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.

Independent of the critique I'm making, I'm just trying to paint a more comprehensive portrait of American religion than you get from a right versus left, religious conservatives versus secular liberal, believer versus atheist, binary. Too often, we just look at religion in America through that kind of either/or lens. I think it's much more complicated than that.

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

The thinking person's case for Romney, murmured by many of his backers, amounts to this: Vote for Mitt, you know he doesn't believe a word he says.

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.

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

My mother converted when I was 16. She was the driving force behind religion in our family. So, I'm sure I was heavily influenced by that. But, I also was, and still am, convinced by the Catholic churches historical claims to represent the continuity with the early Church that other forms of Western Christianity lack.