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Join the Libertarian Christian Institute as each week they explore, debate, and analyze the issues that are directly relevant to the intersection of Christianity and liberty. Always thoughtful, frequently controversial, and never boring (trust us), it is our hope and prayer that The Libertarian Christian Podcast serve as a valuable resource to the Church for years to come.
If you'd like to reach out to us and ask a question or submit some feedback, you can reach us at podcast@libertarianchristians.com, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, our website, libertarianchristians.com.
Matt Bellis:
[0:03] Welcome to the show that gets Christians thinking about faith and politics. Get ready to challenge the statist quo, expand your imagination, and tackle controversy head on. Let's stand together at the intersection of faith and freedom. It's time for the Libertarian Christian Podcast.
Doug:
[0:22] Welcome to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. I'm your host, Doug Stewart, and I have an honored guest with us today. His name is Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow in the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and contributing writer for The Atlantic. He's author of the books, Kindly Inquisitors, The Constitution of Knowledge and Cross-Purposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy, which is the topic of our conversation today. I'm holding this up here, Jonathan. This is like the perfect length book. I'm realizing that whenever I need to actually like read a book that's not daunting to read, this is perfect. It's a little under 150 pages. It's three chapters, perfect number of chapters for what you had to say. Thank you for writing this book. And again, thank you for being on the show with us today.
Jonathan:
[1:09] Well, thank you for having me. I'm intrigued by libertarian Christian, or is it Christian libertarian? This is not a heavily populated market niche.
Doug:
[1:19] You're probably right. Much to my dismay, it's not as heavily populated, although I think we have a lot of overlap in our views. There's probably a lot of people in my audience that are not familiar with you. Would you give us a little bit of your background and the work that you do?
Jonathan:
[1:34] I'm a journalist by profession. I've written, depending how you count, approximately nine books. One of my preoccupations over many years now has been sustaining our liberal democracy, trying to understand how to make it work better, how to understand our institutions. The two I've specialized in are the political institutions and science, what I call liberal science, which is how free, knowledgeable, peaceful, and prosperous societies decide what's true and what's not true. And those have been the subject of several of my books. And the most recent is Cross Purposes, which you kindly held up and, by the way, is available at fine bookstores everywhere.
Doug:
[2:17] Nice. Yeah. I actually ended up accidentally with two copies for this quirk of Amazon. I have a hardcover now and a softcover. So I got one I marked up for. I know, right? I got one I got to mark up for this conversation and one that'll just be sitting on my bookshelf there and I'll admire it.
Jonathan:
[2:35] Buy 10 more. Buy 20 more. Buy one for all your family. Christmas stocking stuffer.
Doug:
[2:41] Yeah, they really do. They would fit in a stocking. That's actually really good. So, yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about the origins of this book in particular. You actually did have a partial, part of your dedication at the front is for, the late Reformed pastor Tim Keller from New York City. And that would be a surprising thing for many Christians to open up your book, given your history and what you talk about and where you are and your beliefs. Tell us a little bit about the origin of the book and maybe connect to us, you know, the connection with Tim Keller a little bit.
Jonathan:
[3:11] So I'm Jewish by identity, but I never believed in God. So I'm atheist and I'm gay. I'm someone who from early in life was very much an outsider to Christianity and perceived Christianity as hostile to me, as bigoted and hypocritical. If you grew up in the 60s and 70s and were any of the three minorities I was, but especially gay, you understood Christianity to be anything but Christ-like. So I arrived at college with a very negative attitude toward Christianity, and there I encountered my first Christian, Mark McIntosh, a roommate who went on to become a prominent Episcopal priest and, theologian and writer. And that set me on a journey to understand religion in a somewhat more generous way.
Jonathan:
[4:03] By 2003, I still wasn't there. I wrote an article for The Atlantic in 2003, which I call the dumbest thing I ever wrote. And that takes some doing. You know, in 2016, I confidently predicted that Donald Trump would never be president.
Jonathan:
[4:21] But 2003 was worse because I wrote an article celebrating what I called apotheism, which is basically secularization, that people were leaving churches and other forms of organized religion. And I thought, well, that's great. It will be like Scandinavia. Religion is divisive and dogmatic. The less of it, the better.
Jonathan:
[4:42] And boy, was I wrong. It turned out what I and a lot of other secular people didn't know back then, this was at the moment of the so-called the new atheists. There was a lot of talk about the badness of religion. What we didn't realize was that religion generally, but specifically Christianity, which is what I'm here to talk about, is a load-bearing wall in our democracy. It does a lot of the work that has to be done to create the substrate of values, that our constitution and our liberal democracy depend on. And in the last 20 years, we've conducted an unprecedented national experiment in de-churching. We can get into the numbers if you want. They're pretty startling. And at the same time as Christianity has failed, we've seen toxic partisanship increase. We've seen the rise of substitute ideologies like woke and MAGA. We've seen society become more divided, not less so, more fixated on the present, less on the future, more fixated on the grubby. Seen a lot of bad behavior. And so I came around to thinking that part of what went wrong was that when the church started to fall, a lot of other things started falling with it.
Doug:
[6:06] You write early on in the book that we live in a society that both left and right has imported religious zeal into secular politics and then expanded, exported politics into religion. And I think that's a really helpful way to sort of, you know, start this conversation because I think a lot of us realize how tribal we are. Right. And we all lament that. And many people lament. I didn't say we all, but we many people lament that in that there's this religious fervor in politics. Like you just can't, you can't reason with people on reason alone because, they're just, you know, I would call the woke mindset that they want to just cancel you or they just want to not hear you because you're white or some other reason or you're rich or whatever, Christian, you know, any of those kinds of things. So you're saying, though, that there's a fault that the church has in some of this, right? I mean, that's in some ways the whole point of your book is that there is something going wrong in the church that is contributing to this load-bearing wall not bearing much of a load anymore.
