Why Democracy Needs Christianity: A Conversation with Jonathan Rauch

In recent years, American Christianity has undergone a profound transformation—and it's reshaping the foundations of our democracy. In this episode, we talk with Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. A self-described atheist, Jew, and gay man, Rauch argues that liberal democracy has long depended on the moral framework Christianity provides—and that its collapse is fueling political dysfunction, extremism, and civic decay. Together with hosts Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram, Rauch explores the historical role of faith in sustaining democratic virtue, the dangers of Christian nationalism, and what it would take for the church to renew itself for the 21st century.

Guest Bio:
Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge and Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. Rauch specializes in civil discourse, political philosophy, and the health of liberal democracy.

Resources & Links:
📘 Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy by Jonathan Rauch: jonathanrauch.com
📰 Jonathan Rauch’s article in The Atlantic on “patrimonialism” and Trump (as referenced in the episode): https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/corruption-trump-administration/681794/
🌐 Braver Angels (bipartisan depolarization network): https://braverangels.org
📖 Losing Our Religion by Russell Moore: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711057/losing-our-religion-by-russell-moore

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, Fifth of Politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching on our YouTube channel, we are so glad to have you. Make sure you like and subscribe and do all those things that you're supposed to do to become rich and famous and my kids can love me again because I'll have lots of subscribers. I am your political host, Wright, and I'm joined once again by my faithful comrade, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? doing great, thanks, Phil. And with us today we have with us Jonathan Rausch. is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, renowned journalist and a leading thinker in democracy, civil discourse and political philosophy. His latest book, Purpose, Wait, Cross Purposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, which is out now, examines the fraught relationship between Christianity and democratic governance, exploring how faith communities and democratic institutions have historically coexisted. Why is that relationship now at risk? So we are just so glad to have you on our show. Jonathan Rausch, welcome. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So I, at the top, we're going to talk about your book primarily. 99 % of our talk is going be about your book. I do have to ask you about a recent Atlantic article that you wrote, if you would enlighten us. If you had one word to describe Trump, like what would that be? This is, could be a long conversation. So not sure if you want to go down that rabbit hole, but that word is a seven syllable monstrosity, maybe patrimonialism. Is ism one syllable or two? Anyway. I don't know. All right. So yeah, this is the concept of when the basic model for how the government is run is that the person in charge effectively owns the state as his or his family's personal property and family business. And it's the standard form of human state organization down through most of history, most monarchies operated that way. And it's also visible in cults and organized crime and street gangs. It's pretty much standard until the current form of modern government came along, which is bureaucratized and rule-based. And so it turns out that the way to think about President Trump is not a classic authoritarian or a fascist or a dictator or a plutocrat. He is a classic patrimonialist. He's running the government as if it all belongs to him. Yeah, you know, that's a new description of Trump. And I encourage everybody to read that article. And I'll make sure that I put the link to the article in the show notes. And we've had cult experts on the show. Stephen Hassan, nationwide cult expert, wrote a really great book called The Cult of Trump, had a very convincing argument on why we should view cult in sort of this movement or cult, Trump and his movement kind of through the lens of a cult. So Patrick, I'm not even going to try to say it because I will embarrass myself. So we're here to talk to you about your book, Cross Purposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. Like, why did you write this? Well, I sit here at pardon me, the Brookings Institution, we're a think tank in Washington. I'm in the part that's trying to figure out how to make government effective and keep it working. And electorates all around the world are trying to figure out, are down on government. They're voting against incumbents. That's very true in the United States. We're becoming ungovernable in some respects, the level of cynicism and anger toward government. And I looked around and realized that I'd been ignoring the collapse of Christianity, which has happened really in the last 20 years, but at exactly the same period when we hit this crisis of loss of confidence in government, as well as epidemics of loneliness and social isolation and anxiety and depression. And we were seeing more and more kind of apocalyptic rhetoric heaped into politics, you know, it's the flight 93 election, lose this one and it's all over. And we were seeing more and more politics seep into evangelical Christianity. So you have these two things, religion and politics exchanging DNA in a way that was harming both. And so I said, you know, to understand the crisis we're having in our democracy. You've just got to look at what's happening to Christianity and it turns out Christianity is a load-bearing wall in our democracy and when it buckles all kinds of things around it get weak or actually start to cave in. Man. is like such a profound insight you know and as a Christian I'm just wondering and thinking man what what happened since the time I was born to now that's creating this issue you know I grew up in born in the 80s grew up in the 90s went to high school in 2000s all that and I kind of watched this church it feels like go for really strong to really weak and to being challenged and then hearing things like we're in a post-Christian nation, hearing things like we're moving beyond, we're going the way of Europe. These are the kinds of things that