How does a nice Jewish boy who is also a gay atheist have the chutzpah to lecture Christianity on its obligations to democracy? Listen to author Jonathan Rauch talk about his book Cross Purposes with EconTalk's Russ Roberts as Rauch makes the case for what he calls a thicker Christianity.
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| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: March 24, 2025.] Russ Roberts: Today is March 24th, 2025 and my guest is author Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution. This is Jonathan's third appearance on the program. He was last here in August of 2021, talking about the constitution of knowledge. His latest book and the topic of today's conversation is Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. Jonathan, welcome back to EconTalk. Jonathan Rauch: I'm always glad to see you, Russ. |
| 1:03 | Russ Roberts: Well, let's start with the chutzpah of this book, if we might. I don't think you use that word explicitly, but you could have. Jonathan Rauch: I could have. Russ Roberts: Why is this a book of chutzpah? Jonathan Rauch: Because I am an atheistic homosexual Jew, or if you prefer, a Jewish atheistic homosexual, writing about Christian America. And writing to Christian America, and asking that Christians behave more in the spirit of Jesus Christ. I think on multiple dimensions, it is not clear to me that Christians want to hear from an atheistic homosexual Jew about the teachings of Jesus, much less preached at them. But, here I am. Russ Roberts: What gives you that urge to do that preaching? Jonathan Rauch: Well, so I work at Brookings, and we're in governance studies, my department. We spend a lot of time, in fact all day, trying to understand how to defend the values and institutions of a liberal democracy. Of course, you know all about that there at Shalem College in Jerusalem. Similar missions and ideas. And, we're trying to figure out why Americans--and not just Americans: this is true of voters in Western democracies around the world--are so deeply discontent, so polarized, so angry. We see indicators like loneliness and isolation rising. And we see that expressed in the trashing of institutions, the growth of political extremism, especially authoritarian populist parties. Something else that we started to see was the attribution to politics of the kinds of quasi-religious attitudes that are more traditionally associated with religion. You know--apocalypticism: If we don't win this election, it's the end of our country, it's the end of our lifestyle. We see the same kind of zeal on the Left in America. You were seeing these strange kind of rituals in wokeness of repentance, and ritual purification, and original sin in the form of racism. On the Right, you were seeing the idolatrization--if that's a word--idolatry of Donald Trump. Christian nationalism, which is not in fact a Christian movement: it's a secular movement that claims the authority of Christianity. People are looking at this, including me, and saying, 'Well, look, something is going on here.' Where it looks like our dominant religious tradition, Christianity, seems to no longer be able to channel the energies and do the work of socializing that we've relied on it to do. Those religious energies and needs seem to be being displaced into politics, and pseudo-religions like MAGA [Make America Great Again], and wokeness, and QAnon, and so forth. And, that's making us ungovernable. So, if you care about the future of liberal democracy, I just concluded you have got to look at Christianity and understand if it's failing, why it's failing, and what might be done about it. |
| 4:35 | Russ Roberts: Listeners know one of my favorite quotes is from David Foster Wallace: "Everyone worships." It's just that if it's not a traditional religion, it's something else. He has an eloquent take-down of the worship of power, and beauty, and money. And on this program, for a long time, I've talked--cautiously--about the substitution of secular causes for religion. It offends people a lot when you tell them that their cause, whatever it is, is like a quasi-religion or a religion. And, for the reasons you talk about--the dogmatic nature of it, the ritual that's associated with it, the sense of belonging that it provides--these are things, as you point out: religion satisfies these desires that, for whatever reason, we have as human beings. The desire to belong, the desire for something larger than ourselves. I think we're in a pretty powerful moment, as you say, for the governability of our polities in the West because they do seem to be falling apart. What went wrong? You have a nice historical analysis at the beginning of your book, where you talk about what went wrong with the Enlightenment that brought us to this moment. I just want to sum up what you've just been saying, what I was trying to say, a quote from the book. You write, Secular movements have their benefits. I'm not here to condemn them. But, it turns out that none of them is capable of replacing the great religions or anchoring moral codes, maintaining durable communities, and transmitting values are concerned. As Jessica Grose wrote in The New York Times in 2023, paraphrasing the sociologist Phil Zuckerman, [quote], "A soccer team can't provide spiritual solace in the face of death, it probably doesn't have a weekly charitable call, and there's no sense of connection to a heritage that goes back generations." Add to that anything you'd like, and to the human desire for those things. Jonathan Rauch: Well, there's a lot there. And I should say, Russ, I've been especially eager to be on your show because I think we have in common that we're both secular liberals in our political orientation and have both come to this place in the journey of thinking about the incompleteness, the inadequacies, the failures of secular liberalism in this context. So, of course, I welcome your reflections. So, Liberalism, by which I mean--in this context and your audience will understand, not American-style Left-wing Progressivism, but the great tradition of Locke and Kant--the tradition of limited government, basic rights, toleration, free speech, and so forth. Liberalism is a system of governance, and it does have important values that are part of keeping it afloat. Liberals, right back from the beginning--the Founders of the United States for example--all told us: Look, we can provide the systems and the platforms for liberal governance. We cannot--Liberalism cannot, however, necessarily provide the values on which it depends. It's going to create space for people in civil society to create meaning and community, but it's not going to do that for you. You have to go out and do that, and then you have to bring those sources of meaning, and community, and values into Liberalism. The Founders all told us--they were very explicit about this--Liberalism, the Constitution, will only work if there is what they called 'republican virtue' in the population, in the citizenry. And by that, they meant things like honorable civic behavior, being well-informed, well-educated, being truthful, being tolerant. Allowing for the rotation in office. They said that civil society was going to need to provide those values. And by that, they meant, of course, the family, and schools, and community. But, they also meant very particularly Christianity--Protestantism, which was the founding faith of America. White Protestantism, to be even more specific. So, there was an implicit bargain that they made with Christianity. It wasn't explicit, nothing was assigned. But, they said, 'We're going to have unprecedented religious liberty. That's going to be the founding principle of our republic.' But implicitly, Christianity needs to use that liberty, that religious liberty, in part to inculcate the values that will sustain our Republic. And for many years, it did that. Now, I am gay. I can give you chapter and verse on the many, many shortcomings of Christianity: its abusive of minorities like me; its historic antisemitism. It has a dark side. Yet nonetheless, for 200 years, the mainstream Protestant churches did actually a pretty good job of socializing Americans into our life together. Of course, through the teachings themselves, but also the Sunday schools, the youth groups, and pastorates. The small groups where Bible was studied. When I was growing up in Phoenix in the 1960s and 1970s, very often, the first thing that people asked each other was not, 'Where do you work?' or 'Where are you from?' It was, 'What church do you belong to?' In those days, 70%--right through the 20th century--70% of Americans belonged to a church. So these were just huge organs of socialization and collective life. And they provided something Liberalism can't, which is answers to the question: Why am I here? What is the transcendent meaning of my life? What will happen after I die? What is the fundamental source of values? Liberalism doesn't answer those questions; and it doesn't try. It says, 'Go out and find your own answer.' That means: If Christianity collapses--and I and others argue that's more or less what's happened in the last 50 years, but especially in the last 20--who does that work? And the answer is that Soul Cycle, and Wicca, and crystals, and self-improvement don't do it. They don't even try. And the pseudo-religions that we talked about earlier--the things like MAGA, and QAnon, and radical wokeness, and radical environmentalism--they're polarizing and disruptive. They are fake religions. They are also incapable of doing this job, and in fact drive us against each other. |
| 12:07 | Russ Roberts: You chronicle how much the Church has faltered in terms of its role in American life in the last 20 years. Church attendance, belief, all kinds of different measures. How much of that do you think is driven by the delay in marriage, and the reduction in marriage rate, and the challenges that the family faces in America and in the West? Because I think they're entwined. The religion--I know more about Judaism. People affiliate, once they get married, especially when they have children. And religion is--obviously a huge part of it is connecting generations and heritage, and tradition, as was eluded in that earlier quote. Isn't that part of the problem? Jonathan Rauch: It may be. You know, there are tons of things that are a part of the problem, Russ. I am not a believer in mono-causality. There's--for example, educational polarization seems to be part of this. Religion, faith, and community participation tend to be stronger and healthier among people with college degrees than among people with high school or less. So, lots of things are going on here. I don't have a particular comment on the specific role of marriage and family foundation in demographics, except to say I would guess they work in both directions. And, that the decline of Christianity, and all the social structures and supports that went with that, has probably, I would guess, contributed to the deferral of marriage, and then the instability of marriage. So I think that probably works in both directions. And I think I would probably cite that as one of many ways in which the decline of Christianity--as a core institution--ramifies through social life in the United States. So, that said, what I try to do in my book is look more specifically at the decisions that Christians have made about Christianity in understanding why Christianity has caved in. Yeah, I'm sure there are external factors, of course. Social media, cellphones, what have you. The post-liberals blame Liberalism. They say, 'You can't really effectively have faith, family, tradition, coordination in a liberal country, because, you know, there's just too much competition from radical individualism.' I don't think that's true, actually. I think Israel is actually a modern, liberal--trying to remain liberal--state, in which religion remains extremely strong. So, I look at the decisions that Christians have made about Christianity as a core element--maybe the core element--of the story. And, that's where you find some big changes. |