Jonathan:
[7:15] Yeah. So there's a very big story to tell about the evolution and devolution of Christianity since the middle of the 20th century. And it would take a long time, so we won't.
Doug:
[7:28] Yeah.
Jonathan:
[7:29] But the story kind of has two big parts. The first is in the latter half of the 20th century. The mainline churches begin to cave in. That's the United Methodists, Presbyterian Church, church, the Episcopalian church and so forth, their numbers begin to collapse. And that seems to happen because those churches begin to blend more and more into the surrounding society. They become more interested in a social mission than in God in the Bible. Got to the point where one retired Presbyterian minister told me that at his church, they would have entire church meetings in which the word God was never used. And people left the church when it lost that cultural distinctiveness.
Doug:
[8:22] Can I ask you a question about that? As somebody from the outside, when you hear someone say, we didn't even mention God in a church service, how does that strike you?
Jonathan:
[8:29] It strikes me as weird because what else are churches for?
Doug:
[8:33] I would think so. Okay, I would think so too. But you know, I don't have a lot of conversations with with someone like you who is outside this space and is thought is very thoughtful about it. So I just wanted to know.
Jonathan:
[8:47] Um, so what then happens is we see the rise of the evangelical church, white evangelical church, and they seem to be absorbing a lot of Christian capacity. But then in this century, we see those churches go into decline in pretty much the same way. And it looks like for pretty much the same reason, which is secularization, except instead of blending into kind of left-leaning culture around them, they blend into the Republican Party. So the white evangelical church becomes, in the words of Ryan Burge, who's probably our leading demographer of religion, the white evangelical church, becomes almost an arm of the Republican Party. You get 83% of white evangelicals voting Republican in elections, including if the candidate is the most unchristlike figure you can possibly imagine. You see things happening like in In 2011, a poll finds that white evangelical Protestants by more than two to one say that character is important in the holder of political office. They're the most likely people in the country to say character counts. It's what they said again and again when Bill Clinton was being impeached. In 2016, they flip. They become the people in America who are least likely to say that character matters in an elected official.
Jonathan:
[10:16] And of course, they're supporting Donald Trump. And so you see this merger of the Republican Party and white evangelicals who then become the backbone of the Trump and MAGA movement. You see what pastors that I and others have interviewed describe as political idolatry.
Jonathan:
[10:34] And that drives away a lot of people who don't come to church to do politics and don't want to be Republican or conservative branded. So between these two things, we see right through the 20th century, according to Gallup, since it started polling, about 70% of Americans, 7-0, affiliated with a church. I mean, a few mosques and synagogues, but really churches. And in just this century, that number's dropped to below half. And it looks like secularization has a lot to do with that.
Doug:
[11:13] How does that survey or demographic take into account the nuns? And I may not use this word, but I know some people use the word nuns and duns, meaning people who are kind of like done with official religion. And so they would check none of the above, but they would still see themselves as spiritual, connected with God. They might even call themselves Christians. Does that fit into the data, to your knowledge?
Jonathan:
[11:34] Yeah, of course. That's where these people are going, who are abandoning Christianity in droves. They're becoming unaffiliated, nones, N-O-N-E-S, none of the above. Some of them will say that they're spiritual. But among those people, organized religion has kind of picked up a bad reputation.
Doug:
[11:55] So before we continue on some of the conversation, because we're going to talk about liberalism and the word democracy is is also part of your book, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. Those are going to be two words that probably need to be defined when you're using the word liberalism. My guess is you're not using the word as like a progressive or something, something in the like left woke kind of liberal, the way that like a conservative
Doug:
[12:21] would just call someone a liberal as an epithet. You're probably talking something more like in the way that you and Jonah Goldberg are both liberals in a very broader sense. Is that more accurate?
Jonathan:
[12:32] Yes, that's correct. I'm using it in the classical sense of the term, which is that liberals are people who believe that all humans are born free and equal. And we believe in institutions like rule of law and the defense of minority rights and government that's democratic and free speech, open inquiry. So I think of liberalism as the philosophy of James Madison and the founders.
Doug:
[13:00] Okay. And then democracy fits in how? Because I know that's a particular form of government, but maybe you're using it differently.
Jonathan:
[13:07] Well, democracy is ruled by a people, but it can mean just ruled by the majority, which can lead to authoritarianism because the majority of 50 plus one can then oppress the minority. And we've seen that time and again. Our founders bequeathed us a liberal democracy, or as they called it, a republic. And that's a constitutional democracy that limits what the people can decide. And it says the real sovereign in our country is not the people, it's the constitution. And the constitution protects the rights of minority. It protects core rights like free speech. It says there's some things a majority can't do by majority vote. And that's what makes America a liberal democracy.
Doug:
[13:52] Okay. How did the founders see the role of religion in society?
Jonathan:
[13:57] They were sophisticated people, the founders, and they told us, be specific, George Washington in the farewell address, James Madison in the ratification debate in Virginia, John Adams in one of his most famous letters, Benjamin Franklin famously told the woman of Philadelphia, a republic if you can keep it, and so forth. they all told us.
Jonathan:
[14:26] As loudly and as emphatically as they could, that they could give us a set of rules, a set of laws, a constitution to follow. And they could give us the ideals in the Declaration of Independence, but that none of those would hold up without virtue in the people, what they all call republican virtue. And that means characteristics like truthfulness, lawfulness, forbearance, tolerance, toleration, all the civic virtues that are needed for people who are very different and disagree on a lot, have very different interests and different factions and different regions to live together. And they told us, we can't give you that with the constitution. Those virtues need to come from somewhere else. And where's that? Well, that meant family, community, civil society organizations, like the local clubs, the fraternal societies. But the main place they thought it would come from, or at least one of the main places, an indispensable place, was Christianity, which to them meant white Protestant Christianity. So they deliberately did not include the name of Jesus in the founding documents. And that's not coincidental. There was a lot of pressure on them by people who today we call Christian nationalists to found this as a Christian country. They specifically did not want to do that.
