* On Easter Sunday, the History Channel will question whether the Bible is God's genuine revelation to mankind.

* The current - Holy Week - issue of Newsweek teases readers with the headline "Is God Real?," and features a debate between a prominent evangelical pastor and an outspoken atheist. National Public Radio also carried an atheist/Christian debate.

* An April 3 New York Times article dismisses the story of Moses parting the Red Sea as a "myth."

On the other hand, as in Field of Dreams, "if you teach it, they will come." Evangelical churches have been growing while the liberal churches have been shrinking, across all demographics, precisely because of their fidelity to teaching the Bible. People don't really want a therapy session, they want the Spirit of God to speak into their lives. They're properly convicted, and they want help. That's the church.

Your publisher advertises God's Continent together with The Next Christendom and The New Faces of Christianity as part of the "Future of Christianity Trilogy." Did you mean to write a trilogy?

Philip Jenkins: When I originally wrote The Next Christendom, no. I thought I was writing a book. But by the time I was at one and a half books there were clearly going to be three.

Although most regard it as the word of God, few read it anymore. Even evangelicals from the Bible Belt seem more focused on loving Jesus than on learning what he had to say.