What has Jerusalem to do With Athens?

A few weeks ago, I concluded my “Bad Religion” book club with Slate’s Will Saletan by questioning the metaphysical underpinnings of contemporary secular liberalism, and I wanted to say something about the responses I provoked. Here’s a snippet from my original argument:

… the more purely secular liberalism has become, the more it has spent down its Christian inheritance—the more its ideals seem to hang from what Christopher Hitchens’ Calvinist sparring partner Douglas Wilson has called intellectual “skyhooks,” suspended halfway between our earth and the heaven on which many liberals have long since given up. Say what you will about the prosperity gospel and the cult of the God Within and the other theologies I criticize in Bad Religion, but at least they have a metaphysically coherent picture of the universe to justify their claims. Whereas much of today’s liberalism expects me to respect its moral fervor even as it denies the revelation that once justified that fervor in the first place.