Jonathan:
[15:52] What they did do is tell us that they were depending on outside institutions, pre-political institutions like the church, to do their job in upholding the values of democracy. And they, and then Alexis de Tocqueville, who came a generation or two later, and others, all said the same thing, which is, if you guys lose your Republican virtue, nothing will save the country.
Doug:
[16:20] Huh. I have two questions I want to ask as a follow-up to that. First would be, there are a lot of Christian nationalists today, some leaders or people who see that as like a goal to be reached, who will say that they would correct you and say, well, yes, the federal government didn't have an institution of religion, but there were so many states that it's written in their constitution that, they were a Christian or Presbyterian or I guess maybe Quaker. What would be a response to that? Because they seem to think that, and in a way, they would kind of overlap in agreement with you in the sense that there was religion just through and through, especially the Christian religion through and through the founding era. And when those states and even beyond were founded, but they kind of push back at the idea that we can't have a quote unquote state religion, just not a federal state religion.
Jonathan:
[17:13] Well, if they mean that states can have a state religion, some of them did, but they got rid of them pretty quickly. Those didn't last very long in the 19th century. And of course, the federal constitution overrides the state establishment of religion. That's been... The federal supremacy has been the loss since the 14th Amendment. So the country they want to make is not the country we live in. And by the way, the Christian nationalists, I know, would not be satisfied for individual states to have to be Christian. They want the country to be Christian.
Doug:
[17:47] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the second one is like, in some sense, there is a way in which you could say that the constitution or the creation of the constitution was as Christian as they could make it. Like they couldn't go so far as to say, you know, everybody needs to be a Christian or sort of, you know, be religious in some way or believe in God or whatever. But they it was assumed that if if you have these values, then you will treat other people as equal. You will have we will have rule of law. The people will be, you know, who rule and not the king. People are born free, created equal, all of those things. What would you make of that assessment that there is, in a sense, the Constitution came and was birthed out of a Christian ethic, but because it didn't go as far as imposing the Christian religion, that that was actually more Christian than imposing the Christian religion. Does that make sense?
Jonathan:
[18:41] Kind of. Can I put my own spin on that?
Doug:
[18:44] Yeah, sure.
Jonathan:
[18:45] And give what may be a longish answer, but one that gets to the heart of the case in my book.
Doug:
[18:51] No, that'd be good.
Jonathan:
[18:53] So if someone says that America was founded as a Christian nation in name, or it was intended to have a permanent Christian majority, or it had to have a government that identified as Christian, or it had to have Christian supremacy, all of those things are wrong. But here's the important sense in which there's truth in what you just said. Christianity has, this is not according to me, this is according to actual Christians, but none I've talked to has disputed this. There are three core traits of Christianity that distinguish it as a creed. The first is the injunction not to be afraid. This is, I'm told by Bible scholars, the most frequently repeated injunction in the Bible. And this is important.
Doug:
[19:37] It's also the first thing Jesus said. Sorry, sorry to interrupt. I think our audio is delayed a little bit. It's also one of the first things or the first thing that Jesus says when people encountered him after the resurrection because they were freaked out.
Jonathan:
[19:49] Right. Or the famous episode when he and the disciples are on a boat in the Sea of Galilee and a storm comes up and the disciples are all afraid for their lives because they think the boat is going to sink. And Jesus wakes up from asleep. He's quite untroubled by this and he calms the waters. That's a metaphor for everybody calm down. And the reason for that is that Christians should believe that God has a plan for you, and you should not go through your life hunkered down in the state of existential terror. You should be afraid of God. But people make bad decisions, unwise, cruel decisions when they're afraid. And Christianity is very reassuring and very insistent on that front. Second core value Christianity, imitate Jesus. Now, Jesus was a radical egalitarian who believed in the fundamental equal and inestimable worth of every human individual. This was a radical concept when Jesus first preached it. It's still a radical concept today. It's the foundation of liberalism. But Jesus says the beggar, the prostitute, the cripple, all of these have just as much value He was the rich man.
Jonathan:
[21:03] So equality is at the core of Jesus's message. The third of these things, maybe the hardest of all these injunctions is forgive each other. It's God's place to judge, not man's place to judge. Judge not that you be not judged. Very hard to do. Okay. So in what sense does our democracy rest on those Christian pillars. Each one of those translates pretty directly into a core Republican virtue, the things our founders counted on the people to have. The first, be not afraid, translates into, you know what? You might lose some elections. It's not the end of the world. You need to have some confidence in our country and our constitution and our fellow citizens so that people move in and out of power. Maybe when they're out of power, they learn something new and important and come back to power better equipped. But if you live in a state of existential fear that the next election will end your country as you know it, you will not participate in our democracy in the spirit in which you're required to. Instead, you might try to overturn an election and have a riot to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
Jonathan:
[22:20] Second, imitate Jesus. Fundamental human dignity and equality. That comes directly over into the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. That's right out of the teachings of Jesus. And that's the core idea of liberal democracy. You don't have to like the other people in our democracy, that you have to respect their dignity and their basic rights. Still a radical proposition, but you can't run a democratic republic without it.
Doug:
[22:57] And the third- Where does the, yeah, I was going to say, where does the forgive each other come into? Yeah.
Jonathan:
[23:02] So this one's a little bit harder to see, but not that much harder. Forgive each other translates into forbearance, one of the great political virtues. Sometimes you win an election. The goal of politics of winning is not to destroy the other side once and for all so that you can dominate the country forever. You know, it's not to drive the other side out of the country and salt the soil with the bitter tears of their women and children.
