In the end, you do need institutions to transmit the faith for the long haul. That's why I make the case that, in certain ways, American Protestants could stand to recover the denominationalism that they've left behind over the last 50 years. They are real values in having a confessional tradition that can sustain your faith over the long term.

If you're willing to recognize the religious element in one secular ideology, you need to be able to recognize it in your own.

I think that secular liberals need to recognize that they are still, often, hanging their worldview on what are metaphysical ideas.

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.

It's not always clear where a healthy patriotism shades into a dangerous nationalism.

I read a lot of G.K. Chesterton. It was a fairly conventional intellectual path to the Catholic church, I would say.

One of the things I try to do is take seriously some of the forms of American religion that people consider to be shallow and try and figure out why they have such a strong appeal and tease out the theology they actually represent.