{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Libertarian Christian Podcast","title":"Why Democracy Needs Christianity, with Jonathan Rauch","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3790,"description":"Does democracy need Christianity to survive? Jonathan Rauch — a gay, atheist, Jewish journalist at Brookings and The Atlantic — has concluded that it does. His 2025 book, Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, argues that Christianity is a load-bearing wall in the American experiment, and that two decades of de-churching have left the whole structure sagging.\nAs an outsider who once celebrated secularization as progress and watched what filled the vacuum, Rauch now claims that democracy needs Christianity. What he found is that when the church stopped carrying its load, toxic partisanship, tribal politics, and substitute religions rushed in to take its place.\nHost Doug Stuart talks with Rauch to work through why the founders counted on Christian virtue, which three teachings of Jesus underwrite liberal democracy, why compromise is a Christian act rather than a betrayal, and what the church has to recover to be worth listening to again.\n\nChapters:\n0:00 Intro\n0:22 Guest Intro and Book Origins\n4:03 Christianity’s Civic Role\n7:28 Churches, Decline, and Politics\n12:23 Liberalism and Democracy Defined\n13:56 Founders on Virtue\n18:52 Jesus and Liberal Democracy\n25:10 Compromise as a Creative Process\n29:53 Congress and Political Cynicism\n32:50 Reforming a Broken System\n33:45 Christians and Culture War\n35:38 Freedom, Fear, and Public Faith\n38:10 Pseudo-Religions Fill the Void\n41:25 Libertarianism and Christianity\n45:39 Altruism, Virtue, and Freedom\n51:15 Latter-Day Saints and Agency\n59:18 Make Christianity Peculiar Again\nAudio Production by Podsworth Media - https://podsworth.com","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/_xYS0SShA1KrKcrVFqXWyj90yhkxE6xSYO7xJUc6g9c/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzQ5Mjc2LzE3MDY3/MjA4ODgtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}