Hi, Monica. You may be right about the Old Testament/New Testament dichotomy. To my mind, insofar as religion is a part of this massive rift in the body politic, it has mostly to do with the tendency most of us have to form our religious views based on our politics and not the other way around.

The road less traveled -- far less -- is to allow the Gospel to transform our world view. But that isn't so simple since the Gospel can't be neatly stuffed into either a "liberal" or a "conservative" playbook. 

I think one of the great temptations for religious people is to fall into the trap of interpreting faith through the lens of ideology rather than personal conversion. When that happens, it becomes all too easy to use religion as a weapon for beating others into submission rather than as a light for individual illumination.