Nathan Long

“So now that the pretense of neutrality has been more or less abandoned, and is on its way to being forgotten, what is the substance of the perspective (or ideology or, perhaps, religion) that is now fully exposed to view—and not merely to the view of its critics? And what shall we call it? In the book you are now reading, Steven Smith sets for himself the task of describing and analyzing it, and he gives it a name: paganism.”
― Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion

“THE CHURCH AS TRUE ISRAEL The church falls in continuity with the people of God throughout the history of redemption. We are not an aberration or a parenthesis in God’s program. The story of the people of God in the Old Testament is our story. Abraham is our father. Indeed, he is a closer father than our biological father (see Mark 3:34)! When we read the Old Testament we should do so not as observers but as participants. One of the hallmarks of dispensationalism is to drive a wedge between Israel and the church. But such a move runs counter to so much of what we discover in the New Testament. There is one people of God spanning both Testaments. As we remind ourselves of who we are in Christ, we must do so in light of what the Bible says in the Old Testament as well as the New.”
― Benjamin L. Gladd, From Adam and Israel to the Church: A Biblical Theology of the People of God

“What he perceives (rightly in my view) is that contemporary social liberalism (“progressivism”) reflects certain core (and constitutive) ideas and beliefs—ideas and beliefs that partially defined the traditions of paganism that were dominant in the ancient Mediterranean world and in certain other places up until the point at which they were defeated, though never quite destroyed, by the Jewish sect that came to be known as Christianity.”
― Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion

“Today little effort is made by liberals (or what are these days more often called “progressives”) to maintain the pretense of neutrality. Having gained the advantage and in many cases having prevailed (at least for now) on battlefront after battlefront in the modern culture war, and having achieved hegemony in elite sectors of the culture (for example, in education at every level, in the news and entertainment media, in the professions and in corporate America, and even in much of religion), they no longer feel any need to pretend.”
― Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion