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Yes, great point. All generations have to deal with the issues we face today. But our generation has reached a tipping point in human development. That difference is hidden in the world "global." In the 20th century, we developed weapons that could destroy all human life on the planet. Weapons of that magnitude never existed before. In the late 20th century, probably in the 1970s, we reached a kind of environmental boundary, where the impact of human beings on the planet became unsustainable by the planet. We began producing so many wastes on a daily basis -- like carbon dioxide, for example -- that the environment could no longer absorb them, and we began taking so many resources -- oil and fresh water are two prime examples -- that the environment could no longer supply them for very long. On a more abstract level, through digital technology, we have created a global digital economy that transcends national boundaries, and so our economic problems are more interwoven than ever, as our recent market fluctuations have made clear. And on top of all this, we've learned that if people are desperate and poor in one part of the world, they can board a plane and do acts of terrorism in another part of the world. So these problems have long existed, but never have we been so interdependent and interconnected.

A rabbi recently told me a parable that describes our situation very clearly. Imagine two castaways floating on a life boat in the middle of the ocean. One of them takes out a drill and starts drilling a hole in the bottom of the boat. The other screams, "What are you doing?" And the first one answers, "Don't worry. I'm only drilling on my end of the boat." That's the difference in our generation today: We realize, as never before, that we're all in the same boat.

You write on your Web site that your book originally included an "imaginary transcript of a speech President Bush could have given after Sept. 11, 2001," but you dropped it for a "variety of reasons." What were some of those reasons?

There were practical reasons like the fact that the book was [more than] 300 pages long, and I'd rather have a shorter book that people actually read than a long one that intimidates people. And then I realized that by the time the book came out, there would only be a year left in the President's term. I expect the book to have a lot longer shelf-life than that, and I didn't want readers of the book in 2009 or 2019 feel that it was focused on past issues. So I decided to make the article available at my Web site, which is brianmclaren.net, and keep the book contemporary in a longer-term way.

You've been quoted as saying, "More and more Christian leaders are beginning to realize that for the millions of young adults who have recently dropped out of church, Christianity is a failed religion. Why? Because it has specialized in dealing with 'spiritual needs' to the exclusion of physical and social needs. It has focused on 'me' and 'my eternal destiny,' but it has failed to address the dominant societal and global realities of their lifetime: systemic injustice, poverty, and dysfunction." Do you expect this book will yield any common ground with your more conservative contemporaries?

I have some very loyal critics who are passionately and sincerely opposed to my work. We honestly and deeply disagree about some matters, and I certainly didn't expect this book to win them all over -- although some of them have said that this book is worth reading and makes some important points. Among conservative Christians in general, I think a real shift is beginning to take place. It's a move from the old "two-moral-issue" politics of the '80s and '90s as people realize that how we care for the planet is a moral issue, and how we treat poor people is a moral issue, and whether we rush into unjust wars is a moral issue. It's a shift in the direction of compassion and a more mature sense of morality and justice, and I think my book is contributing to that shift in some small way. Another important factor: The younger generation of conservative Christians is not interested in taking the baton they're being handed. They love God and they believe in Jesus just as much as their parents did, but they're not interested in the tone of culture wars and one-sided politics. They're realizing that their future is different in many ways from their parents' generation's past, and so they -- like every generation, really -- need to ask some tough questions in order to make the faith their own. Many parents of young adults are finding that my books help them and their kids understand each other and find some common ground, which is always very encouraging for me to hear as a parent myself. I think the old saying is true: parents raise their children for 16 years or so, and then children raise their parents for the next sixteen years -- by challenging the parents to rethink a lot of what they hadn't thought about much since they were in their 20s themselves.