I spent most of my earlier life as an atheist, and thought nothing of churches. But I had been a churchgoer in my childhood, and I came to discover that my old former Norwegian Lutheran church had gone empty, and was being used as a trinket shop. That was greatly disturbing to me. Whatever a church was, it should never have been brought that low. And, that started my return to Christ.

I keep maintaining that we need to revive the concept of "Christendom": the history, culture, works, and people of Christianity. And to defend it. It is in danger from a remorseless secularism...and now from an even more vicious Islamism. So many congregations worship without any clear view of the world that surrounds them, thinking that their faith is just one more flavor in the great ice cream shoppe all around them, with nothing really to fear.