| 15:18 | Russ Roberts: You talk about three kinds of Christianity. Of course, being Jewish, I thought about the parallels of Judaism. Maybe we'll get to those. But, Christianity matters a great deal more to the United States than Judaism does, at least in the public square. You have three kinds of Christianity you talk about: Thin, Sharp, and Thick. Let's go through those one-by-one and just tell us what you have in mind by those terms; and then we'll talk about why this analysis is important. Jonathan Rauch: So, by Thinness, I mean cultural and spiritual thinness. Christianity is fundamentally a counter-cultural religion. It was born outside of the state. Jesus, of course, was a deeply counter-cultural teacher, counter to everything that Roman society around him taught. Christianity is at its best when it's counter-cultural. And, more broadly, sociologists tell us that religious groups are at their strongest when they are different from the surrounding society. So, that they impose burdens on their followers that are different from what they would just get in ordinary life, and they also provide benefits--rewards, social technologies--that are different from what the outside society provides. Thinness is what happens when the religion just begins to blend into the surrounding culture. It loses its distinctiveness. It loses its message. It just becomes more or less a lifestyle choice, a consumer good. You shop around for a religion; it does very little for you. Maybe you show up on a Sunday now and then if you're Christian. Or maybe, you don't even do that. That seems to be what happened to the mainline churches in the United States. People who are younger than my age probably just don't recall: In the 1950s and 1960s, and into the 1970s in the United States, the Lutheran Church, the United Methodists, the Episcopal Church, these were mighty pillars of society. They were just very influential. Now they are a couple of steps from extinct. Only 13% of white Americans associate with any mainline church. They went Left. Not Radical Left; but they decided that instead of being rooted primarily in scripture and in a counter-cultural Christian teaching, that they would get busy with social causes, predominantly Progressive ones. A lot of people seem to feel, 'Well, I can do that without giving up a Sunday morning.' So, in the latter portion of the 20th century, they declined, and declined fast; and they lost their cultural relevance. They began just blending into the surrounding culture, to the point now where they figure really very little in American life. And that's the story of the ecumenical, or so-called mainline churches. Sharp. You want to do that one? Russ Roberts: Yeah, go ahead. We'll go through all three, then I want to come back. We'll talk about each maybe in turn, or why they're--what we need to talk about. Jonathan Rauch: Okay. Sharp Christianity. So, the one multi-syllabic word for the story of Christianity in America in the last 50 years is 'secularization.' That's when the religion comes to resemble the society around it. And, instead of exporting values into the society that surrounds it, it imports values from the society around it. What we just talked about, the thinning of the mainline churches, is an example of that. While the mainline churches began to become comatose in the late 20th century, Evangelical Christianity was thriving and growing. And people said, 'Aha. This shows that people want a more counter-cultural church. They want something rooted in scripture. They want something prescriptive that gives you boundaries to life.' About how you behave sexually, and what your values and mores are going to be around things like abortion and homosexuality. There was a hunger for that. And that was the story that we all told ourselves until, in this century, a couple of things happened in the Evangelical--the White Evangelical--Church. The Black Church is a whole different story, and I don't get into it. So, the first thing that happened was its own wave of secularization. Starting in the 1980s and then proceeding into the 1990s, the White Evangelical Church got very involved in politics and partisan politics. It became very closely aligned with the Republican Party. Now, that was gradual. But, by the second decade of this century, White Evangelicals were voting 80-plus percent for the Republican presidential candidate, no matter who that was. And they were arguably the Republican Party's core base. The Church made a gamble. Which is that: 'We can influence the Republican Party and partisan politics more than they will influence us.' And they lost that gamble. They were wrong. Because, as they increasingly became partisan and politicized, the complexion--this is the second thing that happened--the complexion of the Evangelical Church began to change. This is what really happened--it picks up speed--in this century. People who were there for spirituality and the message of Jesus who may not be Republicans, for example, begin to drift away, because partisan politics is not what they're there for. They don't necessarily share those values. They don't assume that electing Republicans is just essential to keeping your identity. And people begin to identify into Evangelicals who really are not very observant Christians. And you get this weird phenomenon that the sociologist, the demographer of religion Ryan Burge, himself a pastor, has pointed to. So, twenty years ago, some very small percentage of Evangelicals--like, three or five percent--said that they never attended church, because church attendance, that's kind of the deal for Evangelicals. Today, that's about one in eight. So you see people filtering in who were there for the politics, and people filtering out who were there for the message of Jesus. And that sharpens the white Evangelical Church. It becomes more and more radicalized, politicized. This becomes a crisis for pastors. A couple years ago, 42% of them told pollsters that they had seriously considered quitting in the past year. And the Number Three reason for that, after obvious things, like, I guess it was maybe low pay and high stress--I don't remember. But, Number Three was politics. They said people were bringing Fox News, and partisan politics, and the culture wars to church, and demanding that the church do that. 'We're losing our country. It's a battlefield out there. Our church needs to fight, fight, fight.' That's not the message of Jesus and it's not what pastors want to be doing. So, increasingly, that wave of secularization radicalizes the Church, aligns it in a partisan way. Until you reach the point, in 2016, possibly one of the most famous polling results of the 21st century happens. In 2011, the Public Religion Research Institute [PRRI]--I'll botch the wording of the question, but I'll get the idea right--PRRI asked people if a person of poor character can be a good political leader. And, 70% or so of Evangelicals say no. They say, 'You have to have good character; it really matters in political leadership.' White Evangelicals are the strongest on the importance of character in politics. They asked the question again in 2016 and the numbers have flipped. It's about 70% the other direction: Character does not matter in choosing a leader. In fact, white Evangelicals become the group that is least concerned with the character of political leaders. So, you ask yourself, what happened in 2016? What happened is of course the rise of Donald Trump. After initially being standoffish, white Evangelicals go all-in with MAGA. They have become MAGA's firmest base in America. In doing that, they seem to have made a bargain with power that Jesus did not make. You remember in Matthew 4, Jesus begins his ministry by going into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights? There he encounters Satan, who brings him to the highest mountaintop in the world. He shows him all of human dominion and says, 'I will give you power over all of this if you will bow down and worship me.' Jesus refuses the deal. And that launches his ministry. He's about the next life, not the next election. In 2016, in January of 2016, as he launches his presidential campaign, Donald Trump goes to Dordt College, which is an evangelical school in Iowa, and he says two things. The first thing he says is: 'If you vote for me, I will give you power. Remember that.' The second thing he says in this speech--yes, it's the same speech at the same place--is: 'My followers are the most loyal. I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they would not mind.' You see what he's doing here? It's the same deal that Jesus offered Satan which is-- Russ Roberts: You mean Satan offered Jesus, yes-- Jonathan Rauch: Yes, thank you. The same deal that Satan offered Jesus. That was blasphemous. Which is power: I give you power, you give me unconditional, unquestioning loyalty. White Evangelicals take that deal. And that transforms the nature of the Church, at least as it's seen in the general public. How Christian can you be if you are enthusiastically embracing the most un-Christ-like figure in modern American politics? And so now the white Evangelical church is in a state of collapse. According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of white Americans who identify as Evangelicals is 13%. That's no more than identify as mainline Christians. Where are those people going? They are becoming so-called Nones, N-O-N-E-S: people who are not affiliated with any religion. And that's what gets us to where we are. |