would be said in my Bible education in college and seminary. And I would love, I know that you're talking about Christianity's load-bearing wall and how you noticed its collapse, but what kind of specific events or trends were you seeing that let you know that that was the case? In other words, why are people saying that Christianity is collapsing? Was there an event that crystallized this concern or several events? Or is it kind of just a growing awareness that finally came to a tipping point, so to speak? More the latter, there's a lot of sociologists and people with fancy degrees that I don't have trying to figure this out. But I'll tell you the story that's usually told and that is probably pretty close to a consensus story. And that's that you've had two waves of secularization. And the first was mainline churches. in the 50s and 60s, which were our social bulwark when I was growing up in Arizona in the 60s and 70s. The first thing that people would often ask, meeting someone new, is what church do you go to? At that point, right through the 20th century, 70 % of Americans were members of a church. But the ecumenical churches, the mainline churches, you know, the United Methodists and Lutherans and Episcopalians. increasingly started looking like the surrounding society. They moved away from preaching the gospel and scripture and toward social justice and causes like that. And as they lost that cultural distinctiveness and that scriptural rootedness, people drifted away because it became like a consumer choice to be a Christian, a lifestyle choice. Pretty optional. Excuse me. So by the end of the 20th century, the mainline churches are not even very relevant. So at that point, people were saying, well, look, the evangelical church, the white evangelical church, which is the main subject of my book, is growing. And that's because it is countercultural. It has firm edges. It's scripturally based. It's conservative, but it's different from this. It's got its own teachings on sexuality, for example, and an abortion. And that's what people want. And it's growing. The second big wave of secularization and the one that caught so many people by surprise is just within the last 20 years. And that's the flight from the white evangelical church. So I have a terrible head for numbers. But in In just the last 20 or so years, the percentage of Americans who identified as Christian dropped from about, I think it's 68 % to about 50 something. You know what? I should have looked these up before I got on line here. Anyway. It's a very substantial drop and it's like a percentage point a year. And a big source of that has been in the white evangelical church where you've seen such a rapid drop in the last 20 years that white evangelicals as a percentage of white Americans are now as small a group as the mainliners were. There's about 13 % of the public in each of those categories. And that's like a more than 10 point drop. for evangelicals. So both of these churches, the main line and then the evangelical, just saw a massive flight away from them. I think that the story, not just me, but it looks like the story of the white evangelical church is another form of secularization. And that's that starting in the 80s, and then into the nineties and then really accelerating in this century and especially with the rise of White evangelicals merged with the Republican Party. They developed a very strong partisan identity so that by 2012 or so they were voting 80 % plus for the Republican presidential candidate no matter who that was. And they were also bringing politics into the church. They were saying, know, Christianity is endangered, there's a war on Christmas, the country's values are declining, and so they became more radicalized and more politicized. This is primarily coming from the pews, not the pulpit. And as that church became more radical and politicized and more like basically a merger with the Republican Party, a lot of people who were there for spiritual growth and for the gospel left. And you got people who are interested in politics coming in. There was once a virtually negligible amount of non-church going evangelicals. That's now one in eight. These are people who identify as evangelicals, but don't go to church. Why? Because they are political conservatives and evangelicals now part of the package for them. So bottom line is the evangelical church gets rapidly smaller and as it gets smaller it gets more politicized and as it gets more politicized it gets smaller. So it's chasing itself in a downward spiral. And that brings us to 2025 when both of the main branches of white Christianity in America are in a state of crisis. Sorry, long answer. I can get figures for the show notes if you want them. I just couldn't remember them off the top of my head. Yeah, no, no, no problem at all. It's pretty phenomenal just to kind of think about, you know, a person's faith journey, the reason that they came to a faith, and then the thing that was, you know, the thing that shook their faith was like, I don't know, just, just... I'm not quite sure if I'm even making sense, but like when it comes to Trump, I know more people that have left the faith because of Trump than have joined the faith, which like, know, and Josh and I, we had a live recording recently where I asked him about if Christians are overwhelmingly going after folks like Trump. What does that tell the world about the values of Christians? Because I'm a Christian, but I don't support Trump. And Josh is a Christian, and he's been beat up a few times in the show for not supporting Trump. And he's supposed to be the conservative religious part of faith of politics. I'm the token progressive. So yeah, it's just really wild. But I'm really curious, though, about your faith. Jonathan, like when you came into this book, you're writing about a topic that is very, very hot right now, or at least in the circles that we roll in. Tell us a little bit about your faith journey, if you have one. I don't have one. This is an unexpected book for me to write because I am atheist and a Jew and a gay person. And yeah, you can be a Jewish atheist if you're quiet about it. Which I guess I'm not, that makes me a bad Jew. But I grew up completely outside of Christianity and I'm still an outsider. But I have been on a journey with Christian friends of trying to understand Christianity better and learning, starting with my freshman year college roommate who an amazing Christian became a professor, a professor and an Anglican priest, amazing