Whoa, Bruce. The first amendment is a constitiution for state, not a Biblical value; and what exactly is the intent of \”separation of church and state?\” This is a tired argument about religion and the public square, and I see many problems. It comes awfully close to elevating the Constitution of the United States to the level of a confession of faith. There certainly are some minimal agreed upon values expressed in the Constitution, but lets not also forget that many of these framers didn’t exactly “live accordingly”.

Mainstream Baptist
The reason why Wallis always speaks generically about \”secularists,\” never naming them, is because he well knows that naming all the moderate, mainstream Baptist leaders who have opposed him face-to-face on church-state issues would only serve to negate his position.

There is something wrong with siding completely with “secularists”; to banish religious language from public conversation from a ‘theological’ perspective is a bit patronizing and only underwrites the idea that faith cannot be trusted to be “rational” (and always “rationality” is its own set of “dogmas” and assumptions— just like Colin McGinn on Moyers the other night—his “faith” has its own assumptions)