Proselytizing in the Forum

Via Andrew Sullivan again, a link to an interview at Killing the Buddha about Stephen Prothero's new book, God is Not One.  Pretty interesting take on things, and after having watched Bill Maher's Religulous for the first time last night it makes a pretty great point about the aggressive New Atheism and conservative radical Christians in our public forum (italics are mine):

The public role of the New Atheists is, in my view, important. Most obviously, they are raising questions about precisely the things many people value most, not least God, Jesus, and the Bible. More urgently, however, they are calling the Religious Right to task. There used to be a gentleman’s agreement that kept both our faith and our doubt out of the public square. After Christians raced into U.S. politics in the 1970s and 1980s, that agreement was breached. Many of the New Atheists are criticizing the God proposition not only because they don’t believe it but also because they object to the conservative political uses to which that proposition has been put. Here too they are advancing the conversation, by pointing out there is a price to pay for enlisting God in political projects.