Here's a Tom fun fact: I got a minor in religious studies in college, which would have been a major if I wrote a thesis. And I grew up Catholic, of the northeastern laissez-faire variety, and went to a Catholic school for a few years, out of choice. This might come through in my vibe.
So, I haven't been Catholic in a while. But I have some very positive, as well as negative, thoughts about it. I've gotten my Protestantism secondhand. The early history and ideas of some Protestant wings are pretty fun: for example, I'm a big fan of aniconism, the trend of avoiding having churches without paintings, symbols, or any kind of representative art. And there's a lot of innovation around church government which is fun to look at in comparison to trends in secular government. I won't go into detail about what I'm not that jazzed about, just like I'm not going to get into the whole thing of Catholicism.
But anyway, Jesus and John Wayne is a pretty great book about American Protestantism and how a lot of churches have become something very detached from Christianity or any set of values. Instead, they've centered themselves around masculinity, white nationalism, and a worship of the military. It's pretty easy to see this in practice, but the book is very worth reading for the historical narrative and deep research.
I think it's mostly marked by emptiness for me. When it comes to accountability, ethics, or self-reflection, there are a lot of people for whom those things don't exist or matter. They embody a vibe of "I don't care."
Touching maybe a tiny bit on the Catholic-Protestant divide, I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a single mention of sola fide in the book, which I think explains how supposedly faithful people forgive bad behavior - because in practice faith is valued above behavior.
It's a downer. This nearly crossed the line of books that are too close to reality for me. I just can't handle reading ten different angles of how Trump-era America is an increasingly failed and evil place.