Chris Beem, McCourtney Institute for Democracy managing director and research professor of political science at Penn State, talks with author Jonathan Rauch about why the current crisis in American Christianity is also a crisis in American democracy.
In his new book "Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy," Rauch (a lifelong atheist) asks what happens to American democracy if Christianity is no longer able, or no longer willing, to perform the functions on which our constitutional order depends?
In the book and in this conversation, Rauch encourages Christians to recommit to the teachings of their faith that align with Madison, not MAGA, and to understand that liberal democracy, far from being oppressive, is uniquely protective of religious freedom. At the same time, he calls on secular liberals to understand that healthy religious institutions are crucial to the survival of the liberal state.
This episode is the third in a series of discussions Chris has hosted about religion, liberalism, and democracy. The first was with journalist Tim Alberta about the evangelicals and the MAGA movement; the second was with political theorist Alex Lefebvre about the role of liberalism in our daily lives. Those episodes come together in this conversation with Rauch.
Episode Transcript
Jenna Spinelle
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University. Welcome to Democracy Works. I'm Jenna Spinelle. This week, my colleague and co host Chris Beem, the Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute, is in conversation with Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, among other places. If Jonathan's name sounds familiar, it's because we've had him on the show before. He joined us about two years ago or so, when his book The Constitution of Knowledge, came out, and he is back with a new book just out from Yale University Press called Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. And this book looks at Christianity, not so much as dogma or faith, but more as institution, much in the same way we would think about other institutions as part of America's liberal democracy. And this conversation between Chris and Jonathan really fits in nicely with some other interviews that Chris has done here on the show with Tim Alberta about the rise of evangelical Christianity and how that dovetails with the American right, as well as with Alex Lefebvre about liberalism and how it can be more than just a set of governing institutions, but how we can think about it as a way of life. So this discussion and Jonathan's book cross purposes combines all of those things together, and it's a nice trifecta, if you will, in those series of conversations. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this conversation between Chris Beem and Jonathan Rauch.
Chris Beem
Jonathan Rauch, welcome to Democracy Works. Welcome back. I should say.
Jonathan Rauch
It's good to be back. Chris, thank you.
Chris Beem
All right, so let's, let's start here. The subtitle. We're talking about your your new book, Cross Purposes and and the subtitle of the book is Christianity's Broken Bargain with democracy. And you are very explicit and upfront you are not a Christian, you're a Jew, but you're not a believing one, and you're gay. So there's a lot of Christians, and probably Jews too, who think you're in violation of God's law. So, so at first glance, it doesn't seem like you would be the right person to write this book, but, but once you hear the argument, it becomes apparent, I think, to Well, certainly came compared to me, that on on those terms, you're the perfect person, because you think that our society needs Christianity, and if this bargain is to be restored, then all of us should kind of think that, irrespective of whether where you come down on the faith question, all of us need to kind of Be aware of and concerned about the condition of this relationship. Is that a fair summation?
Jonathan Rauch
It's, it's more than fair. It's, it's beautifully stated. Yeah, I am one of a small but I think fast growing number of secular, non believing Americans who, 20 or 30 years ago, welcomed secularization and thought, well, that's great. We're getting over the dogmas of the past. We maybe don't need them anymore. We're turning into Scandinavia. We'll have less conflict and less dogma and less bigotry against people like me. And we discovered that we were very wrong about that, that that in that they the rapid decline, the cratering of Protestantism in America. We can talk about what's happening in some of the numbers, but the cratering of Protestantism has had all kinds of Baleful social consequences, and one of them is it's making the country impossible to govern, ungovernable. So I'm one of, I think, a small but growing number of people who are saying, Look, secular America has a stake in the health of Christianity. We can't fix it. That's for Christians to do, but, but we can certainly be more sympathetic and and welcoming and supportive Interesting.
Chris Beem
Well, why don't we start with, you know the four M's, because what you're arguing is that there are basic, fundamental, inescapable human needs, and liberalism can engage and meet some of them, Christianity can engage and meet some of them, but neither one can do all of them. And so can you kind of go through the four?