guy. But like him and some people like Pete Wehner and the late Tim Keller, who drew me in and helped me to see, excuse me. what it is about Christianity that they're seeing and helping me to realize that I no longer see being atheist as making me smarter than anyone else. I think actually it's a reflection that I'm just built in a way that I don't receive frequencies that actually enrich the lives of people who do receive them. I don't perceive that spiritual dimension in the way maybe you guys do and that's my loss. So I'm not one of these people saying religions for stupid people and they should be religious so that I don't have to be. That is not where I'm coming from. I am coming from the position of an outsider who, so 22 years ago, I wrote the dumbest thing of my career. And that was an article in the Atlantic celebrating what I called apathyism, which was a joking term for apathy, not caring about religion, secularization. And I thought, gee, isn't it great? that people are just drifting away from religion. So we can all be like Scandinavia because religion is divisive and it's polarizing and dogmatic and can be cruel and bigoted. And I thought, this is great. And boy, was I wrong. Everything went downhill, as we discussed earlier. Excuse the burn in my throat. So my journey has been coming to understand that as a secular Liberal, liberal in the sense of classical liberal, what the founders were. I need Christianity to deliver what it is that the founders expected of it. The founders all said, we can give you processes, we can give you a structure, the constitution, but they all warned us it will fail if there's not virtue in the people. And so where did virtue come from? And they said, that's going to come from what today we call civil society, but that's your home. your school, your community groups, and especially it's the church. And they basically said, look, we seculars can't do this by ourselves. We need religion, specifically because it's a Christian country, Christianity to inculcate Republican virtues of values like being honest and civil and truthful and the other things you need to run a constitutional republic. So my journey has been understanding that if Christianity doesn't do that job effectively, all the substitutes are worse. Like you stuff like soul cycle and crystals, which might do a little bit for you, but they won't inculcate a thousand, a multi-millennial tradition of theology, sense of... big sense of what's right and wrong. They won't give you public worship together. They don't give you prayer. All the way from that stuff, which is ineffective at establishing, propagating civic virtue, all the way to stuff like QAnon and MAGA and wokeness, these substitute religions that idolize politics. in weird and divisive and sometimes conspiracy-addled ways. So here I am, you know, the atheist saying, look, I was wrong. If there's a substitute for Christian discipleship in our society right now, I don't see what it is. I'm just like entranced by your words to be honest with you. Like just listening. They're so convicting to me and it's like it's this weird feeling of not like a feeling like I told you so or you know, that's right. See look here's the atheist. I'm a pastor so here's the atheist saying everything I I would know not that like that at all but just this sense of like profound, I don't know, maybe just maybe disturbance and sadness that like it feels like we're groping in the dark trying to find something to hold on to some kind of purpose. We all want this purpose. We all want to be able to give a better world to our kids. And everyone's trying to find their way to do that. And it's like, we don't know how to do it. And the idea that we go back to some traditional way of living is just so difficult for so many people to even wrap their minds around. And it's like, we've gone so far. It's just like, it's a very strange. feeling as as as I'm hearing you talk and I've heard this before right that Christianity like that the founding fathers like hey I've given you a republic if you can keep it you need to have you need to have you know this this this virtue this character that's going to sustain something like democracy because once virtue and character is gone then the people aren't going to make good decisions they may make very bad decisions and you don't have that sense of stability that might be there. But I would love for you to go into more depth, like especially with the rise of Christian nationalism and situating this within our current moment. Like is this the rebirth of something like is it the rebirth of something old? Is this in your mind something new? Like essentially like How is this disintegration of Christianity? And you've, of course, alluding to this and this answer will overlap with some of what you've already said. But even more specifically, like, how have these changes, what are they doing to democracy? Like, why is it, what institutions in democracy are being affected and why, in your opinion and your research, is this affecting them so much? What's the connection? a couple of things to unpack there. One is about Christian nationalism. And the other is, what is it that's failing in Christianity that the founders counted on them to do? And those are different. Is there one or the other you want to go to, or do we want to go to both of them? You can go to the, maybe go to the second one, like you're saying about what is it that's failing, and then I'm sure we'll get into Christian nationalism as we move on to the conversation, so that's fine. So the core of the thinking in my book and the reason everyone should read it or at least buy it is this. It's that it turns out that the teachings of Jesus Christ are much, much closer to the teachings of James Madison, the father of our constitutional system than they are like MAGA. And so I walked through that. Here's how. Christians say, no one I've talked to in the pastorate disagrees with what I'm about to say, except they say they might add repentance, number four. But the Christianity stands on three fundamental pillars that define it and that are really different from other faith traditions in many respects. The first is don't be afraid. the most frequently repeated injunction in the Christian Bible. You know, this is Jesus famously on the boat with the disciples in a storm and they think the boat's going to founder and they're all going to drown. So they wake Jesus and he just says, be calm. There's something sacred and special about approaching