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.

Joseph Bottom is one of the nation's most widely published and influential essayists.

His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Journal. and

the influential essayists. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

He's the former literary editor of the Weekly Standard, and editor-in-chief of First Things.

He holds a PhD in medieval philosophy, His most recent work and the topic of our

conversation today is an anxious age, the post- Protestant ethic and the spirit of America.

Jody Bottom, welcome to thinking in public.

Dr. bottom, in your new book, The Anxious Age, you described this post-Protestant era, but

you really are talking about the fact that it remains resolutely a spiritual age even when people believe it to be quite secular.

Right, I think one of the mistakes that we make is we think that the current elite class of America has fallen into godlessness and

anti-spirituality and there are reasons that we think this of course because the Christian

churches in all of their forms are under attack.

There are reasons that we think this because the elite classes turn so resolutely against the

morality of Christianity.

There are reasons that we think this because, you know, the christian Christianity is suffering but i wanted to look at the

elite class of america uh... in

you know among other things

with sympathy and ask how do they see themselves and I realize

...