There are some great values in Christianity, but I think the values are located more deeply in our humanity than they are in our religion. There are certainly some survival values.

I go where I'm invited. And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I'd be away every day of my life.

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.

I see Christianity in very humanistic terms.

God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny.

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

You need to identify the values that come out of that kind of belief system, because I don't see them. All the polls I look at say, for example, that adultery is committed as much in the Bible Belt as in any other part of the country. The same goes for abortion, child abuse, spouse abuse or murder.