| 28:04 | Russ Roberts: Talk briefly about what you mean by Thick Christianity, and then I want to come back and talk about all three, and challenge a little of this, and give you a chance to expand on it. Jonathan Rauch: So, by Thick Christianity, I mean Christianity that asks a lot of followers, that gives a lot in return, that is counter-cultural in its teaching while also being supportive of the liberal democracy that it relies on--the general American context. And that's a tall order. Right? A lot of the Church did that pretty well for the first 200 years. Tocqueville comes to America in the 1830s; and the first thing he notices is how Christian the country is, and how in America, Christianity seems to align itself with the values of the secular liberal democracy, something that's not true in France. So, thick Christianity does those things. Russ Roberts: I like--you can also riff on this quote, this idea of James Allison's three pillars of Christianity: 'Don't be afraid. Imitate Jesus. Forgive each other.' And you say they all have close parallels in liberalism's core civic values. Explain. Jonathan Rauch: Well so this, Russ, is really the hinge of the entire argument of the book. I mean, so far, I've been describing what's happened and the forces behind it, and I've described the ways in which Christianity--Christians--have made, I think, tragic choices that have redounded against Christian witness, and also weakened liberal democracy. I've said that Christianity's crisis has become democracy's crisis. But, now, we get to what I think is the core of the argument. Which is: We talked earlier--is marriage, is family part of this? Probably. But, you can't understand what's happened without looking at theology. Theology matters. The actual content of Christian teaching is just crucial in this context. Because Protestantism is the founding faith in America. So, I'm secular. I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I'm an atheist--but a Jewish atheist. And yet, when I look at the gospel and when I talk to theologians about Christianity, they cite three principles as the distinctive principles of Jesus' teaching. Now, some say you should have repentance, or this and that, but no one I've talked to disagrees about these three, and you have just named them. The first is: Don't be afraid. The most frequently-cited injunction in the Christian Bible, 'Don't be afraid.' And that means we live in a scary world, but have some faith that God has a plan for you. Don't let fear rule your life, because then you will make unwise and un-Christian decisions. The second principle: Imitate Jesus. 'As he did, care for the least of these.' That's how Christians judge themselves. Not: how do you treat the powerful, who can help you, but how do you treat the least of these? And his radical egalitarianism, which every individual is made in the image of God--Jews have that, of course--and also in which everyone has a core and basic dignity which we are all obliged, or Christians are obliged to observe. A pretty radical concept in the Roman Empire, in Jesus' period. The third is: Forgive each other. 'Retribution and judgment are the province of God, not a man.' That's not why we're here. We need to show grace and mercy as Christians. I say 'we,' being imitating them. So, I look at that, and it's not hard to see that those three principles are also linchpin principles of Madisonian-style liberal democracy. The Founders told us that we need to bring republican virtues in from outside the system. Well, there they are. And not coincidentally, because of course, the Founders are always marinated in the teachings of Jesus and Christianity. But these principles all have secular equivalents. So: Don't be afraid. What the Founders feared more than anything as the treat to democracy is the kind of demagogue who mobilizes fear in the population to overturn the democracy. Hamilton warns about this in so many words. Lincoln, in his very first speech, the Lyceum Address, warns about this. They know this can happen, they know this tips over democracies in the past. If you're fearful, that fear can be mobilized to undermine our way of government. Further, sometimes you lose elections. If you view that as an apocalyptic, catastrophic loss--as a fundamental threat to the country--you can't have a democracy. You've got to be willing to say, 'Okay? I lost this time. Maybe I'll come back next time. Maybe I'll learn something in the process.' If you're not willing to do that--if you're not willing to approach politics without apocalyptic fear, putting some trust in your fellow citizens and in the constitutional order--it will fail. Second: Imitate Jesus. So, those two doctrines we talked about, the least of these and everyone being in the image of God--being equal before God. Of course, those come over directly: 'All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.' It's right out of Jesus. The least of these, the Bill of Rights. What's different about a liberal democracy--as opposed to an illiberal democracy--is there are a lot of things majorities cannot do. They must protect minority rights. That's why we have the Bill of Rights. It's why we have the First Amendment. That's radically counter-intuitive, but it, too, comes very much out of the teaching of Jesus. They're closely aligned that way. We judge a liberal democracy by: Does it tolerate, for example, the speech of minorities who take very different views from the majority? Third: Forgive each other. So, a politician who says, 'I am your retribution,' is not only un-Christian, he's illiberal. Because politics, in a liberal culture, it can't be about maximally punishing the other side, crushing them, and after you win an election salting the soil with the tears of their women and children. You can't talk that way and you can't think that way. When you win an election, you need to share the country. You need to behave as you will want the other side to behave someday if maybe they win an election. And that's not just instrumentally so--because power changes hands--it's intrinsically so. That's a core liberal virtue. It's not virtuous to try to dominate the whole country. Pluralism the heart of Madisonian liberalism. And so, once again: Forgive each other. It translates over a little less directly, but I translate as toleration, pluralism, and forbearance. Sharing the country. So, here I am: I'm looking at this. I'm very secular. But, it dawns on me that you don't have to believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and savior to believe that Jesus Christ was right. And that leads me to conclude that the teachings of Jesus--the core teachings of Christianity--are far closer to Madison than they are to MAGA. And that allows me to say--your first question was about chutzpah; there's some chutzpah here; I'll own that. But, that allows me to ask Christians, to say, 'To heal this country, to realign Christianity closer both to its own mission and with liberal democracy so that it's supportive instead of oppositional.' I'm not asking that Christians become more Republican or Democratic, or Left-wing, or Right-wing, or secular, or anything like that. I'm just asking Christians to become more Christian. It's right there in your scripture. Elevating those aspects of Christian teaching, which align with liberal democracy, could do a lot to heal our country. |
| 37:46 | Russ Roberts: You have some nice things to say about compromise. I read your book last night, so I'm maybe a little more familiar with it than you are. Do you remember what you said about compromise? I think most people think of it as something related to fair play and preventing violence; and preventing the kind of apocalyptic fears that you have about the future. I think of it sometimes as--forbearance is one way to think about it. Mike Munger on a previous episode about DOGE said, 'You really don't want to create a sword that your enemy might wield some day.' So, in one sense, a compromise is: Let's not push things too far even in my own direction, because some day things may be turned around. But you have something much, I think, more profound to say that comes out of, perhaps out of Christianity or Judaeo-Christian values, or perhaps even maybe out of Adam Smith. I don't know if you remember it. Tell us about it. Jonathan Rauch: I will. Russ Roberts: I tease you about remembering because it's a subtle idea, and it's on, like, one page. Jonathan Rauch: Oh, it's not teasing. Russ Roberts: But, I really liked it. I really liked it. Jonathan Rauch: I write so much; I look at my own work, and even sometimes recent work, and think, 'Did I write that? That's pretty good.' So, compromise is the core value of the Constitution in the sense that, if you had to summarize the Constitution on a bumper sticker, it is a compromise-forcing device. That's why it splits powers in so many directions. Madison is, I think, the greatest politician and political thinker in history, including Aristotle, because he answers the question that has bedeviled democracies and government since the beginning. Which is: What do you do about the power of ambition, the threat, the challenge of ambition, and the challenge of faction? The challenge of ambition is that you have these people who believe very strongly and who want to dominate the system. What do you do about that? How do you channel that? No system until then had managed to do that. And the second is: What do you do about factions? These are interest groups that try to take over the system, or go to war with each other and divide the country; and ultimately it collapses. Madison says, on the second of those things, faction: 'You enlarge the sphere of the Republic.' You have a big-enough republic so that you have lots of factions, and you put them into contestation with each other, and that becomes a creative force. What do you do about ambition? This is so brilliant. There's only one force capable of restraining ambition, and that's ambition. You pit ambition against ambition. And you require people to make bargains and negotiate with each other in order to achieve their ambitions. And that becomes a dynamic yet stable energy source for the country. This is so subtle and so intellectually daring. It has roots in Montesquieu and other things; but Madison is the guy who really sees how to implement a stable yet dynamic system; and it's based on compromise. And here's what so many people miss about this that I think you're alluding to, Russ. Sorry, I'm winding my way there-- Russ Roberts: It's great-- Jonathan Rauch: But we're there now. Americans today don't understand compromise because they think of it in the sense of compromising on your values. They think of it as, 'Okay: Two people walk into a room. They have different ideas. They split the difference. Both walk out unhappy.' That's not what compromise is. Compromise is when the two kids can't decide whether to play chess or checkers and make up a new game of their own. Or go out and find a third and fourth kid and say, 'What do you want to play?' And, wind up playing something different. Or even, make up their own game--Chesters--I don't know. Compromise is a dynamic force where people are required to channel their disagreements by looking for new solutions. What often happens in a compromise--ask any legislator--is, you walk out of the room with a better idea than anyone walked in with. There are all kinds of reasons for that. One is the compromise process forces people to gather information. Another is that it forces them to bring in new players. 'Okay, we can't solve this by ourselves. Let's go ask Russ if he can add such-and-such to the mix.' So, it enlarges the sphere. As Madison says. It forces creative and innovative thinking. So, compromise is a dynamic engine. It is a constructive and creative engine. It is not just about splitting babies in half. That's why it's so important for the Constitution to support it, and that's why it's so important for our great faith traditions to support it. Russ Roberts: Beautiful. |
