The new conventional wisdom is that the greatest threat to American democracy is the person who believes that there are universal, transcendent truths, that these truths are embedded in human nature, and that they are meant to govern human life and human societies. The people who hold such views, people of faith, are now called extremists. The proper moral posture, we are told, is that of the moderate…

Moderates reject the concept of a moral God who governs the universe, because an attachment to ultimate beliefs about right and wrong breeds fanaticism. These “abstract ideas”—such as the ancient belief in a God who defends the widow and the orphan and the unborn—have no place in the mental outlook of the moderate.