Nobody in his or her right mind would want to be a member of a socially acceptable religion. It's very dangerous for the soul.

Read the interview with Phyllis Tickle in the Wittenburg Door.

Some excerpts:

"Christian nation" is such an offensive term that I can hardly speak it, even.

As Bishop Mark Dwyer has noted, about every 500 years, the Church feels compelled to have a giant rummage sale. During the last Reformation 500 years ago, Protestantism took over hegemony. But Roman Catholicism did not die. It just had to drop back and reconfigure. Each time a rummage sale has happened, whatever was in place simply gets cracked into smaller pieces, and then it picks itself up and reconfigures.

When I'm talking to Episcopal audiences, I like to say, "If we're in the business of trying to save the Episcopal Church in the United States, shame on us.

Hugh Hefner did a great deal for American culture when, in the mid-20th century, he opened up issues of sexuality and did all kinds of iconoclastic things.