| 43:07 | Russ Roberts: I want to talk a little bit about--I don't think this word is in your book, at least I didn't notice it--which is 'fundamentalism,' in a religious context. It makes an appearance--fundamentalism does--in the last part of the book, because you have a very, really interesting discussion of compromise and the Church of Latter Day Saints with the political sphere. But I want to talk about fundamentalism more generally. Again, since I don't know much about Christianity, and I know a little bit more about Judaism. I think, you know, in Judaism--and I suspect in other religions as well, both Christianity and Islam--there's a deep appeal of fundamentalism. It's more authentic. It's real. It's tied back to a, often a source of divine revelation. And that source of divine revelation isn't a suggestion or inspiring: it's the word of God. And therefore it acquires a power and a credibility that a watering down of that would not provide. At the same time, fundamentalists tend to be small. At least, that's the risk. You have this pure but passionate form of the religion. While it's appealing to be part of that group, that group often has very strong community bonds as a result, you don't fit in so well. It's too counter-cultural for a lot of people. So they want the more watered down version, the version that you alluded to earlier that's imported a lot of the values of the culture around us. And I think that's a perennial challenge for religion. If you think about decades, centuries, millennia, you can see it play out. How do you think about that? How is it possible--let me say it differently. Isn't some of the Sharpness of Christianity that you decry, this fear that the popular culture around is, quote, 'winning?' Now, you provide some evidence that that fear is overwrought, and I'm sympathetic to that evidence. But, there's other evidence that I think is also on the other side, which is: religion has a very tough time in the high ground of our culture. The fact that you could write a book like this, or that Ross Douthat--who was recently interviewed although the episode hasn't aired--can write a book called Believe, has a very new feel to it. Defending Christianity, defending religious belief can get a little bit of purchase in our culture. But for the last 40 years or so, in my adult life and probably yours, it's just socially unacceptable. So, I think there's this tension in religion and where it heads, the competitive marketplace that it finds itself in with secular ideas. It's hard to compete. And so it either goes in one direction or the other. It either becomes much more like everything around it, which is the Thin version, or it becomes Sharp. Maybe in the fundamentalist way, maybe in other ways. What do you feel about that tension and that question of fundamentalism? Jonathan Rauch: So much there. So, I'll say a few things if I can remember them, and hopefully they'll tie together into a meaningful worldview. So, this book is largely about tragic choices that Christians have made that have undermined Christian witness and liberal democracy, but it's not only about that. It's also about a mistake that I made and that a lot of people like me made, which is to neglect at best, and sometimes be outright hostile to Christianity in secular society. And to take to extremes doctrines like separation of Church and State, so that not one school prayer could be acceptable in any public school. Or, every single mom-and-pop cake baker in the country would be required to cater every single same sex-wedding, even if there's a baker across the street that's happy to do it. We showed surprisingly little interest or curiosity about faith. We did not make people of faith welcome in universities and workplaces. People who found out that I was working on this book would tell me: 'It's not that Christians are oppressed or anything like that. That narrative is just wrong. The Supreme Court in the United States is more pro-religion and religious liberty than it ever has been.' Yet, it is true that a lot of people of faith in secular workplaces keep their faith on the down-low. It could be a little bit embarrassing. I don't know: 'What will people think if they find out that I'm an evangelical? Or that I go to church, or that maybe I speak in tongues?' So they leave all of that at home. And that's a loss for secular society, for civil society. People should be able, as they say, to bring their whole selves to work. I could go on. DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] is now very controversial, but at its best it is about just asking ourselves, 'Are we making sure that people feel included and welcome?' That's okay. And sure, we ask that about race. But, do we ask it about people of faith? The answer is pretty much never. So, I think people like me bear a substantial burden of having ignored, overlooked the importance of Christianity in our society. Christianity is a load-bearing wall in our democracy. We forgot that. In fact, I think we helped undermine it. So, there is an important element of truth in the critique of secular liberalism. And, we got to do better; and I own that. This whole book is framed as an apology to two Christians, both of them now deceased. But, an apology for the dumbest thing I ever wrote, which was an article 22 years ago in Atlantic celebrating secularization as a great civilizational advance: 'Won't we be way better off without this religious mumbo-jumbo?' Boy, was I wrong. I was instrumentally wrong and I was theoretically wrong. So. Okay, let's stipulate that liberalism has not been as welcoming to Christianity as it should be; and I hope we can fix that. Nonetheless, something people always say about this book--and I think this is a way of restating the point you just made, Russ, but tell me if I'm wrong--is that, look, Christians have a lot to be fearful of in modern secular culture. I mean, they are swamped by the consumerism around them, the online pornography. They're worried that their kids will come home from school with a sex change of some sort. This secular culture, it's a drumbeat. And then you've got the Progressive Left, which, remember that moment when Beto O'Rourke announced in a Presidential Debate, basically, 'We're going to use the power of the state to force the compliance with anti-discrimination laws, including same sex marriage. We're coming for you.' He walked it back the next day, but everyone understood that he was saying what's in the heart of Progressives. So, yeah: the answer to that is there is a lot for Christians to be afraid of. But, let's go back to what we were saying earlier. The most repeated injunction in the Christian Bible is 'Don't be afraid.' One of the great parables, Jesus and the disciples are in a ship. And a storm comes up, and it's a bad storm. And the ship looks like it's going to founder and they're all going to drown. The disciples panic and they run up to Jesus, who is asleep. And they say, 'Oh, Lord, what do we do about this? My God, my God, we're sinking!' And Jesus awakens just long enough to tell them, 'Be calm.' That's his injunction. Jesus understands that this is a fearful world. Jesus knows we know that it's a fearful world because he winds up crucified. And, yet, his injunction to Christians is about: Does your faith amplify fear by telling you, 'We're losing our country. We won't be a Christian Republic anymore if the Democrat wins the election. You should panic about everything that's going on.' Or does it counsel the opposite? Does it counsel bringing a sense of calm, and dignity, and humanity to our political life? Coming at in a sense that, the fear--there are reasons to be fear, yet we should not let fear dominate our personal lives or our politics. A great theologian, Mark Labberton, the former President of Fuller Seminary, had a wonderful way of putting this. He had me on his podcast. We were talking about fear, and he said, 'Of course you should be fearful of God, if you're a Christian. And of course, fear is a reality in life.' But, 'What Jesus is warning against,' he says, 'is tyrannous fear. A fear that dominates your life so you become a slave to fear instead of fearful of God.' I think that's the answer to that. I think Christianity properly understood could help people approach these fearful questions in a less fear-driven way. Does that make sense? Russ Roberts: Oh, yeah, that was beautiful. I can't help but note: Rabbi Nachman of Breslov Dictum, it's been turned into a song. It's easy to find on the web; we'll put a link up to it. "The Whole World Is a Narrow Bridge": The most essential thing is not to be afraid. It's the Jewish version of that. |
| 54:05 | Russ Roberts: I want to--well first, just in passing, I want to mention that you say your book is written to two Christians. Your friendship, that you open the book with, with a devout Christian and your memories of him at the end of the book is deeply moving. Before we get to something else I want to talk about, I want to ask you if, in writing this book, you became more open not to tolerating the faith of others, but to being more open to your own potential interest in religion? Because it comes out in that conversation, in that when you write about it, it's quite moving. Jonathan Rauch: We get into a personal territory here and sometimes I get a bit emotional, but that's a good thing. The person you allude to was my freshman year of college roommate, Mark McIntosh. When I was 18, I had a very bad attitude toward religion generally, and Christianity specifically, because as a gay person--not even knowing it at the time--and as a Jew, I understood Christianity to be bigoted, and hypocritical, and cruel. And, I had ample reason to believe that; that was not wrong. Mark was the first person who showed me that Christianity could mean what it says. Now, he's flawed, and he got angry, and profane, and whatever. But, this was someone who is every action was deeply informed by Christian witness. And who showed me a grace that I did not deserve, because I was obnoxious as hell. I was your cliché militant atheist kid. And that's what first opened my eyes to the possibility that Christianity could mean what it says. That was a long journey. I was still pretty militantly secular 22 years ago. I didn't think I was hostile to Christianity, I just didn't think we needed it. But, getting to know Christians and seeing our country start falling apart, that reoriented me. You asked me about my faith. This is a little hard to describe. I'll do my best and maybe you can help me. I knew three things about myself--from, like the age of five or six, Russ. One was this unaccountable, very deep and disturbing at the time it seemed, attraction to boys and men. Even cartoon characters, like Superman. I knew that that was something I needed to hide and be afraid of. The second thing was of course I knew I was Jewish. Phoenix, Arizona had a pretty tight Jewish community. I was a member of a shul, I was bar mitzvahed, Hebrew school--all of those things. That made me very different. Christmas would come every year and that would mean we'd go to Katz's Deli. The third thing is I understood from very early that I could not believe in God. That it all just seemed silly, this big daddy-in-the-sky figure who works miracles and creates this fantastically huge cosmos, yet somehow finds time to dote over our every deed and misdeed. I just thought it was silly. I tried at one point. I was 14, I was at a Jewish summer camp. You've probably heard of it--Ramah. For those of you who are not watching, Russ is nodding. People around me were performing the rituals of faith. And I tried to believe, and I found I couldn't. So I gave up. What changed over time is that, as I got to know people of faith--Jews and Christians, especially