Jonathan:
[23:29] The goal when you win an election is to share the country, to treat the other side the way you will want to be treated one day when they're in charge. And the deeper realization that if you approach democratic politics in a spirit of domination, of conquest, of bullying, of do it my way, never compromising, you'll lose your soul. You can't be a small D Democrat if that's the way you approach it. So forbearance and forgiveness, they're a little different, but they're very similar. They both say, our job is not the final judgment. The constitution in a liberal democracy gets the final word, not me and not you. So the founders, what the country is basically saying, what I'm saying, at least in my book, is, It's a whole lot harder to have a liberal democracy without those three principles of Jesus. And that the principles of Jesus are a whole lot more like James Madison than they are like MAGA. And when Christianity takes a different path, when it takes the path of fear, of dominion, of inequality, everything else in our country gets harder.
Doug:
[24:41] You used the word compromise a few minutes ago, and I can I can imagine people who might be leaning more right or if there are left listeners on this show to the show, they may not like the idea of compromise. But there's something important about how you describe compromise is not just a sort of, you know, surrender to a middle ground or something like that. But there was there was a process oriented approach to it. Could you describe that? Because honestly, it's probably the best understanding of compromise that I've read in maybe a long time, if ever.
Jonathan:
[25:11] Yeah, thanks, Doug. This is so important because compromise has a bad reputation these days. People think compromise means, you know, in the famous Bible episode, cutting the baby in half, they think it means compromising on your principles, doing something you think is wrong, or they think it means a kind of mechanical split the difference process where everyone walks away unhappy. So the founder of our constitutional order, the great genius who really more than anyone else designed it is James Madison. And he's a working politician his whole life. Very sophisticated guy. So he says, you have to do two things at once in a republic, a democracy like ours. You need to have constant change, constant adaptation to a changing world. And yet you also need to have stability because you can't overthrow the government and refound it every 19 or 20 years, which, by the way, Thomas Jefferson kind of wanted to do. So how do you achieve those two goals? Madison says you do it through compromise. You set up an intricate system of checks and balances, which may look cumbersome.
Jonathan:
[26:25] But what you do is you have three branches of government, and they have to deal with each other. Within one of those branches, Congress, you have two chambers. They have to deal with each other. You have several levels of government. So you have the federal government, and you have the state government, and they have to deal with each other. What's all that about? The process of constant compromise and negotiation brings in all the diverse factions of the country, all the different ideologies and interests of the country and says to get stuff done, we need you guys to figure out a way forward that enough of you can agree to so that we can act together as a country. And why is that revolutionary? Well, it says compromise is not just splitting babies or splitting the difference. It's a dynamic creative process. So think of a couple little kids. They can't decide whether to play chess or checkers. What do they do? Well, maybe they invent a whole new game. Maybe they go get a third or fourth kid and say, what do you want to do? Bring in new ideas. That's exactly how compromise works. I've watched it happen in Congress. It's a dynamic, creative process in which people say, let's look for new solutions together. Very often, not always, but very often in a legislative compromise, you'll come out with a better bill than anyone started with, because it includes more different perspectives and interests, weaves them together.
Jonathan:
[27:51] So compromise, we shouldn't see it as a necessary evil. We should see it as the engine of stability and dynamism. It's like the momentum that keeps a bicycle from falling over.
Doug:
[28:08] I think the word negotiation is a close approximation of that, like the experience of negotiation. I found, I wrote down the phrasing you used for compromise, a creative, generative, pro-social endeavor. And that experience, okay, that all sounds really good. And I like it. I love the definition. I like the idea that there are people negotiating rather than just giving up and surrendering. I also know that there are a lot of people who are very skeptical that people in Congress in particular, and even their own state legislatures, are doing anything other than what's in their own interest as opposed to being surrendered to the Constitution. We, you and I both know that Donald Trump doesn't give a wit about the Constitution or any sort of order. That's also true in varying respects to a lot of politicians, and I think there is a lot of discontented frustration and cynicism.
Doug:
[29:06] By some Christians, by libertarians, by Republican, everybody. I think from across all of the different factions and parties, that there are people in power that they're there for themselves. And I don't mean to project Trump's own ego onto every politician. I can't imagine that that's entirely true, but also can't imagine that these people aren't in it for themselves to some extent. So how do you how do you respond to that level of cynicism? I mean, I share a lot of that. I'm also representing and doing, you know, kind of a due diligence pushback on your idea here. But I do that. That is something that's coming for me as well. It's like, I don't I don't really trust that some of these people have have my best interest in mind. And I don't know how to tell if they do. I realize we're getting into constitution of knowledge territory here.
Jonathan:
[29:53] Well, that frustration, alas, is not unfounded. I've been in and around Washington covering Capitol Hill much of that time for 45 years, and I have watched as Congress, specifically Congress, especially Congress, has decayed. From a place where a lot of legislation moved on a daily basis through committees where Republicans and Democrats typically normally worked across the aisle, where you saw hearings and markups that brought together different interests, passing things like, you know, farm bills and appropriations bills. This was the work of government. Looks quite different now. Some of that still goes on, but much less. What's happening now is that increasingly candidates are being chosen in primary elections by voters who don't like compromise. Most people don't vote in primary elections. Those who do vote tend to be the most angry partisans, and they like to vote in many cases for the candidate who is going to be the most stubborn and uncompromising. The attitude is go up there and fight, fight, fight. So right now there's a Democratic primary. This is Tuesday. Okay.
Doug:
[31:03] We're recording this in early August.
Jonathan:
[31:05] 2026, just for the future. This is a Monday, and tomorrow there's going to be a primary in Michigan. And you guys listening to this will know the results. But that's a Democratic primary in which you've got one candidate, this is the Senate race, who says, don't compromise ever. I am there to disrupt the system. And you've got another candidate who has served in Congress, and is not an outsider, and says, I can be effective and get things done. And I really care about the state, and moving legislation. These are two very different models of what it means to be in the Senate. And right now, the day before the primary, the radical is favored because the primary voters want the red meat. Well, here's the problem. When the voters are sending to Washington people on a promise that they'll never compromise, legislation doesn't happen.
