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. David A Hollinger is the Preston Hotchkiss

professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley. He's also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,

a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Harnsworth Professor at the University of Oxford.

He's a past president of the Organization of American Historians, and its latest work is, after

cloven tongues of fire, Protestant liberalism in modern American history.

Professor Hollinger, welcome to thinking in public.

Thank you.

I have to tell you, the first of your books that came to my attention

was, it seems, almost 20 years ago, and that was the book,

Science, Jews Jews and secular culture

studies in mid 20th century American intellectual history and since that time I have to tell you I've

been a bibliography voyeur of your. I have gone after just about everything you've written.

Good. Even tracked down some of your less known works and I just want to tell you I find your

approach to intellectual history just

absolutely fascinating and I've really been looking forward to this conversation.

Good. And it has to do with the fact that not only is your field of study of tremendous interest, but the particular topic of your

latest book.

The focus, again the title of Professor Hollinger's book is, after Clove in Tones of of fire the subtitle Protestant liberalism and modern

...