Christians--I came to see that it's not that I'm the smart one who doesn't need the crutch of religion to go about my life and be virtuous. It's that I'm the one whose missing out. That they have a dimensionality, a depth to their life. Call it spirituality, call it faith, or call it what to them it is, which is the belief in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and all that flows from that. But, that gives them access to a side of human life and a way of being, and something very deep in ourselves that I don't have access to. I just don't. So, I feel that I'm in the position of someone who is maybe colorblind. I function perfectly fine. I'm happy being who I am. Please, Christians, don't line up trying to convert me. It won't work. And yet, I am aware that I'm missing out on something. It's like I'm not a parent, same thing. I have a full, and rich, and happy life, and yet I am aware there's a fundamental part of human existence that I don't share. I do feel--I'll try an analogy here; this is not in the book. It's kind of personal stuff. But, I do feel that talking to, knowing people like Mark McIntosh and the late Tim Keller--great, great pastor, died recently, a couple of years ago, co-dedicatee of the book--Pete Wainer, Frances Collins. Getting to know them, and learning about their world and the theology--have you ever been on a train and you've been kind of snoozing? And you wake up, and something is flashing by outside. Maybe a billboard, maybe an interesting building. And you sit up and you look at it. And you get a look at it, but then it's behind you. That's the glimpse that I feel I have of spirituality. That I can glimpse it. And during those glimpses, I have a sense of it. But I can't live it. So no, please don't feel sorry for me. But, do understand this book as a tribute, a tribute to Christianity at its best, and an admirer's plea to Christians to live up to their faith. |
| 1:00:56 | Russ Roberts: That's really beautifully said. You used the metaphor of being colorblind. I think of it as tone-deaf. Sometimes music doesn't speak to people, and as you say, you could have a beautiful life. What moves me--many things move me about what you just said and what you write in the book--but what I find especially moving is that, as you say, you get a glimpse. There's a terrain that many people spend their lives exploring that you were unaware of. And rather than just saying, 'It's a nasty land that no one would want to visit,' you understand that there's some special pieces to that. Jonathan Rauch: Yeah. And I understand--if I could add to that, the premise of this book is I also understand that I'm weird. And, that most people have--not everyone but many people--most people have a deep need for meaning in life that you're not going to get from Soul Cycle. Or, God help us, QAnon, or environmentalism. Answers to core questions: Why am I here? Am I more than just a random agglomeration of molecules that's here one day and gone the next? What's the source of morality? What's the difference between good and evil? The greatest liberal thinkers, Kant and Hume--towering intellects--have done their best with that. Adam Smith and The Theory of Moral Sentiments. And they've made huge gains, but ultimately they cannot find a grounding for morality that is deeper than human preference. And so, I also, at a deep level, understand that human society needs what religion can offer. Not just instrumentally, but existentially. We need answers to those questions. I don't think that the divinity of Jesus Christ is the right answer. I don't believe that. But, I do believe that it's a profound answer. And that in 2000 years of thinking--to say nothing of Judaism, which is another set of answers--3000 years, it has articulated some very deep and important moral concepts which you don't have to be Christian to believe. Russ Roberts: Yeah. I guess the question came up in a recent episode with Jeff Sebo, which again hasn't aired yet, but will by the time our conversation is out. A lot of our morality, I worry, is left over from Judaeo-Christian beliefs, values. If those underpinnings aren't there or aren't believed, how long will that last? We'll see. Jonathan Rauch: Yeah, that's Nietzsche's critique, of course. |
| 1:04:03 | Russ Roberts: Yeah. I want to close with maybe a little bit surprising place. I want to talk about Europe. And I want to talk for a minute about a trip I took to Prague. If you go to Prague, you're haunted by Kafka. He's everywhere. His face is everywhere. It's kind of depressing. He's on tote bags. It's just a little weird. Prague is pretty Jew-free. There's still a few Jews there now, but most of them were murdered. Kafka dies young of tuberculosis, I think. And, his three sisters are all murdered by the Nazis. And the Jewish stuff there is all huge tourist attractions. Cemeteries, Holocaust memorial, old synagogues, hundreds and hundreds of years old. But, there's nothing Jewish about Prague: it's just there's some things in Prague that are Jewish. It's really quite weird. So I'm thinking these thoughts and I end up one evening in a church. Not the fanciest church in Prague, but there's a lot of pretty nice ones that aren't fancy. And they're playing classical music. There's many churches in many places offering this in European cities. They're playing Bach and others. And, I realize that there's nothing Christian about Prague, either. It's a particularly secular city. But, once, just like there was this Jewish flavor to it culturally, from writers like Kafka and others, Christianity built Prague. It built those churches; it built that music; it built the sculpture about human yearning and imperfection. Prague is very secular--Czechoslovakia is a very secular country these days: much stronger than the trends that you talked about earlier in America. And you think about Europe generally. They gave up Christianity a couple decades before America did. Now, America is a complicated place. It may swing back. But, I want you to talk about two things. One: Is there anything to be learned from European democracy and Christianity--from that trend hitting there earlier? And secondly, a question I asked Ross Douthat, which is: Is there a justification for deducting religious expenses, membership in churches? Is it fair to ask non-believers like Jonathan Rauch to support the churches, the beliefs--and you could call it even a hobby--of mine or other religious people? Of course, your answer in this book is: 'Yeah, you're damn right it's worthwhile to subsidize. There is a public good element to this.' Now, a lot of listeners would disagree. I'm encouraging them to write us a comment. But, I'm curious about those two things. You've made a case in this book for the profound importance of religious belief. You close your book with some recommendations--mostly adjurations--adjuring Christians to take their faith seriously, as you have throughout our conversation. Are there any public policy implications to this? What do you think about a place like Europe, where at least on the surface of Christianity, it appears that there's no pendulum swinging back the other way? Jonathan Rauch: Well, in reverse order. The first one I'll dispatch pretty quickly because my book is primarily about private policy, not public policy. The core idea is that America is becoming ungovernable because Christianity is failing. As much as I'd like to be able to fix Christianity with a government program or a Brookings five-point white paper, I can't. They're going to have to do that work. The good news is a lot of them want to, a lot of them see what's happened. The people I've talked to who are most unhappy about the direction of Christianity are Christians. And, there's movements afoot to try to reform it, to try to build a civic theology that is more like Jesus and less like X--as Twitter is now called. But, no. You can argue about the charitable deduction. I would argue, look, if you're giving to everyone else that does charitable things, you better give it to Christians and Jews. That's a pretty easy call. If you ever decide not to make any charitable work tax-deductible, then we can have a conversation about the special role of religion. I hereby dispatch that aspect of your question, no doubt in an unsatisfying way. The other half of your question is more difficult, and more profound, and interesting. Which is: What do we say about Europe? The standard story about Europe is that it is partly because perversely it has the state religions that it is less religious. And this has been talked about for years--the distinctiveness of America and the vibrancy of American religious culture. Which meant primarily Christian culture. So, a few things to say about that. The first is: Am I saying that it is absolutely impossible to have a liberal democracy without a healthy faith sector? I don't know that it's absolutely impossible. I only think that it's harder. That everything else will be more polarizing and more different if, instead of a faith tradition that's reasonably well-aligned with your democratic values as most of the European mainline churches are, you have either the collapse of the faith tradition or faith traditions which are aligned against liberal democracy. That's where we are in America. I'm not sure you would say that that's where Europe as been. Because as weak as some of its institutional religion has been, those have been fairly closely aligned with democratic norms. Second thing: America is a very different kind of place than historic Europe. We'll set aside modern Europe; we'll come to that. But, of course, it's a land of great ethnic, cultural, national diversity. It is a creedal country in a way that, traditionally, the Netherlands or Britain was not. That meant that the job of bringing people together and socializing them into a common culture is a lot harder. That means that the load--I mentioned that Christianity is a load-bearing wall in America--the load that it has to bear is a lot more challenging just because you got to do all that extra work. You can't just assume that everyone is a Lutheran and everyone is white. And so that makes it more critical in the United States--and more damaging when a key institution that did that work of socializing fails. It turns out everything else just has harder work to do and doesn't do it as well. And so, given the difference in composition of the countries, I think you would expect America to have a harder time with the collapse of Christianity. And by the way, the collapse is much more recent here than the changes that we've seen in Europe. And very sudden. There hasn't been time to adjust. So, here's a third thing, and I would love to get your reaction to this. But, this challenges the premise. So Nietzsche, in the 1880s and 1890s, says: 'God is dead.' And what he says--people don't understand this--is he hates Christianity but he also recognizes its important, and that without it, secularism and modernity are going to struggle to offer any account of life. And basically says: People will have to go out and build their own. That may work for Fredrich Nietzsche; doesn't work for anyone else. It turns out, he's right, because in the 1920s and 1930s, everything falls apart in Europe. It falls apart in Russia. We get the rise of Fascism and Communism, and their[?they're?] false gods. And Nietzsche's vision comes nightmarishly true. And I think that can be attributed, as Nietzsche said, partly to the decline of the faith in Europe and the rise of secularization at a rate that people couldn't accommodate. Okay. So then you get the Post-War period. And we get the American security umbrella, and you get the rebuilding of institutions, and everything looks hunky-dory, and we all say, 'Look, secularism works in Europe.' Except, in the last few years, you get waves of migration of a kind we've never seen before. You get a city like London, where I'm told, British Anglo-Saxon whites are a minority. I'm not quite sure if that's true, but I've heard that said. You get places like Scandinavia, which take big inflows of people like Syrians. To say nothing of Germany. Mass migration becomes a thing in Europe; and you start to see the same kind of collapse that you're seeing here: polarization, anomie, anger at the democratic institutions; and across Europe, the right of these far-right parties. Christian nationalism is a big thing in Europe. Remember, it's nationalistic, but it's not Christian. It's a secular movement that appropriates Christian symbolism. In other words, maybe Europe is not so special. Maybe, when it comes under the same kinds of strains that we're seeing--everything from media fragmentation to mass migration--you see exactly the same things there as here. So, maybe we're talking about a global problem. |
