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Ingrid Bergman was invited by Ed Sullivan to appear on his program around 1958 when she was living with an Italian film producer. She had left her husband and had a child. Before she actually went on the show, there was such a public clamor that he couldn't have her on. Can you imagine? Today every time Elizabeth Taylor gets married, it's seen as sort of a national holiday. The difference in the public reaction toward Ingrid Bergman then and Elizabeth Taylor now is solid sociological data of enormous consequence.

YOU ARE CURRENTLY WRITING A BOOK ON CHRISTIANITY. TELL US ABOUT IT.

Yes. I started it two years ago. I decided that there was so much to be read in preparation that I would abandon it. But then I got tempted back. I have written about half of it. What I don't have is a story line. That will come, I hope and pray.

SO IS THERE NO GENERAL THESIS?

Well, yes, it's pro-God. I suppose if I apostatized halfway through the book, that would make it a bestseller.

IS THIS A PHILOSOPHICAL LOOK AT CHRISTIANITY?

The publisher wants—and quite correctly—an entirely personal book. They don't want another book on theology, and I'm not qualified to write it anyway. They want to know why I am a Christian, without reciting all of the Thomistic proofs for God's existence.

SO IT WILL BE A JOURNAL OF YOUR OWN SPIRITUAL JOURNEY?

That's what they want. I'm an ardent fan of Charles Colson's book "Kingdoms in Conflict," where he lapses into fiction every now and then. I thought it was a great book and skillfully done. I nominated it in one of my columns for book of the year. I just can't think of any fiction that I could stick into mine.

WHAT WILL YOU ATTEMPT TO ADDRESS IN THE BOOK?

One of our problems today is that many of us don't talk to each other.

I wrote a little piece in the American Heritage Dictionary's hundredth-anniversary edition a few months ago in which I said that the secularization of society is the biggest historical event in modern times. One of the reasons that we don't have these theological/cultural debates is because the other side feels they have won so triumphantly that they don't need to talk about religion any more.

YOU ONCE DESCRIBED YOURSELF AS A PHILOSOPHICAL PESSIMIST WHO REMAINED A TEMPERAMENTAL OPTIMIST. DO YOU STILL FEEL THAT WAY?

I remember that someone once said that the trouble with socialism is socialism, and the trouble with capitalism is capitalists. I've talked in general about the theme that there is every objective reason to think that things are going to go bad, like Whittaker Chambers thinking that he was joining the losing side. But temperamentally, I think the notion of disaster is very sinful.

IS YOUR TEMPERAMENTAL OPTIMISM ROOTED IN A CHRISTIAN THEOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT OF GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE WORLD?

God has a role which you can't predict, to begin with. Plus, one likes to think that the sheer enterprise of right-thinking people will at least cause things to survive. I was 18 years old when the atom bomb went off, and I was 65 years old when the Berlin Wall came down. My entire adult lifetime was during the Cold War. When you consider that this is what 250 million people in the Iron Curtain countries and Russia endured throughout their entire lifetime, it is very hard to say that God cleared his throat early on in this contest. On the other hand, we did finally win.

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By Michael Cromartie, senior fellow and director of the Evangelical Studies Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Copyright 1995 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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October 2 1995, Vol. 39, No. 11