the world with a sense of calm and focus on the next world rather than fear in this world. The second is imitate Jesus. I have yet to meet a Christian who doesn't accept that. Jesus's ministry is focused on the least of these, on the poor and the outcast and the marginal. And that's a radical break with any previous tradition. And Jesus's a fundamental egalitarian because he believes in the equal God-given dignity of every single human being, no matter how high or low. And that's a, again, that's a radical innovation in the world. So the third pillar of Christianity is forgive each other. You're going to bear slings and arrows. People will do bad things, but it's God's place to judge, not ours. Okay. So why do I care about these things? I'm not a Christian. It's your religion. It's not mine. The answer is that all three of those things map onto the core Republican virtues that the founders needed us to uphold. Don't be afraid. That translates into sometimes you lose an election. It's not an apocalypse. It's not the end of the world. You need to have some confidence in your country and your fellow citizens that you can be out of power for a while and you'll actually learn from that and come back better and stronger. Moreover, the thing that the founders most worried about killing our country was a demagogue. Demagogues overthrow democracies again and again throughout history and they do it by mobilizing fear. You know, for Hitler, it's the Jews. are destroying the country. But it could be almost anyone, outsiders, insiders. So fear, an attitude of fear is toxic to democracy. That second thing, be like Jesus. Both of those core principles we talked about, fundamental equality of human beings and judging a society by how well does it treat the weakest and most marginals. Those translate directly into the philosophy of of liberalism, small l, not progressive left wing, but I mean the philosophy of our founders, which is you always treat human beings as ends in themselves, never as means to an end. You don't manipulate them, you don't deceive them, you don't deprive them of their rights. And the second thing is you protect your minorities. That's why we have a Bill of Rights in the Constitution. You judge a secular democracy by it doesn't let the majority run rampant and trample the rights of minorities. It looks after the marginalized in the week. And this is no coincidence because, of course, the founders of our republic come out of a Christian tradition. The third thing, forgive each other. That doesn't translate quite as directly, but it maps on to the idea of forbearance, which is so important in a liberal republic. Sometimes you win an election. When you win an election, your goal is not to crush the other side, drive them out of the country politically, and salt the ground with the tears of their women and children. You're not trying to win forever and destroy the other side. You're supposed to treat the other side with the same kind of respect and civility as fellow citizens and members of this republic as you will want to be treated when they're in charge. And that's not just because what goes around comes around. It's because that's a core virtue in itself that's required if you're going to have exchanges of power. So I'm sorry to be long-winded, but this is really the heart, the heart of the book. So what you see there is the reason why Christianity is crumbling is so problematic for a liberal democracy is that we didn't realize it. But we were relying on some of the tenets that we have, we secular liberals have in common with Christian Christianity. And we didn't realize how much we were relying on Christianity to spread that message. Unfortunately, white evangelicals have gone a very different direction. They are the base of MAGA. They voted for Trump 80 plus percent. They've effectively unified with the Republican Party. Be not afraid has been replaced with to a large extent with what I call the Church of Fear. The country, there's a war on Christmas. Substantial majorities of white evangelicals say that their religion is under attack on a daily basis. And they're acting out of fear and almost panic. The second, be like Jesus. Well, Calling an entire sector of the population vermin, for example, that doesn't seem very Christ-like. Reveling in the pain that you can cause your political enemies doesn't seem very Christ-like. But above all, of course, Christians should engage in politics, as should people of all faiths. But if what happens is that they begin to sacrifice core religious principles in order to have power. That's going to corrupt them and it's going to corrupt their church. And that's what seems to have happened. That movement away from Jesus. You know, there's one of the best stories in the gospel. Jesus is baptized. He gets ready to start his ministry and preparation. He spends 40 days in the wilderness and Satan comes to him. takes him to the highest mountain top, shows him all the dominion and says, all of this will be yours if you bow down and worship me. And Jesus says, go away, Satan. Jesus is rejecting power as a betrayal of the Christian method. And that's what the whole church is built on. That's its whole appeal. Finally, I'm sorry, I'm long-winded again, but the third core Christian teaching. forgiveness. And that translates to forbearance, which is a rarely spoken of, but crucial civic virtue. And that means sometimes you're going to win. Did I already say this? And you're not supposed to crush the other side. I think I went there already, but you have forbearance. You accept and you embrace pluralism, that people will disagree. And you don't try to punish people for that. You don't try to marginalize them or drive them out. So there I am looking at all this and concluding the last thing I thought I would ever say, given my background, that a lot of what's going wrong in America right now can be healed or at least helped if Christians would be not more liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic or secular or anything else except more like Jesus. We need more Christianity not less Christianity. I think that that's really powerful. And I, I, to me personally, I think the. blown away honestly, know, yeah, go ahead, well, yeah, mean, just, yeah. think the fact that you're an atheist actually lends it more credence, to be honest. So I didn't grow up in the church. I came to the faith in 2008, but I was a hardcore atheist for more years in my life than I've been a believer. So, like, I totally get where you're