At the end of this month, Crossway Books is set to release The End of Secularism. It is authored by Hunter Baker, who is presently Director of Strategic Planning and Associate Provost at Houston Baptist University (HBU), where he teaches in the Department of Government. Hunter was my graduate assistant for two years (2003-2005) while he was earning his Ph.D. (in religion, politics, and society) at Baylor University. He also worked for then-Baylor President Robert B. Sloan, Jr., who now serves as President of HBU.

This is a terrific book, and comes out of Hunter’s doctoral dissertation. (Full disclosure: I served on Hunter’s dissertation committee). Here’s my endorsement as it appears on the publisher’s website:

“Hunter Baker is a gifted writer who knows how to communicate the issue of secularism to an audience that desperately needs to hear a critical though winsome voice on this matter. In many ways, the book is a twenty-first-century sequel to the late Richard John Neuhaus’s classic, The Naked Public Square. Baker understands the issues that percolate beneath the culture wars. They are not merely political but theological and philosophical, and they are rarely unpacked in an articulate way so that the ordinary citizen can gain clarity. Baker offers his readers that clarity.”

Others endorsing the book include David S. Dockery (President, Union University), Robert A. Sirico  (President, Acton Institute), Russell D. Moore (Dean, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), and Jennifer Roback Morse (Founder and President, The Ruth Institute).

I am so proud of Hunter and what he has accomplished. His years at Baylor were some of the most tumultuous in the school’s history. And because he was my grad assistant and worked closely with President Sloan, and had the temerity to come to our defense in several online publications, he was at the receiving end of several incredibly unfair, uncharitable, and unChristian attacks. Happily, those days seem like a distant memory. And Hunter has more than survived. He is now thriving at Houston Baptist University, under the leadership of one of the great visionaries in Christian higher education, Robert Sloan.