I think it is fair, in a way, to describe certain forms of Marxism, for instance, as the secular equivalent of a religion. But, I think the same is true, to a certain extent, of secular liberalism as well.

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.

Every young writer, I imagine, has their first intellectual magazine, whose essays and articles are devoured all the more greedily for being slightly over one's head. Mine was First Things.

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

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.

I do think you can see, throughout American history, this temptation, and it's both a liberal and a conservative temptation, to take a healthy patriotism a little too far. For liberals the temptation is to say the purpose of politics is to straightforwardly bring the kingdom of God to Earth. For conservatives, I talk about Glenn Beck, the temptation is more apocalyptic and messianic, it's the temptation to say we did have a covenant with God, a literal covenant beginning with the Founding, and we are, like Israel in the Old Testament, falling away from it.

Even secular people can't really escape from the need to rest their ideas on some belief, some sort of commitment that is not scientific commitment.