coming from. And one of the things that I've said as a Christian is I'm like, Like why are Christians trying to reinforce all the negative stereotypes that these marginalized groups already have about Christians? Like you don't, you don't need to go on a terror against LGBTQ. Like they already know, you know, like, like you don't have to talk about, you know, how Democrats are, the devil because like we already know. so it seems like, you know, for, for generations that, whenever Christianity has become involved with politics, it's always been in the pursuit of power in one form or another and it seems like it's continuing to this day. So I'd love for you just to kind of do a little future casting, based on the trend, the dilution of Christianity. Like, where is all this headed? Well, I wish I knew the answer to that question. It's kind of funny, Christians all ask me, the pretty unqualified person, what's going to happen? Am I optimistic? Do I have hope? When I ask Christians that question, a room full of Christians, which I like to do, I say, raise your hand if you're a Christian. And most hands in the room go up. And then I say, keep your hand up if you're dissatisfied with the direction that the church has taken. and most hands stay up. And then I say, keep your hand up if you have hope that this could be turned around and most hands still stay up. You know, this fair number go down. So I can tell you Christians have hope. I can tell you that what white evangelicalism is doing now is not working. It is rapidly shrinking their church. So. Maybe they should try something else and maybe that something else should be more like the teachings of their Lord and Savior. Maybe that would work better after all. Christianity is the most counterintuitive religion of all time. It doesn't promise power. It does the opposite of that. And it asks you to make this transcendent commitment to salvation and another world. It's really hard what it asks you to do. And yet it's the world's biggest and most important religion. And it always seems to do best on the missionary field when it is preaching the gospel of Jesus and not the gospel of partisan politics. Russell Moore, who you've heard of, know, he's a president, I'm sorry, editor in chief of Christianity today. Yeah, wrote a wonderful book called Losing Our Religion, an altar call for Christian America. And he has this wonderful quote. He says, if we want to know why young people are leaving our church in droves, it might be because if all we offer them is a choice between paganization and secularization, they'll choose one or the other. And that seems to be the case. But so you tell me, what does the future hold? I don't see in the near term, maybe 50 or 100 years, but in the near term, in the intermediate term, I don't really see a replacement for Christianity, for the kind of teaching it develops, for its deep institutional roots, for the kind of community that it can provide, and above all, for the wisdom of its scriptures. And so, I think if Christianity doesn't rediscover those core truths that we're talking about and realign itself so that it's aligned with liberal democracy and with our constitution instead of pulling the other direction, if that doesn't happen, both Christianity and liberal democracy are in trouble. Yeah, you know, I want to, I want to try to take a stab at, at that question and maybe, maybe get your, get your thoughts. because, this is something I actually, I have really kind of thought a lot about cause I just, I do care about like the, the Christian faith. I care about its people. I care that it's given me tools to kind of navigate this crazy life. so, you know, I think that. that we are going to see a fracturing of the church probably in a much greater extent than we are already seeing it. Kind of like the fracturing of the Republican Party. They do seem to be sort of on parallel tracks of like you've got folks that were born and raised a Republican like Josh and now he's like, I have no idea. Like I haven't voted for a Republican in the past, you know. two or three elections or something like that. So like, is he even still a Republican? So I can foresee the church kind of fracturing, trying to find its own place, maybe another denomination become formed or developed. So yeah, that's what I think. What do you think about that? Well, Russell Moore, who I pay a lot of attention to, he's been a real guiding light for this work, says that if renewal comes, it won't be in the form of a big schism, you know, a big battle between the pro-maggot church and the anti-maggot church and one side will win. He says it'll come from the grassroots from the bottom up and it will come from a new generation of seekers, a new generation of pastors. new church plannings. It'll come from the small groups that take place in the evangelical world. And it won't look like your grandfather's or your father's, you know, big cathedral or mega church. It's going to be more customized and more personal to this generation. They want something more personal and customized. But he says again and again throughout history, when Christianity has gotten too too power hungry, when it's become corrupt, or when it's just started to fade, that this is how it renews itself. And I tend to think that's right. Will it happen? I don't know. But I just look at the odds that Christianity has faced over 2000 years, beginning with the fate of its savior. And I think, well, there must be something in here that's not going to die off. So that's my hope. That said, it'll sound a little cynical, but if white evangelicals wanted to kill the church, they could not do a better job than what they're doing right now. Attaching themselves to a political party and endorsing things like, so pollsters asked, do you agree or disagree that illegal immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country? This is a question they never even thought they would have to ask in America. But after Trump said it, they asked. And they broke it down by religious groups. In only one category of religious groups, did a majority agree to that proposition? 