Jonathan Rauch
Yeah, you know, there's this view that that you and your audience may have heard associated with, for example, neoconservatives like Irving crystal, that. Well, religions, religion is not true, but I'm glad other people believe it. It's good for society that they do, and I'm not one of those people. I'm trying to make a deeper argument in this book, which is that the world view of secular liberalism, that's science and all of that, is crucial, but it's incomplete, that there are two fundamental questions that most people, not everyone, but most people, feel they have some sort of need to answer. And they both begin with m1, is mortality and one is morality. Mortality is what is the purpose of my being here? Is there a reason for life just me being a random clump of protoplasmic cells that will expire in a few years and leave no trace behind? That's a very unsatisfying view of life. And the second is the question of morality, which is, mustn't there be some kind of transcendent or fundamental anchor for right and wrong beyond just it's my preference, and I prefer my way to your way. Well, the great religions offer answers to both those questions. For someone like me, an atheist, I don't think they're satisfying answers, but most people do, and it turns out that secularism just cannot fill that role. It can try, but it can't. There are two other M's. There are two other roles that it turns out the world of religion can't answer in an equally fundamental way. One is what I think of as murder, and the other is magic, or miracles. Murder is why would a good God allow evil? Why would he allow people to kill and hurt each other? Why, for that matter, would he create small pox and childhood diseases? Religions never been able to answer that. Christianity certainly hasn't, in a compelling way. It's, you know, it's tried, it's, it's, it's made headway. But the great, late Pastor Tim Keller once told me that he's thrown everything he possibly could from Christian theology into the bucket of explaining the problem of evil, and never got it more than about two thirds or three quarters of the way full. And then the fourth issue is magic, or miracles. That once you introduce a religious worldview in which miracles can happen, it becomes impossible to come up with a systematic, socially adjudicable account of the world. You're not doing science anymore. You're not comparing notes and looking for regular patterns, you're saying it happened because I saw a revelation. It happened because of God. So in order to get past that kind of randomness in explaining the world, you got to have some rules, and those are the rules that science provides. But the bottom line is that fundamentally, at an intellectual level, even an existential level, these two systems, the system of faith and religion and the system of liberalism and science, they will always be in tension, but they will always need each other. They're like, like, imagine two posts or beams that are leaning on each other for support.
Chris Beem
I interviewed Alexander Lefebvre about his book, Liberalism as a Way of Life, and it's a really good book, but it is him as something a very similar question, and and he acknowledged that liberalism is deficient, but he basically said, you know, that's a choice he's willing to make. And I'm like, I wonder if he's actually had a dark night of the soul, because I don't think he'd be quite as, I don't know, insouciant, or whatever else you want to call it, if you had but in any case, I, you know, I think that this, this kind of fundamental insufficiency of both is, is a big deal for your argument and And that is why, you know, our society needs Christianity, and you call it an implicit bargain. Can you? Can you say what you mean by that?
Jonathan Rauch
So the founders of liberalism, small l liberalism, that's, that's the system we rely on. That's market economics, and it's science, and it's liberal democracies, the founders of those things, and specifically the founders of the American republic, were very smart people, and they understood, I think, better than we do today. They understood the insufficiency of liberalism. They understood that liberalism can create processes and institutions and norms and rules that can guide us toward being our better selves and settling our conflicts in ways that are peaceful and productive and in keeping with what Alexander Lefebvre says. They also understood that liberalism is not value neutral, but. That it relies on certain values, like truthfulness, lawfulness, civility, forbearance. And they understood that fundamentally, for example, the US Constitution cannot provide those values. It needs a substrate of institutions in the larger society, they called it Republican virtue that will furnish those crucial moral values that liberalism needs. So they always understood that the Constitution did not stand entirely by itself. It needed help, and for that help, they turned to civil society, and at the core of civil society in their day, and yes, still, despite everything in ours, was religion. So what they were saying is not everybody has to be a Christian in order to be a good American citizen, or Christian should run the government, or anything like that. But they were saying that in order to have a healthy liberal society. You have to need, you have to have a healthy civil society. And part of that, a lot of that just has to come from a healthy religious sector.
Chris Beem
So you have Christianity that have this role, and you say that it's veered in two separate, distinct and maybe slightly partisan directions, right? And you call them thin and sharp, do you want to you want to talk about them briefly? I mean, they're both very complicated, especially the sharp one, but, but yeah. I mean, just give us the the, you know, 50 cent tour of those two terms.
