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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. [More to come, 1:04:03]