Jonathan:
[31:54] And when legislation doesn't happen, not only does the government grind to a halt. So we keep having government shutdowns. We keep even risking a default on the national debt. But more important, Congress is the only institution in the country that can bring together our different regions and ideologies and factions in a bargaining process. Congress isn't just a political governmental institution. It's a social institution. And when Congress breaks down, there's no one else who can do that work of brokering. And that means all of society becomes turbulent, factional, partisan, polarized. And that's where we are right now.
Doug:
[32:39] What do you what do you see as a solution to some of this? I mean, maybe not the solution, but a contribution to one.
Jonathan:
[32:47] Well, there's a couple of places that we can look.
Jonathan:
[32:51] One is there's different kinds of political reforms. People talk about different structures for nominating contests. We don't need to get into them, but nonpartisan primaries, rank choice voting, people talk about proportional representation. There's all kinds of things floating around in terms of reform. There's also a lot that could be done and should be done in Congress to get things back on the right track. There's too much authority is focused in the, congressional leader's office. A lot of members of Congress want to return to what's called regular order. That's the committee process where you work more from the bottom up. And the ranking member and committee chair will work together to develop legislation and they'll move it through. And if it passes the committee, it will get floor time and there will be a debate about how Congress used to work. And frankly, it was better. And most members of Congress wish they could do that. Okay. Breath pause. Different category.
Jonathan:
[33:45] Christians, what should you guys do? Because you can play a huge role here. Right now, the white Protestant church is overwhelmingly in the camp of never compromise. Christianity is at war with secular society. They are trying to destroy us. War on Christmas. Constant fear. I call it the church of fear. This is the Fox News view of the world. Next election, if the Democrats win, your kids are going to come home from school with a sex change and christianity will be abolished um so.
Doug:
[34:17] Can you can you go over you went over in your book all the reasons why that attitude is very very unfounded from supreme court stop uh some from supreme court support sorry i can't say those words together to things like the war on christian christmas just being kind of made up can you, i think our audience would benefit from you kind of giving a kind of a brief overview if you don't mind of like what is it briefly but i'll just finished the point I was going to.
Jonathan:
[34:46] Which is just that, The whole point of my book, which is a plea from a secular, non-Christian in America, is to Christians, it's right there in the teachings of Jesus. Don't be afraid. Imitate Jesus. Forgive each other. A more genuinely Christian attitude, if brought to our politics, would go a long way to heal this country. And so I'm just hoping, asking, maybe even praying that Christians will elevate their own core teachings in ways that can reinforce and heal our democracy. Because I believe that they can if they want to. I think it's a tragic choice, a tragic and very costly choice that the white Protestant church has gone down the road of conflict, polarization, and culture war. But I also think that that choice can be reversed, and that's why I wrote that book.
Jonathan:
[35:38] So yes, we now have the most pro-religious freedom Supreme Court in American history. By far, it's not even close. We now have stronger governmental supports for freedom of religion than we've ever had by far. It is illegal to discriminate against Christians. Could go on and on.
Jonathan:
[36:04] But America has, there has never been in the entire history of the planet, a society that is safe and as welcoming of Christians as the United States of America right now. Now, white Protestants don't necessarily feel that way because they've been losing dominance over the last 50 to 100 years. But for example, if you're a Catholic Christian, would you rather be in America today or 100 or 200 years ago?
Jonathan:
[36:34] That's a, you know, it's a pretty easy question. How about the culture? Are we culturally hostile to Christianity? Well, there's something to that. And Doug, I take some blame for that. I'm one of those secular people, as I said at the outset, who for too long failed to understand the importance of Christianity in our democracy and failed to understand that they're core truths to Jesus's teaching that we need in our country right now. But I'd say in the last 20 plus years, there's been a distinct swing in secular land away from kind of the new atheists and the attitude of religion. Who needs it? There's been a real reawakening in secular circles to, hey, wait a minute, maybe we threw out the baby with the bathwater there. Maybe we need to take a second look.
Doug:
[37:28] Where do you think that realization, or maybe it's not a realization, but where do you think that trend started? Because I've noticed that too over the last probably five years, there's been a less hostile toward Christianity. I mean, even the likes of Dawkins, you know, saying things positive about Christianity in recent months or maybe in the past year or so. Brett Weinstein talking about how it's important that we have religious thinking and the importance of Christian undergirding of society.
Jonathan:
[37:58] Let's not put Weinstein next to Dawkins. They're two very different people.
Doug:
[38:03] Well, I was trying to cover the groups of...
Jonathan:
[38:06] I have some issues with the Weinstein view of the world.
Jonathan:
[38:11] But I take your broader point. I think it's coming from just living and experiencing and seeing what's happened to this country at the time when Christianity collapsed. We also saw a rise in all the bad mental health indicators went up. We saw depression, loneliness, anxiety, social isolation all went up. There's a Surgeon General report about that. We saw the substitution of pseudo-religions for Christianity. So instead of becoming, you know, secular or atheists or whatever, people turned to pseudo-religions like radical wilderness, radical environmentalism. They turned to MAGA. They turned politics into a kind of idolatry. Partisanship became a new religion. And none of those things can substitute for what the great religions do. The depth of Christian doctrine worked out over 2,000 years. We saw that in the Pope's encyclical, a very, very deep moral tradition. None of those other things can transmit the same values to kids over generations. None of them bring people together in group worship and observance, and none of them really focus people on the larger meaning of life, why we're here. You know, SoulCycle has its points, but it just does not give you that basic purpose in life, Nor, by the way, will being a Republican or a Democrat. So I just think we all just saw this happening and.
Jonathan:
[39:37] It just became obvious that we had a problem. Maybe there's more to it. I don't know. What do you think? Did you see a change?
Doug:
[39:44] I did. There's a show that I listened to over the last 15, 20 years called Unbelievable. It was out of the UK. I don't know if you've ever been on that show at all, but there were a lot of chats between atheists and Christians and people who were both hostile to faith, but also, you know, just people who happen to be atheists or agnostic. And then they would also do like sort of intra-Christian conversation, but it was a very popular show both in Great Britain and in America. And the host, Justin, he actually wrote a book about the surprising rebirth in belief in God. And he kind of recounts how those conversations were happening. And I think it's very similar to the story you're telling is that there's something inadequate about.
