evangelicals had been educated into a profoundly different worldview than that of the secular, anti-Christian, Satan-following Ivy League elites we had been taught to fear. We understood the world to be a spiritual battleground with forces of good pitted against forces of evil. Real angels and real demons hovered about us as we prepared to wage these wars. We sang songs like “Onward Christian Soldiers” in our churches. At summer camps and vacation Bible schools we stamped our feet, and waved our arms as we sang with good Christian gusto “I’m in the Lord’s Army.” We knew which side we were on.

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