Me in USA Today. An excerpt:
The West is surely indebted to Protestantism. But the idea that liberal secularism was born from it steals a few bases. Protestantism lent itself to being a state religion even more than Catholicism did. And while Christianity has long recognized the distinction between secular and religious authority, the reality is that secularism rests on a foundation of blood, not theology. The Reformation inaugurated an era of relentless religious wars. French Catholics slaughtered Protestant French Huguenots. Calvinists and Lutherans beat the stuffing out of each other. The bloodshed continued until, as British historian Herbert Butterfield put it, religious tolerance became “the last policy that remained when it had proved impossible to go on fighting any longer.” Secular tolerance, in other words, defined the terms of cease-fire.
Update: From a reader:
You have a lot of guts putting out that article in the USA Today. About 5% of Americans on a good day are even going to get what you are trying to say. Maybe half of those will agree. I think it’s a pretty good thesis, myself, but if I hadn’t been reading your stuff for years, I would have brushed you off as a weird crackpot.
Let me know how it works out for you.