Christianity and Secularism in America, with Jonathan Rauch

”I grew up thinking that Christianity was basically cruel and hypocritical.”

“The core teachings of Jesus align very well with the core teachings of James Madison.”

“That's why we need Christianity. It's not because we don't have reason to fear. It's because we do.”

—Jonathan Rauch, from the episode

We’re at a crossroads, where Christianity and secularism in America are both operating at cross-purposes, and both need a critical reassessment of their role in democratic public life.

In his new book, Jonathan Rauch “reckons candidly with both the shortcomings of secularism and the corrosion of Christianity.” He “addresses secular Americans who think Christianity can be abandoned, and Christian Americans who blame secular culture for their grievances.”

Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode),  Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch.

He is also a celebrated essayist, a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and a recipient of the 2005 National Magazine Award, the magazine industry's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize.

In this episode Mark Labberton and Jonathan Rauch discuss:

• Republican virtue
• What Jesus and James Madison have in common
• The political idolatry of secularism
• The differences between the thin church, sharp church, and thick church
• The political orientation of the church in exile
• Tyrannical fear
• The Morman church’s example of civic theology “of patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation”
• The promise of power in exchange for loyalty

About Jonathan Rauch

Jonathan Rauch is senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books, including The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth and his latest book (under discussion in this episode),  Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. Follow him on X @jon_rauch.

Show Notes

• Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy
• The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
• Reasonable, civic mindedness
• “Graciousness toward a faith you don’t share.”
• “Of course I knew I was Jewish. I also knew that the idea of God seemed silly to me. I just never, never could believe it.”
• The Rev. Dr. Mark McIntosh
• 2003 Atlantic article: “The dumbest thing I ever wrote” celebrating secularism in America (”Let It Be,” The Atlantic, May 2003)
• “ It turned out that when Christianity started to fail, people started looking for substitutes, because they were looking for a source of identity and values and transcendent meaning.”
• Political idolatry of secularism
• “A major reason the country is becoming ungovernable is because of Christianity’s crisis. We can no longer separate the two, and that’s why I, a very secular person, am writing a book about Christianity.”
• “Moving away from the teachings of Jesus…”
• “The core teachings of Jesus align very well with the core teachings of James Madison.”
• Mark’s description of his father: “ My dad used to save certain neck veins for the discussion of religion because he felt like it was something that should be avoided, at that time, at all costs, particularly its most zealous kind. And his primary critique was that what religious people do is that they take great things and make them small. …   What shocked me when I became a Christian was this discovery that Jesus and my dad had this same theme in common, that Jesus often objected to the small making of various religious authorities of his day.”
• “God’s capacious grace, creativity, purpose, and love”
• Will the church live in its identity as followers of Jesus?
• “Christianity is a load-bearing wall in our liberal democracy.”
• “Republican virtues” (not the party): lawful, truthful, civic education, tolerant, pluralistic
• Christianity’s role in upholding the unprecedented religious freedom
• “When Christians begin demanding things that are inconsistent with those core values, that makes everything else in the country harder.”
• “The thin church is a church that blends into the surrounding culture and it becomes diluted.”
• “The sharp church is …  where the church takes on the political colorations of the surrounding environment, aligns itself with a political party.”
• Divisive and polarizing
• “The third is the thick church. And there, the challenge is that you want a church to be counter cultural. You want it to have a strong sense of its own values. Otherwise, it's just not doing the work. So it needs to ask a lot of its followers. It needs to give a lot back in exchange. That's what sociologists mean by, by thick communities and groups. At the same time, it needs to be reasonably well aligned with our constitution and our liberal democratic values.”
• Church of fear
• Fear of demographic decline
• Cultural fear and losing the country to the woke Left
• Fear of emasculation
• Plain old political fear: “Our side needs to win.”
• Fear as a major theme of the Bible
• Fear of God as “the beginning of wisdom”
• “A communion of unlike people. … A workshop in which the character of God … is meant to be learned.”
• Immaturity and lack of wisdom in the church
• “The chief defense of the faith in the world that Jesus died and rose is that unlike people find communion with one another in a union that only Jesus Christ's death and resurrection could actually accomplish.”
• “Tyrannical fear”—a drive for dominance
• “Fear is part of the human condition. Yet what's so countercultural about Christianity, is its teaching that you can't be governed by that fear. You can't let it run your life and go around in a state of panic. And that Jesus Christ himself had lots to be fearful of, as we know from the end that he came to, and yet comported himself in this calm and dignified way, did not let fear triumph over him. That's why we need Christianity. It's not because we don't have reason to fear. It's because we do.”
• “Fear casts out love.”
• Trump administration[’s] … demonstration of a capacity to have literally no compassion, no empathy.”
• The paradigm of Exodus versus the paradigm of exile
• Isaiah 58: “ Now as strangers in a strange land in Babylon, I'm going to ask you: Who are you now? Who do you trust now? Who are you going to put the full weight of your life on now?”
• “Exilic Church”
• “ Christianity is not about owning the country or winning in politics.”
• “It can’t be a coincidence that at a moment when (at least) white Protestantism in the United States is obsessed with political influence and has mortgaged itself to the least Christlike figure possibly in American political history (in any case, right up there) that its numbers are shrinking catastrophically.”
• “The irony of the cross always is this self emptying power.”
• [Trump] is saying, “I will give you power, and in exchange, you will give me unquestioning loyalty.”
• Comparing Trump’s transaction (at Dordt University in Iowa) “If you vote for me, you will have power” with the temptation of Christ in the desert: “All of this will be yours if you bow down to me.”
• Transactional relationship with power
• The Mormon church’s “ civic theology … of patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation”
• Jesus: “Don’t be afraid, imitate Jesus, and forgive each other.”
• Madisonian liberalism: “Don’t panic if you lose an election, protect minorities and the dignity of every individual, and don’t seek retribution if you win, share the country.”
• “When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he said, ‘It would be a good idea.’”
• Black church and MLK Jr.—”emphasis on Reverend”
• “You accept the stripes and the crown of thorns. You turn the other cheek.”
• Profoundly counterintuitive countercultural example

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.