New York City is, from many perspectives, an ideal haven for the newly godless. It is a stronghold of American secularism, its flagship store, if you will. Religion is mostly not discussed, at least not among the twenty- and thirty- somethings I've met over the last six years, except perhaps as a political force, a cause of explosions in distant marketplaces. I have never heard anyone at a gathering here casually reference his or her faith in any god -- not my Jewish friends when discussing their plans for the High Holy days, and especially not my friends raised Christian. Even the unlapsed, I suspect, fear seeming naive at best, at worst, evangelical.

So we do not talk about faith, even though New York is also a city teeming with believers -- Muslims and Sikhs, Jews...