There is nothing more profane than the image of an atheist with tears in his eyes conducting the glory and passion of Handel's Messiah.

I do think evangelicals have been under attack.

The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues, and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color or two up front on TV to obscure the all-white, all reactionary all backward — there-is-no-global-warming — rube reality. Actual conservatives, let alone the educated classes, have long since fled.

I think that the Democratic Party has been ill served by identity politics. I think that ironically evangelicals have now bought into the same mistake. They have discovered allies in the white supremacist movement. I think this is a heavy price to pay and will in the end accelerate the departure from religion by young people.

There is nothing more profane than the image of an atheist with tears in his eyes conducting the glory and passion of Handel's Messiah.

I don't think anyone sees truth for a simple reason: we aren't static.

When I was a child, my parents taught a literal creation. By the time I was in my 20s they were accommodating evolution. In other words, less creed, more roll with changing ways of seeing. Maybe adapting is a better way to see this.