62%. And that's white evangelicals. Is this from the PRI survey? I think it is. Yeah, I could easily tell you and put it in the show notes. Yeah, that's I think that is PRRI, right? It's just so disturbing. you know, I guess like in this conversation, feel so, one, I feel a little bit of, I mean, a little bit of confirmation in what I feel like. You know, I'm a very spiritual person, so I feel like God has spoken to me. I also grew up Pentecostal, so that's kind of like what they said all the time. And that was my experience, and that's kind of like guided a lot of decisions of my life. And I came and I planted a church in Richmond, Virginia, and I didn't want it to be like a normal church that was just, come here, we're going to have to smoke the lights and everything. let's attract everyone who wants to be at a church. you know, I was very cynical of that. And then, you know, I tried to start a house church movement and house church network and several things happened and it just didn't work out. we're meeting in a meeting in a building now. And my heart, though, is still like I've said it before, like I'm not going to hang a MAGA flag and I'm not going to hang a rainbow flag outside of the church. Anyone is welcome here, but it's not that's not the gospel of Jesus. no, well, someone might have want me to hang a MAGA flag, but I don't know if anyone, they didn't get a lot of pressure, but I did. In my church experience, there was this sense where people from, I was at a church in Ohio and there are a lot of people that left because we weren't political enough. We weren't essentially, you know, Republican enough or speaking out against things. And so, yeah, I think there is that pressure there in the evangelical world to, you know, be pro-Trump or to be pro, you know, this kind of we call Christian nationalism now at that point. was just like, and I'm sure that wording was around, but we just didn't use that. I didn't talk that way. It was just like, hey, you need to be pro-military, pro-America, pro-everything. And I just saw it as patriotism, and never really thought about any of the issues until I started reflecting on it deeper. And it's been an enormous, enormous struggle. for me because I've been trying and will goes to the church and he knows and he's and he's liberal and we and we have some people from the LGBTQ community there and and I'm trying to wrestle with my convictions in my heart. My emotions about I just care about these people and I just love these people and then what is God think? What is my scripture say? How do I interpret that? How do I interpret it honestly and not try to change certain and? methods of interpretation to fit what I want in either side of that. I'm not just saying, I need to somehow a pro, a more liberal stance from some of the more liberal scholars, quote unquote, liberal scholars, that I'm pushed towards that. I'm saying on both sides, there are methodological considerations in this. All this to say like, I have been wrestling with this so much. How do we create a church for this new generation and for people that are going to want to come and be a part of it? And yet how do we maintain these convictions? And we have, mean, Will and I have talked about this ad nauseum. We've, we've tried to, you know, wrestle with this because he has very different views than I do, but he's able to be at the church. And I want to create that. it feels like creating that space definitely drives people away. And there are churches that are exploding in growth, and yet the entire Church of America, Christianity in America, is precipitously dropping. So something is wrong with the picture. As you're kind of pointing out, and I've been... spinning my wheels, feeling so discouraged at times, like that there isn't the growth that I want. And I'm like, what am I doing wrong? Maybe I should just and then wanting that mega church and all these things. It's been it's been a road, to say the least. And I guess the reason I'm getting into all that is because when you're saying this, man, I'm like, man, we're on the right track, but it's so hard to do it. It is so difficult right now to be a pastor that tries to stay in the middle, who's not... Go ahead. have an active pulpit at church? So you're ministering to a church right now. And do you feel like right now you're getting pressure from your congregants to be more political? No, not right now. No, I don't. It's a small church, but I don't. one of the most interesting and strange things that's happening in this second wave of secularization we're talking about is that back in the eighties and nineties, it was prominent church leaders like, know, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who were leading the church, white evangelical church toward politics. But this really big wave in which the church has really shrunk in this century. It's coming from the bottom up. It is not pastor led. And in fact, a consulting group called Barna a couple of years ago, polled pastors and asked them if they had seriously considered leaving the pastorate over the last year. And 42 % said yes. And the first two reasons they gave, know, stuff you expect, like I don't remember, but it was like stress and money. The third, Right up there was politics. And what the pastors are saying is that they want to preach the gospel. They want to bring people to Christ. But they say we get our congregants for two hours a week if we're lucky and Fox News gets them, cable news gets them for 12 hours a week. And people are bringing this fear, this very stirred up sense of being under attack and the need to fight back. what one pastor I talked to called the battlefield mindset. They're bringing that to church and often they're demanding it. It's not necessarily everyone in the church or even a majority, but even an outspoken minority can make the pastor's life very difficult. And so that's, that's a real challenge. How do you disciple people away from that? To use the phrase that I've come to learn. If you, if I could add a point to that, I'm sorry to filibuster, but so there's a, there's a core concept. that explains a lot. And it's the concept of a civic theology. So why has so much politics come into, and partisan politics come into the way evangelicals broadly defined are thinking about Christianity in their lives? And the answer is that there's a vacuum there. So. The idea of discipling or spiritual formation is for people to make themselves in the image of Jesus. churches are still pretty good at discipling people in personal character in many ways, you know, family and friends, church community. The churches are still going to step up in a wonderful way when the hurricane hits, like we saw that in Asheville. But there's another kind of disciple discipleship that's civic discipleship. And that's answering a different question, which is how does Jesus want Christians to comport themselves on social media