It might be helpful to consider how strikingly similar Hanson’s—and many conservatives’—attitude on race is to secular liberals’ response to religious faith. Secular liberals would love it if Christians viewed Christianity as incidental, as something to be trotted out briefly during the holidays. Secular liberals would prefer that religious faith, and especially Christian religious faith, not influence people’s worldviews, their actions, the communities they form, the movies they watch.

Confronted by people with a strong identity in Christ, secular liberals often simply pretend their faith doesn’t exist. Mollie Hemingway has documented how the mainstream media ignores the faith element, and particularly Christianity, in major stories. The secular Left’s neglect of faith is well-known.

Secular liberals also commit another, often underappreciated, mistake: they reduce Christians to nothing but their faith. Secular liberals can’t imagine that evangelical Protestants may be able to order South Indian food like a native, intelligently debate the relative greatness of Lebron James versus Michael Jordan, or reflect on the morality in “The Walking Dead” (these are people I actually know).

In short, many secular liberals can’t imagine that they might have much in common with evangelicals. So not only do secular liberals try to ignore Christians’ faith, once they learn about it they see nothing else.