The Territory of Belief

By ALAN WOLFE

Americans are a religious people, and the great proportion of the faithful are Christian. Do those facts place a special burden on non-Christians — or, for that matter, nonbelievers — who seek to understand American religion? Richard John Neuhaus, a Roman Catholic priest and editor in chief of the influential First Things, argues in the journal's June/July issue that it does. "If you're not a Christian and not about to become a Christian, but you're a public intellectual