This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Ross Dalth that writes a must-read commentary for the New York Times, where he serves as the youngest

regular op-ed writer in the newspaper's history.

He's the author of several books including privilege, Harvard and the education of the ruling

class, and his newest book is entitled

Bad Religion how we became a nation of heretics he's a graduate of Harvard

University he writes also film reviews for the National Review and many other

articles for other publications.

We're here to talk about his new book, Bad Religion.

Welcome to Thinking in Public, Ross Dauthitt.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's pleasure to be here.

Well, I've looked forward to this conversation, and I've looked forward to reading your book ever since I saw the first publisher's notation about it. It's the kind of title that immediately appeals to an evangelical theologian. Someone writing about heresy, anyone writing about heresy, is actually bucking

the trend of the last 200 years or so. How did you end up writing a book on heresy?

Well the idea for the book came to me, I would say somewhere in the second term of George

W Bush's presidency when I felt like the debate over religion, religion and politics and so on in America

was dominated by, well really by the sort of new

atheist assault on Christianity in particular and theism in general.

So we had sort of endless debates between Richard

Dawkins Christopher Hitch and Sam Harris and so on and whatever champion of

...