Jonathan Rauch
So there have been two versions of the same kind of thing over the past 50 or so years, and that kind of thing is secularization. And secularization means reducing the distinctiveness of religion. Specifically, we're talking about Christianity in this book. So reducing the distinctiveness of Christianity so that it blends into the general culture and stops being counter cultural and becomes just another consumer good or another political good. And people kind of say, what's the point? The first wave of that was in the mainstream, mainline Protestant churches, starting in the mid 20th century, they got less and less interested in the Bible and the specific teachings of the Gospels and Jesus, and more and more interested in social works, they veered to the left. And by the 70s or 80s, people were just leaving those churches in long large numbers, because they didn't seem to be providing the distinctiveness, the sense of mission and purpose. And so then everyone at that point, you'll remember this, Chris, but people were saying, well, so the evangelical churches are picking up the slack. We're talking about white Protestantism here. The Evangelical churches were growing like Topsy, and you had the mega churches, and they were saying, look, it's because we remain anchored in the Word of God in the Bible. That is what we're teaching. We are distinctive. But then they, a generation later, went down the same path and threw their lot in with politics, partisan politics, the white Evangelical Church increasingly invested in in politics and in partisan politics, without understanding that they couldn't change politics without politics also changing them. So going into this century, they were providing 80% of them. 80% of white evangelicals were voting Republican. They had become the Republican base, and then along comes Donald Trump and the Maga movement, possibly the most un Christ like figures to appear in politics in recent times. And that made no difference. They became deeply invested in Trump and the MAGA movement, they're Christians who say they became idolatrous that they put Donald Trump ahead of Jesus Christ. We began to see a change in the complexion of the church. This is what I mean by sharp it began to lose members. So now evangelical churches are shrinking just as fast as the mainline churches did a generation ago. And as they become smaller, they become sharper, more partisan, more fearful, more invested in the culture wars, and those things are now feeding each other. So again, sorry. Long disquisition there, but two cycles of secularization, both wine and. Up in the same place, which is Christianity is just not as able to do the job that the founders wanted it to do, of giving us those cultural values that are fixed on the transcendent things and not the politics or the Society of this moment.
Chris Beem
So there's no doubt in my mind that that Christian nationalism is a heresy. But I think the other thing I took from your book is this idea of fear as being so fundamentally un Christian. And you made me think of John Paul two's first trip to Poland, when Poland was still, you know, a communist country, and that's what he preached on, was Be not afraid. And there was something deeply, profoundly political about that, but it was also deeply and profoundly Christian, right? It was like, no you, if you're going to commit to this, you should recognize that fear is something that God does not want you to feel that if you are genuinely a Christian, you are, you recognize that God is in charge. Now I've been going on too long.
Jonathan Rauch
No, Chris, you haven't because, Chris, that's beautifully stated, and it is such a central point. The the injunction, scholars say, that's probably repeated most often throughout the Bible, is, don't be afraid. Have faith in God. And Jesus says has, have faith in the next world and and the sharp church, as I've called it, is, I also call it the church of fear, because it's organized around this fear that Christianity is under siege. We're losing our way of life. The Liberals are taking over the culture. They're going to turn our boys into girls and our girls into boys. It's organized around fear, and it's not predominantly coming from the pastor. If this is a big change since the 70s and 80s, you know, the age of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, when it was politicized, preachers, this is coming from the pews, members of the congregation who are telling their pastors, we want to join the fight. One of the pastors I interviewed for the book called it the battlefield mindset. Pastors want to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, most of them, and they are exhausted by this One survey found that over 40% of them over the course of the previous year, had seriously considered quitting. I asked pastors that question as part of my interviewing for this book, have you seriously considered quitting over the past year and and sure enough, they said yes. One of them said only four times and. And so this is putting a terrible strain on on Christian witness. And the thing that I like people to to come away from, if it's only one thing in this book is that there are three core principles of Christianity. This is not original to me. I gave got it from Christians, but three core principles, excuse me, of Christianity, which map surprisingly well onto the three core principles of liberal pluralism. That's James Madison and the Constitution and Jefferson and all of that. The first principle is the one we've been talking about. Don't be afraid. And in liberal democracy that maps on to have some faith in our institutions and in your fellow citizens, you're going to lose some some of the time. Don't think it's the end of the world. The second is, imitate Jesus. Be like Jesus. And that maps on to the elements of liberal democracy that coincide with Jesus's teaching about the fundamental worth and dignity of every individual, regardless of their political view and the need to care and put first the poorest and weakest. Those are poor constituents of the idea of liberalism that you protect minorities and the weak, and all men are created equal. And then the third of the Christian principles is forgiveness. Forgive each other. It is God's place to judge, not ours. Well, you you'd never hear that or pick that up from the way Christians behave, you know, on social media. But it also maps onto liberalism, not quite the same way, but the idea of forbearance and compromise, that you're going to work with others. You're not going to try to remove them from American life. You're not going to try to crush the liberals or crush the Conservatives so they never come back. You're going to be living with these people and sharing the country. So you've got to have forbearance. So what I'm telling people is, look. Think if you want to repair our democracy, and if you're a Christian, I think I know where to begin. It's in the Gospels of Jesus Christ. It's right there. I'm not asking Christians to become more secular or democratic or more liberal, I'm asking them to become more Christian,
Chris Beem
Which is something that, you know, I think it was Gandhi said, What do you think about Christian civilization? He said, I Western civilizations, right?
