And such people ought to be the first rather than the last to
understand the anxieties of the devout Christians — evangelicals, fundamentalists,
orthodox Catholics and Protestants —
about, precisely, the growing chaos in a country from whose public life religion has not so much disappeared but been banished.
I want to say something
about the way in which reflection upon Jesus» own faith in God led to the historic formulations of
orthodox Christianity, and why these doctrinal constructions are important, both because of what they positively affirm and because we can not revise or replace them unless we
understand what they were intended to do.