The biblical picture is not one of an upward, linear progress or a precipitous, downward decline. It is a more complicated picture of a fallen world in which there is a gospel of power.

Before we're Americans, we're Christians. And so we have to be informed by a certain moral sense, which means that we need to speak up for moral principle and for gospel principle regardless of who that offends.

Conservative evangelicals don't want government support for our faith, because we believe God created all consciences free and a state-coerced act of worship isn't acceptable to God. Moreover, we believe the gospel isn't in need of state endorsement or assistance. Wall Street may need government bailouts but the Damascus Road never does.

An 'almost gospel' doesn't raise a corpse.

I believe that we're all created in the image of God and we're all fallen sinners. And I think we can recognize that as we look backward in history.

The assumption that the larger culture agrees with Christians on values issues led to evangelicals' minimizing the theologically distinctive aspects of Christian witness. It also set up evangelicals to be disappointed when the culture did not turn out the way many expected it to turn out. So our response ought to be that we are always, in every culture, strangers in exile.

When we adopt—and when we encourage a culture of adoption in our churches and communities—we’re picturing something that’s true about our God. We, like Jesus, see what our Father is doing and do likewise (John 5:19). And what our Father is doing, it turns out, is fighting for orphans, making them sons and daughters.