Jonathan Rauch
Yeah. He said, It would be a good idea, yeah.
Chris Beem
And so, you know, there's the reason you know that Christians say, say we're saved by grace, not by works, is because nobody, except for a few saints, maybe, is ever going to be able to do the things that that's demanded of us, right, as as as follow human being. The other thing that I that I saw that you mentioned in the book that I thought was right. It's not one of your three, but you mentioned the the seamless garment. And I think that is a good um, that one kind of fits into your civic theology as well. Because, on the one hand, it it belies the idea, I think you say it, that, you know, the if you are going to the soup kitchen and volunteering once a week and then going on Twitter and saying scurrilous things about liberals or, You know, trans people, whatever, that's not acceptable Christian behavior, right? You are. You are. What's demanded of you is that you behave a Christ like way, irrespective of the circumstance. I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean you're, you're behaving the same way, but you're it's the demand is that you strive to live up to those standards, regardless of who you're talking to. And in in a little democracy, I've argued that the the UN the unrespected virtue, is consistency and so and that means that if you're going to say it's bad for a Republican, it's bad for a Democrat, and if it's good for a Republican, it's good for a demo behavior wise, right? And because our natural tribal inclination is to view everything in terms of our own tribe, our own partisan identity, we don't do that very well, and so consistency in both contexts is a way of, kind of, making explicit the demand that we live up to these standards Regardless of the circumstance.
Jonathan Rauch
Yeah, you were quoting there, one of my all time favorite quotes and a big inspiration for this book, which is what David French has said, which is, it just won't do to say, I may be an asshole on Twitter, but you should see me in the soup kitchen. Yeah. That's it. That's it, yeah, which is a wonderful way to put it, one of the things that I hope the book makes more of us, especially Christians, think about, is the big empty hole, the giant sucking sound in American Christianity, where Civic theology is concerned. And what I mean by that is that Christianity has a lot to say about how we treat our fellow humans in personal situations and when we come into contact with them, and it has a lot to say about what churches should do when Hurricane Helene hits Asheville, North Carolina. My friends there say the churches have been incredible. But as Christians have have told me, Christianity, American Christianity, has had almost nothing to say about how Jesus wants Christians to behave in the civic sphere, in the world of politics. So what does Christ expect to people when they're interacting on social media? What does Christ expect of people when they're thinking about how to engage in politics? Now we're not talking about who specifically Jesus wants you to vote for. It's not anything like that, but it's about, how do we engage with each other? Because the way Christians, many Christians, not all but but the way a lot of Christians are engaging in public conversation and and politics is about as divisive and unforgiving and and scorching as you. Could possibly imagine. And so more and more Christians, little by little, are saying we got to fill this hole. Well, we've got to take seriously understanding what God wants us to do. It's in civic relationships with each other and and I am, I am telling the secular world, my world, we all have a stake in doing what we can to support and help Christians who are trying to answer that question. Because as long as Christianity is pulling against the founding values of a liberal democracy, as long as it's making us more politicized and more sharp and more fearful and more angry, I'm not even sure our democracy can survive that.
Chris Beem
So what, what does that support mean? How does that manifest? How would you envision that manifesting itself in terms of the secularists of the world or the secularists of the nation?
