I travel a lot these days. When sitting on an airplane, a seatmate will inevitably ask me what I do. “I’m a writer,” I usually reply. “Oh, that’s interesting. What do you write about?”

I hesitate. Do I really want to answer? Finally, I blurt it out: “Religion. I write about religion.”

My seat companion looks askance—almost as if he is sitting next to some sort of fanatic. He obviously worries that I will spend our cross-country flight trying to convince him to accept Jesus in his heart, join an evangelical megachurch, vote for a local religious right candidate, or that the world was created in six 24-hour days. I quickly add, “Not that sort of religion. I don’t write about narrow, right-wing religion.” He looks relieved. “I write about mainstream and progressive Christianity—churches that base their message on God’s love for all people and God’s vision of peace and justice for the world.”

Now he appears genuinely interested. “There are churches like that?” “Yes,” I assure him, “there are lots of churches like that.”

Although many people have not yet noticed, there is a quiet revival going on in American religion in its least likely quarters—among moderate and liberal “brand name” Christian congregations, folks like the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Methodists, the American and Cooperative Baptists, in peace churches like the Quakers and Mennonites, and in independent and alternative Christian communities gathering around the “new monasticism ” or “emergent village .” These Christians practice their faith with renewed enthusiasm, are experimenting with new forms of worship and service, and are, by their insistence on friendship, justice, and diversity, reforming the structures and traditions in which they find themselves. They are NOT the religious right. And, frankly, they do not like the fact that the media depicts most—if not all—American Christians as card-carrying members of suburban megachurches and Focus on the Family.

But they are not exactly a religious left, either. There is a religious left, and a rather vigorous one at that. I’m talking about something slightly different—Christians and churches that are something else—a new, generous, practicing sort of postmodern Christianity, a kind of Christianity that is embracing and redefining tradition while enacting justice in the world—people and communities that escape easy characterization or precise definition.