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

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.

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.

In many ways, American evangelicalism is somewhat stronger today than it was in, say 1955 - certainly more mainstream and influential in the culture as a whole. But, the increased strength of evangelicalism hasn't increased fast enough to compensate for the total collapse of mainline Protestantism and the pretty steady weakening of my own Roman Catholic Church.

The decline of institutional Christianity over the last 40 or 50 years has empowered a side of American religion that has always been there. The sort of do-it-yourself, "create your own Jesus" kind of faith. But, the forms that faith takes do have a real reason they are so appealing.

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

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