[...] the attitude I associate most with evangelicals is a sneering contempt for moral striving. A stock phrase among evangelicals is that “there will be a lot of good people in hell,” which I heard continually in sermons, in radio broadcasts, and in casual conversations about those poor, naive liberals. This sentiment was presumably intended as a sobering reminder of the magnitude of human sin and the profundity of our need for Christ’s forgiveness, but some people treated this dark theological truth as a positive good. From the way they spat out the phrase good people, I imagined that these believers were looking forward to seeing the “good people” burn. While some secular liberals hope to find common ground with evangelicals of goodwill on certain issues, the ones who have descended to this point of malice and disdain are probably unreachable. After all, they reject in advance any standard of moral judgment other than a nihilistic scorn for “good people.” The end result of their Christian faith is the unshakable conviction that nothing could be stupider than expecting people to live by the teachings of Christ.