Doug:
[40:27] Those sort of shallow quasi-religious, I think you use the word quasi in your book, quasi-religious experiences that get us to some extent there, but they're not ultimately fulfilling. And for those who, you know, I appreciate your candor in your book about not feeling particularly, I don't know what word you use, but like worried or anxious about what happens to you after death, but, that you also recognize that most people, many people do. And that is an existential anxiety that a lot of people have and that identifying that as something that people in general, society in general, wrestles with and considers their own mortality, that there has to be something that sort of solves that for them either internally or just existentially as well.
Jonathan:
[41:17] Can I ask you a question?
Doug:
[41:18] I don't know if I got to blame. Yeah, sure.
Jonathan:
[41:21] That maybe pushes a bit further. I hope not too far, but you'll tell me.
Jonathan:
[41:25] Would it be fair to say that for most of this period, libertarians have been part of the problem, that they've been hostile to faith and especially the Randian types of libertarians, who view religion as kind of at best unnecessary and, at worst as kind of contrary to the entrepreneurial spirit and energy and the, uh, the objective vitality that makes societies go.
Doug:
[41:52] That's a, that's a really good question. And when I was, I mean, it's been about 20 years that I've sort of entered into the libertarian world and it is, it was at that time. And, and again, obviously libertarianism goes back, you know, my whole lifetime a little bit further, even it was, it did feel that way at the time. And there were, there were, there were a lot of, you know, hostile thought, you know, attacks or hostile thinking about it. It always puzzled me, though, because it seemed to me that the, like what you said earlier about, you know, liberalism in and of itself is very parallels the teachings of Christ in so many ways from a more societal level.
Doug:
[42:34] I have seen over the last 20 years, though, that that hostility and animosity toward Christians has reduced quite a bit in the liberty space. There are a handful of reasons that, you know, I don't need to share here on air while we're recording, but there are some observations within the movement that there are a lot more Christians in this movement now. And that is fairly demonstrably true in a number of ways. But even so, I have seen, I recently was on a panel at Freedom Fest with, grab her name here, Jennifer Grossman. She's the head of the Atlas Society. And she was very friendly toward me. And the panel was also with Michael Shermer. And we were talking about, we were debating Christianity. We were debating free will and the concept of determinism, you know, vis-a-vis Sam Harris's views. And they were very friendly and they were libertarian and they can see that, if you could be a libertarian because of your belief in God, then that's great.
Doug:
[43:33] But yes, I would say in terms of, I don't know if I got to the first part of your question, which is like being part of the problem, but there has been a lot of libertarian hostility toward Christians. I think in some sense, that's a lot of reasons why Christians are not, Christians who are not libertarian look askance at libertarianism because they feel like there's possibly still some hostility. The fact that the Libertarian Party was for a long time pro-choice, that turns off a lot of conservative Christians. I mean, part of the Libertarian Christian Institute's mission is to help Christians see a Christian.
Doug:
[44:11] Sorry, see the Christian case for a free society and not just, you know, and show the inherent compatibility between libertarianism and our Christian faith. I don't know if I got to all of your, what you were pinpointing there. You can ask it again if you need.
Jonathan:
[44:25] Everything except Ayn Rand, who puts such a heavy emphasis on, you might almost say, a cult of reason, objectivism. And then the heavy interest she had. It sounds like you're saying that's subsided compared to the 70s and 80s.
Doug:
[44:41] I think the attitude has subsided. I think there are a lot of Rand's followers. I mean, I'm going to shoot from the hip a little bit here, but I think a lot of Rand's followers are going to be a little less hostile just because we're decades removed from her direct influence. There are, there's a book, it's kind of over my shoulder, you wouldn't be able to see it because it's blurred out, but there's a book called The Soul of Atlas, which is reconciling, you know, the ideas in Ayn Rand's two main works with Christian faith. And then there's another, I did an interview with a guy named Cody Leiboldt, who wrote a book called Redeeming the West. And it was, I think people who would read Ayn Rand from a non-Christian perspective would read this book and say, wait a second, I didn't realize there was enough overlap here that we could agree on. Obviously, he's coming from a Christian perspective, but the idea of using reason, as not in contradiction to faith is probably where that overlap lies. I wouldn't be able to speak further to that, but that's an intro to it.
Jonathan:
[45:40] And what about the rejection of altruism, which seems like a Christian virtue? Yeah.
Doug:
[45:47] Oh, wow. We're going to, we're going to get in the weeds. Um, altruism, I'm just curious. No, no, it's fine. No, it's fine. I will, I will try to formulate my thoughts live here. If by altruism, how would you, how would you define that? I'm going to give you.
Jonathan:
[46:01] Doing good, being nice to other people, doing good to other people for its own sake.
Doug:
[46:06] For its own sake. So my, my way of thinking through that is that I don't, I don't actually think that exists. I don't actually think, I think what happens is we find, I'll put it in Christian terms and you can, you know, filter that however you'd like. The idea of doing something for the good of somebody else because I enjoy doing it is not altruistic. Now, I realize that the most, like, so for example, if I see somebody who's in need, I'll give you an example. In March, I took my daughter to see a Broadway show. We live a couple hours outside of New York. It's cold. And my daughter's like, can we bring food to give out to the homeless? Like, just take food and snacks in case we run across a homeless person. And I said, well, absolutely. Sure. We can do that. And she was giddy as can be. And I don't know if you, you could call it altruism on, on, in a shallow sense, but I would, I would probably say that she found an, a joy in doing something, in doing something loving towards somebody else. And I don't think it's wrong that she felt joy. I don't think you would agree. I don't think you would disagree with that, that point. But I'm not sure, I can be wrong, but I don't think I view human behavior as, we're either doing something for ourselves or we're doing it for someone else. I think we always do something for ourselves. And by finding a higher joy in serving others, even if it does come at our own expense, kind of negates the idea of like literal altruism or like pure altruism. I don't know. You can push back on me there if you'd like.
