The idea of universal human rights may not seem as weird to some people as the idea of a personal God, but it is still a metaphysical idea that liberalism, at least as we know it, couldn't really survive without.

The fact that institutional churches have gone into decline doesn't mean that we're going to enter some purely secular age. Secular people need to be aware of that.

No one doubts that pure libertarianism is simple, but that's just why it remains on the ideological fringe - because it boils down the most difficult questions in human affairs to a simple equation, a What Would the Market Do bumper sticker.

The Democratic Party's rigidly pro-choice stance is one of the more unyielding positions in contemporary American politics.

It's just silly to look at the incredibly steep decline in the mainline and the clear institutional weakening of Catholicism in the 1960s and 70s and pretend that something really big didn't change then. It did change. There really was a significant institutional decline.

Many things about American life, that even secular people consider good, have flowed from the presence of a robust, resilient institutional Christianity.

I do think that evangelicals in general need to think seriously about how you pass on your faith across generations and over the long haul.