Jonathan Rauch
I should say, Oh, I thought you were gonna ask, how does it manifest in terms of Christians? Because there's some interesting so for secular people, people, people like me, I think too many of us went too far in just taking for granted that the church would always be healthy, and that the job that it did would somehow get done, and we could go on about our lives without giving it a second thought. And indeed, sometimes worse than that, there's a kind of aggressive secularism which takes the form, for example, of people in my world, the LGBT world, who insist that every single Baker in every single bakery across the country serve every single same sex wedding, even if you've got devout Christians who would rather not do that. So we framed laws in ways that tended to be too rigid, I think, and unforgiving. It's, I think, we should be a little bit more charitable in in creating some exceptions and exemptions for that, I think we've been a bit too thoughtless in our institutions about explicitly making room for the religious people who work there. I've had people in my workplace who are Christians approach to me when I, when I they found I was doing this work, saying it's, it's not that anyone is unfriendly or there's discrimination, nothing like that, but, but they do feel hesitant to express their faith in the workplace, because it's just going to seem weird, and that can't be right. I mean, what would maybe some of us who are secular, secular should accompany our Christian friends to church or our Jewish friends, to synagogue, for that matter, and and dip more into that world. And why? For example, we talk about, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in all kinds of environments. Corporate academic, why don't those ever include religious faith? They never do. But why aren't we giving a bit of thought to are we being as welcome here as we should be to people of faith? You know, we've a lot of people of faith in America. Some I think a lot of them exaggerate the so called war on Christmas, that that doesn't exist. The country has actually never been more protective. But I think it's true that we secular people have not done enough to understand and recognize the importance of these faith traditions. Interesting. Value, the value of these faith traditions to us, right? Yeah, to everyone. To everyone.
Chris Beem
Well, you know, it's clear that we're in a in a world where the the innate anger for the meaning that religion provides is more the absence of it is more apparent and more felt than it has been in a long, long time. And the idea that there isn't an opportunity here for, you know, not just you know, Christianity, but any kind of theistic perspective, pretty clear that it that there is that moment, or at least that opportunity. But I see a lot of I also kind of read between the lines that you know the pastors that you spoke to, some of them are clearly afraid too, right? They're afraid of losing their flock. They're afraid of losing their employment. A lot of these people are employed by their congregation and and, you know, it's, it's very clear that if, if Christianity is to make a contribution to our society, right now, it's going to have to not only come. Front that fear, but also think about how to more authentically respond to the times.
Jonathan Rauch
Well, that's the most common question people ask me, and I turn it right around and ask them, especially if they're Christians, which is, Can Christianity chart a new course? People are leaving in droves. I mean, the figures are like, the number of adults never attending religious services has doubled since 2008 from 45 million to 85 million church membership is below half population, first for 50 years. Throughout the entire second half of the 20th century, 70% of Americans belong to a church. Now it's 47% on and on, and people say, Well, maybe it's, maybe it's just too late, you know, maybe this is a secular world now, and Christianity no longer offers something that's attractive and and it's and there's nothing to be done. So you tell me, Chris, my response is always, well, I think Christians have some say in that. And I'm just, you know, I'm just the outsider, right? I'm not the believer. But it, it does seem to me that the message of of Jesus, Christ and the Gospels has proven over a couple 1000 years to be pretty darned attractive when people are exposed to it, and that the church's chances of surviving, both in terms of the numbers of people that it holds and attracts, but also in in terms of being its best self, its chances are a lot better if it puts the message of Jesus Christ ahead of the message of partisan politics and culture wars.
Chris Beem
I'm just saying it's, you know, this is a sounding pretty proselytizing for the democracy works podcast, but we are in a grave, grave spot with respect to democracy, not with not, let's just leave religion out of it, right? Democracy, not only in the United States, but throughout the world, is on the ropes, and it is only prudent to marshal every resource you have in the fight to preserve it.
Jonathan Rauch
And I think I guess what I'm trying to say at the end of the day is that Christianity has within itself the resources to renew itself and to renew its core teachings, and that in renewing itself, it can also contribute to the renewal of our liberal democracy and make our society more peaceable and more governable. And so I'm here to say, as the liberal atheist, a non believing Jew. At times in my life, persecuted homosexuals. I want to tell Christians if, if you're willing to be better Christians, I am willing to help. Well, that's a that's an excellent point on which to end this conversation.
Chris Beem
Jonathan, thanks very much for your time and for the book. It was really terrific. And if you wanted to see just how much I took it seriously, come and look at my copy, and you can look at all the notes that scribbled all the way down the market.
Jonathan Rauch
Thank you very much. I'd be remiss if I'd be remiss if I didn't tell people it's a very short book on purpose designed to be only a quick Read and and it's available at fine bookstores everywhere.