Religious Roots

Stephen Carter is dismayed that liberal culture doesn’t take religion seriously. His complaint has hit a nerve. Peter Steinfels, the religion editor of the New York Times, praised Carter’s “well-honed arguments” in his Saturday column. Bill Clinton read the book while on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard and raved about it afterward to a group of religious leaders in Washington. And Carter was granted a softball celebrity interview with MacNeil-Lehrer’s Charlayne Hunter-Gault. (Trivialization alert: the interview was taped inside New York’s Riverside Church.)

Why all the fuss? A likely explanation is that some members of the liberal establishment— including Stephen Carter himself and ...