and in politics? Not their immediate world, but as David French says, he's New York Times evangelical, maybe now ex evangelical. He says, it just won't do to say I may be an asshole on Twitter, but you should see me in the soup kitchen. that you can't have Christianity just in the personal side of your life and then behave the opposite way in the civic side, the political side, where you're calling people names, where you're actually engaging in hateful gestures toward, I don't know, could be immigrants, calling people vermin. And so the gap that needs to be filled there is a Christian civic theology that develops the ways that Christians should approach politics, social media, and places like that. That's the gap that's gotta be filled. And there are people working on that, actually. I think more and more Christians have realized, hey, wait a minute, we didn't pay attention to the civic and public aspects of Christianity. So like Michael Ware is looking at that, and Curtis Chang, and the aforementioned David French, Russell Moore have a program they're starting. the after party. Yeah, the after party. There's a small but growing contingent of Christians who are starting to think about that. The biggest example in my book of really advanced, impressive thinking on civic theology is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who are just way ahead of the curve on this and just doing some remarkable things, both in thinking about civic theology and actually practicing it. And I think they can be an inspiration for Christians. You know, whenever we think about the destruction of the American Christian Church, I don't think that think tanks and political organizations can wash their hands free of it because it seems like for decades they have found that You know, getting, you like you have voters all in a building that if you can just cleverly put your flyer, you know, on a table or something like that, that you're going to increase the likelihood that somebody will learn about your campaign. I know, like, you know, having talked to Catherine Stewart, who's written a bunch of really great books about the subject and. and Nelson who wrote a really great book called The Shadow Network. There is a real legitimate strategic move to infiltrate our churches and infiltrate our politics. I'd love to get your thoughts on what do we do about these influences out there, these sort of shadow networks, if you will. I'm pondering that. I'm not a good source of advice to Christians on how they should go about practicing and upholding their faith. I guess... I'm sorry. I was going to maybe I can sort of change the characteristics of the question a little bit, such as, you you've got Christians that want to be involved in politics, which they should. But you also have Christians that want to sort of speak out against the stuff that's making them look bad. But there's just all this pressure and even pastors have the same kind of pressure. if, you know, like the Bishop Mary Ann in DC that gave a message about loving her neighbor and grace and, you know, and it prompted a post by Trump about it. So, I mean, like how can any sort of believer, especially if you believe in a pluralistic society, kind of stand up for themselves and And I mean, that's what I tell people. is the world's religion that's based on people standing up and doing what's right, even if it cost them pretty dearly, and it did for your Savior. So I don't have the answer to that, and you guys need to find the answer to that, right? One of the pastors that I interviewed for my book had a phrase that stuck with me. This is someone who's thought about quitting, as I would ask them the same question. And like one pastor said, are you kidding? I've thought seriously about quitting four times in the past year. And this guy I'm referring to now said that he thought about quitting. But he said he stays for what he calls the church within the church. And those are the smaller group within his church that really are oriented toward Jesus and letting them inflect that in their lives. And I guess I would turn the question around and ask the two of you, maybe, you know, we've got to practicing pastor on the call right now. How do you guys who are leading and following in the church move back toward the message of Jesus? I can't really help you with that. I can hope that you succeed, but I don't have the answer to that. Well, I'll throw an answer out and see if you have any thoughts on it. One thing is that I really do try to preach Jesus. So like I go and we've gone through the Sorn of the Mount. We're going through it. It's taken a long time, but there's really deep stuff in there. We also try to talk about it and really talk about what's going on. I'm trying to encourage critical thinking within the church, really challenging the basically like the reigning mantra, which seems to be, feel therefore it's true. I feel like this, it must be true. I feel like this, it must be true. And say, okay, well, our feelings, they're real, but they're not necessarily true. So they are... really happening and we really feel that way. And they could be a marker of something that's true. But that's going to require us to slow down a little bit and think about this. like, I'll give you an example. We talked about divorce and I presented four options that people had interpreted for divorce. And those are just four of the main line, like just the main, not main line, but main evangelical scholarship on it. And I basically said, you know, some of you are going to want me to come down in one position here, but I would rather have a conversation about this. And even how do we even talk about something like this? Because this is part of what we've done to try to start this podcast is how do we create avenues and environments and atmospheres where people can actually talk and listen. And there's other organizations doing this and it has to be even. more popular. I think there's a lot of people that want a space to be able to say what they think without fear of being like just the hammer dropping on them, whether they're in a liberal system or whether they're in a conservative system. They they want to be able to question these reigning principles or these reigning ideas that are put out there and be able to question them. And I don't know how much freedom in any side there is right now to have really critical discussion. And so a big part of us in this podcast and even what we're trying to do at the church is to bring discussion into the