| 1:14:18 | Russ Roberts: Well, I think we are. I think if you're a narrow person and you focus on your own country, you'll feel that there's something going wrong with it. But you are not alone. You and I are blessed and cursed to have grown up in a time mostly where things were pretty stable, and it looked like things were getting better slowly in material ways, in other ways--tolerance. And yet, I like to say the veneer of civilization is thin. I think times like these remind you of that: You're forced to recognize it, and the worst things that human beings are capable of--which describe the middle of the 20th century--don't seem as far away as they once did. So, I'm very concerned about the future. It's hard to see how it's going to go well. I'll quote James Buchanan, the economist. I once heard him say, 'If I look to the future, I'm a pessimist, but if I look to the past, I'm an optimist.' What he meant was: Boy, in 1933, it looked pretty dark; and the world survived, got better--a lot better--for a long time. So, sometimes when things are very dark like they seem now, sometimes they turn out surprisingly well. We somehow muddle through. But I think the thing that's disturbing--and your book has this I think as an undercurrent--is that the institutions and the sense of what Lord Moulton called 'obedience to the unenforceable'--the respect for certain norms--help get things taken care of without anyone having to explicitly solve them. We muddled through. Those things or institutions are not strong. The unenforceable norms are being ignored and people are much more opportunistic and self-interested. They want to wield that sword and they're not worried that their enemies are going to get a hold of it some day. So, I think these are incredibly scary, concerning times. But, there's a lot of optimism in your book and hope for better times, which I appreciated and enjoyed. You can close this out, respond to that in any way you want. Jonathan Rauch: Well, I wouldn't go quite as far as optimism because I'm in a dark place right now and because Christians themselves are deeply concerned about the Church's ministry. But, I would say hope. I would say hope, for sure. To me, it is a source of hope and even inspiration that the teachings of Jesus have within them the core ideas that would help restore governability to our country. And that those teachings, whether you believe in his divinity or not, have survived for 2000 years and prospered for 2000 years. Christianity is the world's biggest religion. And, something that Christians themselves forget but that other Christians remind them of, which is that Christianity is at its worst when it's seeking dominion, domination. When it wants to be the big man on campus and the big force in the culture. And that's what it's tried to be--what white Evangelicals have tried to be. And that's what they're afraid of losing and that's what seems to be driving their wedding to the MAGA movement and the Republican Party. And yet, if there's one thing we know about Christianity it is that it's at its strongest and most appealing when it is counter-cultural and exilic--as Jesus was. When it is coming to society not from the point of view of, 'We got to run this goddamn place,' but from the point of view of, 'We have a message that's very different from what you're hearing around you.' That is, as David French put it, 'shiningly counter-cultural.' It's a beacon of something different in life that's on offer for you. And so, the very weakness that we're seeing in both the Evangelical and the mainline churches may hold within them the key to restoring some of Christianity's core appeal and core message. That's the hope. Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Jonathan Rauch. Jonathan, thanks for being part of EconTalk. Jonathan Rauch: Thank you. |
READER COMMENTS
Jerry Benuck
Apr 21 2025 at 10:43am
The notion of compromise (at 37:46) is particularly interesting. Yuval Levin points out in “American Covenant” that it’s a key design point of our constitution. The purpose of which was not to create unity, but to govern based on effectively managing our differences.
One might also speculate that a reason for the success of the American economy and society is the innovations created by focusing our energies on compromise. I’m thinking of another past EconTalk guest, Matt Ridley and his previous book, “How Innovation Works.”
Thank you Jonathan and Russ. Great discussion!
Jerry
Tami Demayo
Apr 21 2025 at 1:39pm
Thanks you, Jonathan, for framing religion in a way that emphasizes the humane–and socially practical. May your ideas reach many ears.
Steve Spiller
Apr 21 2025 at 3:10pm
Jonathan Rauch describes his book, in part, as an apology to Christians for the brash and dogmatic rejection of his younger self. In is not just for his younger self, as he acknowledges that “there is a fundamental part of the human existence that I do not share.” Nevertheless he casts fault for today’s problems on the Protestant Christian religion – “America is becoming ungovernable because Christianity is failing.” For Jonathan Rauch it is Christianity that broke its Madisonian bargain to infuse a Christian moral fiber into the American people to guide them in our 250 year old experiment in self-governance.
Nowhere is there any recognition that it is his own self-identified sexualized left which sowed much of the discord in this nation by demanding “approval” of their lifestyle not the “acceptance” that the nation was willing to give. It is a not a subtle distinction, it is as fundamental as night is to day for many, many Christians. Russ may have been too generous to describe him as merely “tone deft.”
Alex Goodwin
Apr 21 2025 at 8:25pm
I think if a person is being persecuted by a group of people, it’s reasonable to think that they would want more than just acceptance, which is something that has definitely not been offered in too many cases.
Mark
Apr 22 2025 at 1:06am
American Christians, particularly of a conservative variety, certainly aren’t content to be merely tolerated by secular people; they demand much, much more from the rest of us, which has driven conservative Christianity to the point of lunacy in this country. It’s odd the that you can’t understand why others would also find mere tolerance unsatisfactory.
Steve Spiller
Apr 28 2025 at 10:43am
Mark – “Acceptance” verses “Approval.” It may be that I have not made myself clear. “Acceptance” is how we choose to act in our society. “Approval” is hugely different, in that it is internal to the individual – it is what an individual thinks.
Inspecting the differences in these two words through a Freudian lens: our minds for all humans can be described as being composed of the “id”, “ego”, and “superego”, (a) the “id” representing the most primitive and instinctual drives, including potentially destructive or anti-social impulses, while (b) the “ego” acts as our mediator, balancing the demands of the “id” with the realities of the external world, and (c) the “superego” is an individuals internalization of societal norms, serving as a moral compass suppressing and controlling these impulses. “Acceptance” is how we act to the external world. “Approval”, on the other hand, is purely internal and private – it is what we think.
DG
Apr 23 2025 at 10:31am
To Steve –
I think the distinction between “acceptance” and “approval” is an interesting one. On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to the idea that people should be free to hold their own beliefs, and I do find some of the more heavy-handed rhetoric from parts of the far left to be a bit thought-police-ish.
But I’m curious—what are the concrete examples of the left demanding approval in ways that are genuinely harmful to Christians? I’m not sure I see much real damage being done, unless we’re talking about broad cultural shifts—which, while uncomfortable for some, aren’t being driven by any single group.
Steve Spiller
Apr 28 2025 at 10:51am
DG – Revisit history – From the Spanish Inquisition, to Chinese Communist Red Guards public ‘self-criticism’ purges – both attempting to compel what individuals are allowed to think.
DG
Apr 28 2025 at 3:57pm
The Spanish inquisition? Geez.
I was trying to get at what you think the current issue is. You said the “left sowed much of the discord in this nation by demanding “approval””. That’s strong language, but I’m not sure what you really talking about.
Are there tangible policies you think are forcing you to “approve” of something? What are they? Because to me what your talking about feels more like an online echo chamber where people on each side gets progressively more outraged at the other. I think that’s more about biased news sources and the toxicity of social media than a real left wing movement.
Diana Weatherby
Apr 24 2025 at 1:56pm
Actually, he did just that Mr. Spiller.
If you look at the transcript or listen again at his response to the question asked by Russ at minute 43 you will see he responds:
” It’s also about a mistake that I made and that a lot of people like me made, which is to neglect at best, and sometimes be outright hostile to Christianity in secular society. And to take to extremes doctrines like separation of Church and State, so that not one school prayer could be acceptable in any public school. Or, every single mom-and-pop cake baker in the country would be required to cater every single same sex-wedding, even if there’s a baker across the street that’s happy to do it.”
and
“So, I think people like me bear a substantial burden of having ignored, overlooked the importance of Christianity in our society. Christianity is a load-bearing wall in our democracy. We forgot that. In fact, I think we helped undermine it.”
He said a lot more but that is enough for this reply.
Jesus teaches that we are to get the log out of our own eye before looking at the speck in another person’s eye. He seems to be attempting that. We all must ask if are doing likewise.
