When I was a boy, the Episcopal Church was still using the elegant 1928 Book of Common Prayer. "We, thine unworthy servants,” we prayed, "do give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all men..." Hopeful words that soared above the evidence.

By the time a new prayer book spoke less poetically of "benefits," my wife and I were doing the grocery shopping Sunday mornings. In retirement, we've joined a church which asks only that the benefits be distributed more fairly and that we respect everyone's beliefs. To some anti-religious writers such generosity is dangerous.

Sam Harris, the author of “Letter to Christian Nation,” said in a recent interview, “The most controversial aspect of my book has been the criticism I make of religious moderates. Most people think that although religious extremism is problematic and polarizing, religious tolerance is entirely blameless and is the remedy for all that ails us on this front. But religious moderates are giving cover to fundamentalists because of the respect that moderates demand of faith-based talk.”

I've been reading Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. I share their scientific world view, but I don't think we need to dump religion, because: 1. Millions of intelligent, educated, and creative religious men and women aren't deluded, they've made a choice. 2. Religion isn't the chief source of the world's troubles. We are. 3. Religion need not be limited to the belief in a supernatural God. For many religious people, religion is completely natural. 4. Science doesn't hold the only key to reality. Believers and nonbelievers experience the world through the senses, form hypotheses in good faith, and state their conclusions in symbol and metaphor.

Wanting to do away with religion is as hopeless and destructive as any of history's grim attempts to rid the world of a rival faith. The only constructive goal in a world of personal Weapons of Mass Destruction is peaceful coexistence. Fortunately, the majority of religious people of all denominations are moderates and are willing to live and let live when not misled by extremists. Most would accept science and evolution provisionally and understand that sacred texts, however much inspired, are human documents as well and require constant re-interpretation. We moderates just need to speak up more forcefully for what we believe. Cape Codders often say that if we can't build a good and just society here where we have so much wealth, talent and good will, what hope is there for the world? If religious traditions, which are based on the Golden Rule, can't live together peacefully, what hope is there for a secular Shangri-La?

With a fraction of the effort expended in attacking one another, religious people should be able to practice mutual respect over even such divisive issues as abortion and gay marriage.

Most women agonize before deciding to have an abortion. They consult partners, doctors, and their own conscience. Many would support reasonable restrictions. For their part, few abortion opponents would outlaw them altogether. They live in the world too and would permit abortion in the case of rape, incest, or a serious threat to the mother's life. Abortion is a fact, in any case. Half of all fertilized embryos are aborted naturally, miscarriages that happen sometimes without the mother's knowing. Surely there's room for compromise. One woman might not have an abortion under any circumstances, but she would ask others only to try to avoid the need, to think long and hard before making a decision, and to consider giving up a child for adoption. She could also work to eliminate the ignorance, poverty and lack of social support that permits many unwanted pregnancies and to improve the lives of children in adoptive and single-parent families. This would be a far more effective way of reducing the number of abortions than inflicting harsh penalties.

Homosexuality is called an abomination in the Bible, but so are many other activities that we now think of as irrelevant, permitted, or even necessary in a civilized society. Since 1960 the psychiatric community has not considered homosexuality a mental illness but rather a normal variation of human sexuality. Biological research begins to reveal that our sexuality is largely genetic and not a matter of choice. So, it's hard for moderates to see how gay marriage harms anyone or does dishonor to the institution. Marriage through the ages has rarely conformed to today's ideal of a lifelong, consensual and democratic union of one man and one woman over the age of 16, with the support and blessing of society. There is no one tradition of marriage to preserve. Thousands of same-sex marriages have now taken place throughout the world without shaking civilization.

What makes a marriage? It's the pledge, in the presence of witnesses, of life-long mutual support. The Catholic Church considers marriage a sacrament in which the pledging couple are the officiants. A marriage is recorded by the state and may be blessed by a religious body, but neither the recording nor the blessing is needed to make it valid. Millions of long-term, loving, same-sex couples are as married as anyone could possibly be. Millions of heterosexual couples who have gone through the motions but not honored the pledge are married in name only. This being the case, same-sex marriage isn't such a threat, and civil union isn’t so inadequate. There's plenty of possibility here for generosity and compromise.

The challenge for religious moderates is not to win over the extremists. We greatly outnumber them already. What we must do now is demonstrate the strength of our conviction that each of us is valuable, each free to follow his own conscience, and that God, at the very least, is the love that can unite us.

Russ Chenoweth is president of Nauset Fellowship, Unitarian Universalist.