center where someone like whose trans could say, this is how I am. This is how I feel. I don't understand why and really express themselves and express what they think. And then someone who's in a different generation can talk and they can both understand each other. don't know where that's happening. I mean, I know it's happening in some places, I'm sure, but in my mind, until we can get to a place where we can even understand what this other person is thinking or why they might come to that decision, it's like we're dealing with aliens, like someone from another planet. when we're talking about this stuff and it's like, no, no, guys, we're human here. Let's work through this. it's exceedingly difficult. But it has to be continued. And we've done this podcast. And I'll be honest, I've been afraid. I've been afraid at times, like, how is this going to come back and hurt me? Things I've said about Trump, things I've said about what I think about LGBTQ issues, things I've said about... Because I've had a lot of... shift and change in my life. I would say my core principles and beliefs about scripture have not significantly changed, although I would say I'm open to hearing arguments that I never would have been open to before. But if that hadn't been for my relationship with Will, to be able to talk to him, to be able to talk with someone, and John, the stuff you're saying, I'm like, you make so much sense to me. And yet, And yet I would have been encouraged younger. Well, he's Jewish and he's gay. You can't listen to him. I mean, maybe they wouldn't have said that out loud. Maybe they would have, but that would have been the idea. Now you can't that you can't even it's like the fallacy. well, look at the source. You can't you can't listen. And I'm like, we cannot keep doing this. So it's like this mixture of calling us back to the mission of Jesus and being willing to. make sacrifices for it and having integrity in that and calling us to critical thinking. I think we're terrible critical thinkers. We just take anything anyone says and we're just like, that must be when we like it. So I don't know if that makes sense. I kind of went off in a little bit of a tangent there. I'd love to get your response. all. So here's a hot tip for you guys. There's an organization called Braver Angels. Hmm. I was a founding board member back in the day. I'm not on the board anymore, but I'm still an evangelist for it. It's braverangels.org. It's a national grassroots depolarizing movement active in all 50 states, many college campuses. There's, I think, braver Christianity now, but the braver angels is equal numbers of reds and blues. who are committed to depolarizing among themselves and in their communities and have a lot of tools for doing that. One is a wonderful set of structured workshops. Actually, it's based on marriage counseling, family therapy, was the inspiration for this structure, which reteaches people how to talk with people who are on the other side. It's super interesting how it's structured. It's not about finding common ground or agreement. It's just about reopening those channels of communication. Something that's really going well is what we call braver debates, which is what Josh just described, which is a structured environment where people from both sides, without preparation, can come and speak their own honest truth on controversial issues in a way that will be structured and safe. Those are being rolled out in campuses and communities across the country. People love it because It's exactly what you say, Josh. There is such a hunger to be able to be true to your beliefs and discuss them with other people in a way that no one says, no, you can't say that. There's a lot more programs. The point is this is something that anyone in any state can organize in their community. You guys would be ideal because you've got one blue and one red. That's what you need. Everything is balanced between blue and reds. That's how they keep their credibility. That's the cost of admission. Yeah. And so check it out. There's probably one wherever you are right now. If not, there's a whole organization that would back you if you wanted to have a workshop or get something going. I was just out in Utah talking to the Braver Angels coordinators out there. And you know, it's a land office business. To me, this is a good sign. There is so much demand for this kind of project. The single most common thing that people say after they've left a Braver Angels workshop or event is we're not as divided as we've been led to believe. And that is empirically true. The surveys show that people have an exaggerated notion by two times, two X, how extreme the other side is compared to themselves and how different the other side's beliefs are compared to themselves. And just telling them that, just showing people that by getting them in the room together and starting those conversations, that's depolarizing in and of itself because people walk away saying we're not as divided as we've been led to believe. That's really, really good. John, I appreciate you coming on the program so much. It's been an absolute pleasure to have this conversation with you. How can people follow your work? there someone you would lead, somewhere you would lead them to to connect with you or follow your work? JonathanRoush.com, and I post a lot, though not all of my stuff up there when I think of it. I have a book out about all of these things. The book is better than the movie, and it's called Cross Purposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. For those who are wondering, there's a section of the book we didn't talk about where I talk about the mistakes and inadequacies of secular America, people like me, because we also have work to do. We have not appreciated the importance of Christianity. We have let secular culture become neglectful and even hostile to people of faith. There's a lot that we can do to understand and appreciate the importance of faith to our democracy. So it's a very short book. It's like an airplane read. It's short on purpose. So that's where people can go to learn more about what we're talking about today. That's great. Well, thank you so much, John, for being on the program. It's been a pleasure. Absolutely. And to our viewers and listeners, guys, thanks so much for joining. We'll put all the links to John's stuff and books and website in the show notes. And until next time, guys, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. God bless. Have a great day. Goodbye.