William Hope
Apr 21 2025 at 3:56pm
It’s kind of weird to acknowledge the fall of religion and then point to reforming the “Christian church” as key to political sanity. The reality is that “Christian America”, which is too diverse to generalize, will (and has historically) turn on a dime in a two party system. A wing of the Democratic party is screaming right now that it pushed the social woke agenda while abandoning the little guy, and it caused the working class to tack right. That’s closer to the truth of what happened.
Haven’t read his book yet, but it seemed like the argument was backwards. I may be alone here, but I felt like I was listening to an older person who is mad about the way the Republican party has turned. The more interesting discussion is an examination of why people are turning away from religion. The argument that the religious institutions turned political caused people to leave the church didn’t resonate with me. There is an incredible diversity, more than ever, of religious organizations for all religions. If your church went political, you can always find a different one.
I certainly won’t argue against the idea that we all should be more like Jesus. I just don’t feel like reforming the “Christian church” (if that can even be defined) will be effective if you are attempting to improve the political climate in the US.
Cindy
Apr 21 2025 at 4:34pm
At 15:30, if the conversation touches on Palestine, please do not omit the terrorist campaign waged by the European immigrants in order to establish a state. It’s regrettable that Russ allows Econ Talk to serve his political views as opposed to intellectual standards.
Russ Roberts
Apr 22 2025 at 5:39am
Your comment has nothing to do with this episode. We normally delete comments that are off-topic and encourage people to write me directly with suggestions or criticisms. I’d like this one to stay, however, just so you can be sure that we allowed you to have your say even though it is critical of me.
In return, please write me at mail@econtalk.org and let me know how I can improve. I’m also happy to hear suggestions for guests that challenge my political views. Thanks, Cindy.
Eric
Apr 21 2025 at 8:17pm
As a Christian, I gladly welcome Jonathan Rauch’s “chutzpah”, his appreciation of classical liberalism and Madison’s design, and his many very insightful observations. That said, he makes a couple mistakes, including ones where the more accurate truth is actually closer to his intended message.
No, Jesus is not just “about the next life”. He is about leading the coming of a kingdom made without hands (i.e. not man-made) into this world that was already promised in the Hebrew Scriptures (cf. Daniel 2). But it is not based on controlling land mass with political power. When he had received authority (not by Satan’s shortcut), he made it about calling people throughout the nations of this world to voluntarily become his disciples (i.e. his apprentices, his imitators) in this life (cf. Matthew 28:18-20). That is why Rauch is quite correct to identify “imitate Jesus” as a pillar of Christianity. There is no “Christianity” apart from choosing to be his disciple. This also connects directly to his important points about the way in which the founders expected the influence of Christianity to instill the virtues needed for a free society to thrive. If Christianity were only “about the next life”, it could not have that effect. The central theme of Rauch’s book requires that Christianity is about following Jesus in this life, not just the next life.
No, it wasn’t a parable. It was an actual event that he and the disciples experienced that threatened drowning. And no, Jesus did not tell the disciples, “Be calm”. He stood up and commanded the wind and the waves to be calm and so stilled the storm. To his own disciples, he didn’t give an “injunction”. He asked two questions. “Why were you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” (cf. Mark 4:35-41). So the real message speaks directly to the point that Jesus is teaching his disciples to not fear threatening circumstances, but rather to have faith. Rauch is correct to point out to Christians the importance of not fearing the threats we encounter that are from this world.
It is true that the “God-gap” (comparing Democrat vs. Republican religious belief and participation) is the greatest it has ever been measured to be. However, Rauch is neglecting a very important part of the story.
Rauch values how “Christianity is fundamentally a counter-cultural religion.” True. Going all the way back to the Didache, the earliest written Christian instruction we have after Scripture, part of that counter-cultural instruction was to recognize (contrary to Roman culture) that abortion and infanticide are morally wrong.
At one time when the God-gap was small, there was a place for pro-life Democrats in the Democrat Party. Now that species of politician may be extinct. Today’s progressive Democrat Party has pushed Bible-believing Christians out. They are not welcome there. If they are to participate at all in politics, which party increasingly scorned, disdained, and mocked them and their values, and which one welcomed them? I think Rauch knows (and apologized for his own part in the secularization of the Left), but he described this movement as if it were an arbitrary choice made unilaterally by evangelicals in a vacuum. Evangelicals didn’t secularize the Democrat Party.
All that said, Rauch is not wrong to point out the mistaken “deal” of compromising Christian values for the sake of supporting one side in order to gain political power over the other side — as if political power will achieve the kingdom that Jesus is building. It cannot. And Rauch is quite right to point out at the end that no government program can fix our mistakes about putting too much focus on earthly political means.
I thank Jonathan Rauch for his contribution.
Zarathustra
Apr 21 2025 at 9:02pm
I found this to be a really powerful conversation. I was raised Catholic, but became an atheist pretty young, not out of any animosity or sense of rebellion, but just out of a feeling of disconnection and an overly strong confidence about the capabilities of science to explain the world.
Over the last several years, I’ve been exposed to more positive depictions of religion and its role in society. I can appreciate its benefits and why it’s appealing to so many. I think I’d be happier joining a religious community, but I can’t quite make that leap of faith to feel like I belong at a religious gathering or have any comfort being there. It’s been so long since I could even relate to believing in a god that it’s hard to do at this point.
I was really interested in what Rauch had to say about how he handled his newfound appreciation of religion and if he found faith. I was a little disappointed in his answer, but I don’t think he’s done thinking about it yet either.
Is anyone else here in a similar boat?
JSB
Apr 21 2025 at 9:55pm
There was a lot to love in this podcast. I really appreciate the guest’s heart, which came through loud and clear at times. A Christian listener like myself comes away both challenged and frustrated. This topic might be more fully explored through an interview with Professor Joshua Mitchell (Georgetown), who would add some interesting context and provide deeper discussion to one’s thinking on this topic.
Shawn
Apr 21 2025 at 10:33pm
Liberals erode and subvert society and then have the gall to complain that civilization is falling apart, hoping the unwashed rabble rediscovers tradition.
Marc
Apr 22 2025 at 1:17am
Closer to the opposite. Rauch, I suspect, has resigned himself to the persistence of Christianity and is trying to push it in what he sees as a salutary direction, at a time when conservative Christianity, as it currently exists, is tearing American society apart. He’s extending to you an undeserved olive branch.
I’m far less charitable than him. What American Christians are doing right now is just more evidence that Christianity (and the other abrahamic religions) must be left in the dustbin of history for civilization to be safe.
J Mann
Apr 23 2025 at 9:28am
What is your concern about what Christians are doing?
Christians are disproportionately pro-life and probably disproportionately pro-Israel, but those are positions that many atheists hold as well. Is it just that Christians don’t agree with some of your political goals, or do you have other concerns. Thanks!
DG
Apr 23 2025 at 10:48am
I think the core concern Jonathan is raising is that “sharp Christianity” has been on the rise—and that it appears increasingly anti-democratic and anti-freedom. If he’s right, this isn’t just a policy disagreement; it’s an existential issue for the country.
J Mann
Apr 24 2025 at 10:42am
Thanks – I’m still not clear on what sharp christianity has done that is so objectionable that Marc wants the whole religion destroyed.
DG
Apr 24 2025 at 6:59pm
J Mann –
Obviously, I’m not in favor of “destroying” an entire religion. I can’t speak for Mark, but I’ll note that he didn’t use that language.
I do agree with you that Jonathan and Russ could have spent more time detailing what the “sharp” movement is doing that’s specifically anti-democratic (small “d”). That said, they did point to blind loyalty to Trump as a central concern—and there’s a fairly long list of actions by Trump that could reasonably be described as anti-democratic or anti-freedom. The most obvious, of course, is his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
J Mann
Apr 25 2025 at 10:01am
Thanks!
I would note that about half the country voted for Trump, of course, so I’m not sure what that says about Christians.
Obama and Biden didn’t do themselves favors by requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to fund abortions for employees at their rest homes or requiring Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. You can reasonably argue that abortion rights are so important that Catholics who disagree just shouldn’t operate rest homes and hospitals, but I’m not sure it’s anti-Christian or anti-democratic to disagree.
DG
Apr 28 2025 at 9:05am
J Mann –
Obviously abortion is a though issue, where both sides (in my view) have reasonable claims about basic human rights. Although I would still say both sides should agree to resolve the issue democratically (small “d”).
As a side note, I’m not sure I agree with your characterization of the little sisters case. It was primarily about contraception (e.g. birth control pills), not abortion, and there was always a religious exemption in the law for the contraception mandate. So the actual issue was pretty limited in scope. But regardless, nuns who have devoted their lives to caring for poor people would solidly count as “thick” christians, so not really the group that Jonathan is talking about.
You raise a good political science point though. Jonathan claims that (A) “sharp” christianity is a lynch pin in an anti-democratic movement by Trump, and (B) “thick” christianity was a pro-democratic (small “d”) force in the past. He doesn’t really explain why he thinks those things are true, but in fairness to Jonathan, Russ really doesn’t ask about it at all. Seems like an odd ommision.