Jonathan:
[47:32] Well, I don't need to. I'm mostly just, just curious. The view of the founding era in some ways was quite different from today's. They, founders were not utilitarians who believed in the greatest good for the greatest number. And they also weren't the type of libertarians who believe that incentive structures, kind of dictate. And if I do something nice for someone, then it's an exchange because I'm getting psychic rewards. They were more like Aristotelians who believe that what freedom is, isn't just autonomy, the ability to act as you want. Freedom actually means having the discipline and knowledge to pursue a virtuous life. That's what we're free for. The idea for them is freedom isn't the thing in itself. It's for something. And that's to develop virtue. It's much more of a classical Aristotelian view of things. And it's quite different from what you just stated. Because in that view, the practice in its own right kind of comes first. And then you build your values around the practice. But the first thing is you become a good citizen, you become a giving person. You follow your civic duty. And by doing that, you become a more free person.
Doug:
[48:54] That's interesting because I agree with everything you just said that you were describing there. And I'm mentally wrestling with how did that actually conflict. So you're saying that there is possibly an inability for people to be joyous in serving others. And so there is some sort of practice that helps inculcate that for them?
Jonathan:
[49:15] Yeah, there's virtue that's valuable in and of itself. And if we don't follow those virtues and we don't inculcate these virtues, we can't be truly free. And it's not just an exchange type of situation where I give you food and in exchange, I feel better about myself. I think they'd say that's a shallow and thin view of morality.
Doug:
[49:36] Okay. I would think actually.
Jonathan:
[49:38] Wouldn't a Christian also say that's a shallow and thin view of morality?
Doug:
[49:42] Well, feel better about myself, I would agree. That is shallow, but finding true joy in doing it would be, would be probably the, I would say the more, the thicker way of putting it or the deeper way. Sorry to mix metaphors.
Jonathan:
[49:55] Well, I'm, I'm not the Christian in the room you are, but.
Doug:
[49:58] No, that's fine. Well, I mean, I'm answering it that way. Yeah.
Jonathan:
[50:02] Just, we don't need to go down this rabbit hole anymore, but.
Doug:
[50:05] No, it's okay.
Jonathan:
[50:06] I'm just so fascinated by, to me, what seems to be at least a bit of tension between the standard libertarian worldview and the standard Christian worldview, or standard libertarian worldview and the view of the founders, which was not libertarian. Yeah, not strictly so. It was very focused on liberty. And wouldn't a Christian say that that act of giving has meaning beyond any joy that it gives you? In fact, it may not give you joy. It may result in suffering on your part. And yet, it's important because it's what God insists that you do. It's what God expects you to do.
Doug:
[50:43] Yeah, I think we could explore that. The question that rises in my mind is if I'm a student of, if I'm a student of the virtues, right, and I'm, disciplining myself to live a virtuous life, I am choosing to do that because I believe in, I believe it does some good for me and for others. And I'm not sure. Yeah, I will give I will give that some thought. I'll probably follow up with you after we're done here. I think there's a this is a good way to segue to basically my final, you know, several thoughts here for you is.
Doug:
[51:16] Your third chapter was a little bit of a twist. And it seemed like in one of your interviews, it seemed like you sort of surprisingly came upon it as well, in that there's this, there's a church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we call them Mormons. The Latter-day Saints Church has a sort of political or civic politics, to choose the right word here, that is based on something regarding agency. And I had never heard agency put this way. I realize that we're kind of over time here, so I don't want to impinge on your time even further, but to to sort of demonstrate what what has the the LDS church done that was remarkable to you that I mean, it deserved most of the third chapter in your book because it was an example of one of the ways out of this sort of mess that we're all in. And as as you answer this, I think it'll be obvious how how the conversation we just had kind of spins into that.
Jonathan:
[52:12] Yes. So implicit in a lot of what I've been saying for the last hour or so is, the idea of a civic theology. And a civic theology for Christians answers the question, how would Jesus want Christians to behave in civic life, which means primarily social media and politics? This isn't about what you believe, what policy you want, where you come out on abortion or the war in Iran. This is about what kind of tone and style do you use? In approaching the public realm. And there's been a complete failure in specifically the white Protestant church, one could name others as well, in filling this gap in civic theology. The church is pretty good at what they call spiritual formation, discipleship, making people like Jesus is, I think, the definition of that. It's pretty good at that in family life, church life, community life, encouraging Christ-like behavior. But then a lot of these same people will turn around and engage in some pretty awful behavior in social media and politics. And that would include, for example, wholehearted support for a politician who calls an entire class of humans vermin, just to name one of many examples.
Jonathan:
[53:38] And that's not a good answer to the question, how would Jesus like Christians to behave in politics? So, there's a growing desire, appetite among Christians to fill that gap in places like Michael Ware's Center for Christianity and Public Life are setting about doing that. Books are being written. The biggest movement I know of to finally get to the point is in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They went through a real transition of campaigning against same-sex marriage in 2008 in a pretty heavy-handed way, seeing the backlash and polarization that resulted and deciding to change course and begin looking for ways to make bargains, compromise, there's that word again, that, would both expand the space for religious freedom and also expand the space for gay and lesbian people to go on about our lives. And they've done that now at least twice, once in the state of Utah in 2015. It's called the Utah Compromise. And again, in the United States Congress, they were part of a group of religious actors that supported.
Jonathan:
[54:48] The Respect for Marriage Act, which enshrined my marriage to a man in federal law and also added very important new religious liberty protections, like for the tax-exempt status of churches that don't celebrate or honor same-sex men. And that's coming out of their theology. So, I'm sorry about the long answer. It's kind of a complicated series of ideas here, but we kind of have an agency, which is where you started. Should I continue in that vein or do you want to?
Doug:
[55:21] If you have the time, I'm certainly happy to do that. I don't want to take Take too much here that you don't have to give.
Jonathan:
[55:29] Because I told you we'd be done. I am as well. I don't want to impose on your listeners too much.
Doug:
[55:35] I think they're very much engaged right now, I bet.
Jonathan:
[55:40] So, Latter-day Saint theology does not believe in the fall of man and original sin. And it gets complicated, and I don't pretend to be an expert. But they believe that we're all born.
Jonathan:
[55:56] Not sinful. But with moral agency to make ourselves better or worse over the course of our lives. Agency is a lot like free will, except free will says we have the capacity to make choices in our lives, moral or immoral choices. Agency goes the next step and says, not only do we have the capacity, but we need to have the opportunity to make choices. And that means we have to have the opportunity to make bad choices. Otherwise, we won't learn to make good choices. Seems kind of obvious when you put it that way, but it's not the standard Augustinian doctrine. So if that's what you believe, you don't want to make the whole world follow the particular set of what you think are the right choices. You want to have a pluralistic world in which different people can make different choices.
Jonathan:
[56:49] And discover their own virtue. And that leads to the idea of what the current president of the church, says is their civic theology, their idea of how Christ wants Latter-day Saints, in fact, all people, all Christians to behave in public life, which is a spirit as he puts it, patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation. Not try to dominate the world. Some people will make mistakes. They'll get things wrong. They'll do things like same-sex marriage with the church very much opposed it. And yet there they're saying, let's have a country where we Latter-day Saints can do things our way in our church, but where other people can make other choices. It's classic Madisonian pluralism.
Jonathan:
[57:35] And that's a way of holding up the constitution and holding up Christianity at the same time. It's super sophisticated and super, in my view, It's super admirable. Incidentally, the president of the church in September, that September is coming to Washington to make a speech, which I think will be about this. And that's a big deal. He's 93 or 94. He doesn't just do a lot of big public events.
Doug:
[58:01] Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. And I read there was a couple of pages you were describing the agency thing. I didn't know that about the Latter-day Saints Church. And I was starting to wrestle with like, well, wait a second. I agree with this whole thing about agency. And I think from the more Protestant, Augustinian way of looking at this is the agency was granted at creation that humans were endowed with agency from the beginning. And it wasn't the eating of the fruit that endowed us or imbued us with that. But there definitely is a similar approach in that, you know, I wrote this down. If I impose my, you wrote, this is you. If I impose my will politically to limit your agency, I have deprived you of a pathway toward godliness. I can't disagree with that. That is sort of, you know, one of the major reasons in our case why we have a Libertarian Christian Institute is that we want Christians to think in that way. Not from that particular foundational theology, but in that way, you know, as an end.
Jonathan:
[59:00] Well, that's important. And I'm sure you're as aware as I am, if not more so, that the more common attitude of Christians down through the century has not been to tolerate wrong choices. It's to burn people alive for making them.
Doug:
[59:14] Yeah. Yes. Regrettably, for certain. Yeah.
Doug:
[59:19] You end with the last section. You have a little section in these chapters called Make Christianity Peculiar Again. I think that's a really great way to end. Do you have anything, any admonishments for Christians out there thinking publicly that we need to hear that you want to wrap up with?
Jonathan:
[59:35] Well, by Make Christianity Peculiar Again, what I had in mind is Christianity is an exilic religion, which is to say that Christians are in exile from the kingdom of God, which is yet to come. And that's meant to keep Christians focused on the next world, not just this world. And it's meant to prevent Christians from thinking that they need to dominate our public life. And Christianity is at its strongest when it's the most countercultural. It's a deeply countercultural religion. That's why Jesus was crucified. He was so countercultural. No one understood him at the time. No one agreed with him at the time. And yet Christianity is truer to itself and bears a stronger witness for itself, when it emphasizes its most countercultural ideas, and I named three of them. Christianity is at its weakest and its least persuasive when it begins to mirror.
Jonathan:
[1:00:41] The secular transactional worldly ways around it. And so I think, I guess what I'm just begging Christians to consider and do, is to recover those countercultural elements of Christianity, which would say to all Americans, look, as angry and frightened, as polarized as you are, don't be. Have a little more confidence in your fellow American, a little more confidence in our Constitution, a little more confidence in God. Remember how Jesus approached people who were profoundly different from himself. So if Christians would do that I think I think that would do more than any other single factor I could think of to heal what's broken in our country.
Doug:
[1:01:28] Jonathan Rauch that is a great way to end thank you so much for your time are there any forthcoming projects you can speak of and that you're working on and also where can people find you do you have a website or you know.
Jonathan:
[1:01:40] Just some just some articles and stuff nothing ready to announce and my website went down because the provider went out of business, but I'm reconstituting it. So soon, jonathanrausch.com. I have a webpage of Brookings where you can find me and I'm easy to find us on Blue Sky, John Rausch, J-O-N-R-R-E-U-C-H.
Doug:
[1:02:01] Excellent. Well, thank you again.
Jonathan:
[1:02:03] I think there's an underscore between the John and the Rausch. Anyway.
Doug:
[1:02:06] I think we'll find you.
Jonathan:
[1:02:07] You'll find me.
Doug:
[1:02:08] All right, Jonathan. Thank you so much.
Jonathan:
[1:02:10] Thank you.
Norman Horn:
[1:02:14] Thank you for listening to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast. If you liked today's episode, we encourage you to rate us on Apple Podcasts to help expand our audience. If you want to reach out to us, email us at podcast@libertarianchristians.com. You can also reach us @Lciofficial on Twitter. And of course we are on Facebook and have an active group you are welcome to join. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Katherine Williams:
[1:02:37] The Libertarian Christian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit. If you'd like to find out more about LCI, visit us on the web, at LibertarianChristians.com. The voiceovers are by Matt Bellis and Katherine Williams. As of Episode 115, our audio production is provided by Podsworth Media. Check them out at Podsworth.com.