Elizabeth
Apr 22 2025 at 3:43pm
I’m pretty sure that the beating heart of Christianity is not Jesus’s message; it’s his death and resurrection, through which he saved us from sin. Accepting Jesus as one’s lord and savior precedes an attempt to follow his teachings or “imitate” him.
Roger McKinney
Apr 22 2025 at 5:13pm
The irony of people who despise Christianity begging for it to come back! Tom Holland did something similar in his book Dominion. Then there is Richard Dawkins who begs for culture Christianity.
The real problem is envy. Envy powers socialism. Helmut Schoeck wrote in Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior that only Christianity in the West managed to suppress envy enough to allow for innovation and economic development. As Christianity recedes, envy explodes.
Shalom Freedman
Apr 23 2025 at 2:51am
An interesting conversation with valuable insights but I do not think it has much chance of working. You cannot turn the clock back. The United States today with its less than replacement birth-rate and its vast increase in one-person households is following the Western European model of ceasing to believe in its own future. Only a fool believes in their predictions for the future of any society based on the continued operation of present trends, but I would not bet on the future as something one goes back to.
AL
Apr 23 2025 at 12:40pm
Fantastic episode, thanks to Russ and Jonathan!
One thing that I take great issue with is Jonathan’s statement that:
Amidst a great conversation and many brilliantly insightful points from Jonathan, this statement is surprisingly ignorant and dismissive of any contribution to the understanding of moral reasoning and moral theory beyond “human preference” across a variety of disciplines in the history of thought.
Richard W Fulmer
Apr 23 2025 at 8:04pm
Atheists such as George Will and Will Durant have argued that, while there is no evidence for God’s existence, societies have tended to collapse when they lose their faith. Could the failure of atheism at scale be evidence that something greater than ourselves exists? The human rights records of officially atheist regimes – such as the USSR, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia – do little to recommend atheism as a foundation for civilization. Scientists typically reject theories that don’t work.
Greg
Apr 24 2025 at 8:12pm
Is the US becoming ungovernable, as Mr. Rauch claims? Or could it be the case that Mr. Rauch and many others do not care for the governments that have been elected into office with considerable support from Christians? The latter seems more likely. Mr. Rauch’s message to Christians (“be more like Jesus”) is likely to be welcomed by some Christians, more so than his previous message in favor of secularism. And if Christians became more like Jesus and less supportive of Trump, they may more likely help elect candidates more to Mr. Rauch’s liking. This is the only sensible message I derive from this and other recent interviews Mr. Rauch has given. I hope he is successful in encouraging some Christians to reconsider their support of Trump and similar candidates, but the historical justification he provides for his argument seems weak at best and maybe even cartoonish.
Was the demanding form of “Thick Christianity” ever the dominant form in the first 200 years of the US? It does not seem so as evidenced by the treatment of women, Native Americans, or people of African or Asian descent. Slavery, racial segregation, Jim Crow laws, and unequal treatment of women were often justified by Biblical interpretations of Christian churches. Several states had requirements that public office holders belong to a specific Christian denomination.
Even if you think the “be like Jesus” form of Christianity was dominant for the first 200 years of the US, then the question becomes: Was the country really more governable prior to 1960? Only partially so from 1861-65. And I think many women and minority groups would question whether it was properly or fairly governed before or after 1865.
And if the Christian Church is to be counter-cultural, isn’t that disruptive? Many churches were counter cultural during the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
A possible historical example of counter-cultural disruptive Christianity is described by Marilynne Robinson. In a few essays and talks, she describes a group of graduates from elite seminaries in the eastern US moved to the frontiers of Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas in the mid 1800s to oppose slavery. They established colleges and stops on the Underground Railroad. They were counter cultural and disruptive. In some places in the Gospels, Jesus says he comes not to bring peace, but division. He overturned the tables. Ultimately the state of Rome considered him an enemy and executed him. The early Christians were similarly ungovernable.
If some Christian Trump voters shift their attention and loyalty from Trump to Jesus, I think that may reduce the likelihood of Trumpist candidates being elected to public office. But being more like Jesus can go in a variety of different directions, as has occurred during the last 2000 years including the last 250 in the US.
Kevin Ryan
Apr 25 2025 at 2:32am
Very interesting podcast. The following comment is from my background as a long since lapsed ethnically Irish Catholic. Which is that although ‘Christians’ and ‘Christianity’ was quoted numerous times, what JR was actually talking about was Protestants and Protestantism in the US.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that my comment is anything other than tangential to the discussion, or that conclusions would be different if a wider scope of Christian denominations were included. (Although it may have made for a richer story, especially given the longer and broader experiences of the older Churches).
However it did bring me back to an imaginary conversation I used to have in my head many times when I was much younger about discussions mentioning ‘Christianity’ reported in the UK media at the time. These invariably finished with my conclusion of:-
‘They’re talking about ‘Christians’. That’s not us. We’re not Christians. We’re Catholics’. (If not clear, what I am reflecting is that practising Catholics always spoke about themselves as being ‘Catholic’ at the time. Everyone else was a ‘non-Catholic’. The only RC people who referred to us as ‘’Christians” (other than when referring to the early Church) were the odd few who thought we should be seeking some sort of unification with the non-Catholic denominations (which of course was a nonsense idea as they did not believe the same things as we did).
Trent
Apr 25 2025 at 11:26am
Enjoyed the podcast very much, and I agree with the author’s criticisms of Christianity. Of course, the problem is trying to define what “Christianity” is – different denominations will disagree, and those within the same denomination may well disagree. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a strong consensus among denominations about what a person has to believe to be considered a Christian.
The issue of Christians/Christian churches straying from the teachings of Jesus is real – and it’s one that Jesus knew would happen. That’s why when He gave His final marching orders to His 12 apostles, Jesus told them to “teach them to observe all that I have commanded you” (the very end of the Book of Matthew). In other words, stick to what Jesus taught…don’t add on other stuff that may prevent people from finding and following Jesus.
I found the author’s personal faith journey to be refreshing. Yes, there are plenty of Christians who may do a poor job of following Jesus – we all fall short as none of us are perfect. But that human fallacy doesn’t mean that you should turn away from Jesus; in fact, it’s why we all need Him.
Further, Jesus’ initial and overarching invitation is to follow Him. Just follow Him. Not to go through a big change first….not to agree to profess a lot of beliefs first….simply to follow Him. For in following Him, you will change. Maybe not believe, as the author says he still does not, but he does admit that he’s changed. As one Atlanta megachurch says in their mission statement, they want to help more people follow Jesus because it will not only lead them to a better life, but it will make them better at life.
Yes, Christians all need to do a better job at being Jesus Followers, myself included. If we all did that, our communities would be better places, and perhaps our government. As Jesus Followers, we should want our community to be happy that our church is present because of all that we do in and for the community. We should want our employers to be happy that we’re working for them because of the work ethic, integrity, values, etc., that we exhibit on the job. We should want our employees to be happy that they’re working for us because we are true servant leaders in our management positions. And so on. If we truly followed Jesus’ teachings (and the author outlined three of them pretty well), we would stand out in these ways.
Lastly, the author’s comments about the tactics that some Christians have employed is, again, a valid criticism. I recently heard a tenet that whenever the Church employs the tactics of earthly kingdoms, it not only loses, but actually takes a step back. But whenever the Church employs the tactics of (King) Jesus, everybody wins, non-believers included, because of all the positive side-effects.
I hope you have more guests on this, and related topics, in the future.
Mark Maguire
Apr 26 2025 at 5:04pm
Another great podcast, wow, thanks.
I’ve been reading “The Diary of Anne Frank”. Today, I happened to come upon these thoughts of Anne, at the end of her diary entry of July 6, 1944 (The whole diary entry for that day is well worth reading). She had just turned 15 years old at the time.
One of the people Anne was in hiding with was Peter Van Pels. He was school age, a little older than Anne. He was talking negatively about his future. Anne was trying to formulate responses. Part of her thinking:
“Poor boy, he’s never known what it feels like to make other people happy, and I can’t teach him that either. He has no religion, scoffs at Jesus Christ, and swears, using the name of God, although I’m not orthodox either, it hurts me every time I see how deserted, how scornful, and how poor he really is. People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don’t necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death, purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can’t accept, but still a religion, it doesn’t matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn’t the fear of God but the upholding of one’s own honor and conscience.”
Timothy Born
Apr 27 2025 at 5:32pm
Regarding the 2016 election, bringing up Trump without bringing up Hillary Clinton betrays a deeply flawed view of elections. Christians were not given the option of “no president” or any other realistic candidate. Plenty of voters “held their nose” and voted for a realistic candidate over their preferred one. Rauch appears to confuse political allegiance for political realism (which he wrote a book about!).
In particular, Clinton’s views on abortion (refusing to give any limitations), woke politics, and lack of immigration enforcement assured many would vote for her most-competitive opponent regardless of their lack of Christian pedigree.