{"id":2391,"date":"2025-04-11T16:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T21:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/12\/an-atheist-urges-christians-to-help-save-democracy-christianity-today\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T16:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T21:50:10","slug":"an-atheist-urges-christians-to-help-save-democracy-christianity-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/11\/an-atheist-urges-christians-to-help-save-democracy-christianity-today\/","title":{"rendered":"An Atheist Urges Christians to Help Save Democracy – Christianity Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We agree<\/p>\n

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\"\"A quarter century ago, author Jonathan Rauch wasn\u2019t very worried about the prospect of Christianity declining in public influence. Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy 168 pages $24.75 But in his latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity\u2019s Broken Bargain with Democracy , Rauch admits to changing course. \u201cI was smug,\u201d he writes, \u201cabout secularization.\u201d Rauch describes watching apprehensively \u201cas the country sank into chronic anomie and discontent\u201d and \u201cthe public turned to dysfunctional and sometimes dangerous alternatives to religion.\u201d Eventually, he \u201cbegan bending an ear to warnings that Christianity\u2019s crisis is democracy\u2019s, too. I came to realize that in American civic life, Christianity is a load-bearing wall. When it buckles, all the institutions around it come under stress, and some of them buckle, too.\u201d Cross Purposes assesses the damage and suggests a pathway to repair. Characteristically succinct and sometimes reminiscent of Rauch\u2019s remarkably prescient 1990s title Kindly Inquisitors , it\u2019s a nuanced and honest addition to contemporary conversation around secularization, civic discord, and the social benefits of church. For those in need of an efficient introduction to these topics, Cross Purposes is a worthwhile read. Rauch is rare in his ability to discuss complex questions in clean, accessible prose without ever talking down to his reader. But who is that reader? This is the question I kept asking\u2014and couldn\u2019t quite answer\u2014throughout the book.<\/p>\n

The necessity of Christian America It is relevant to mention up front that Rauch is, as he describes himself early and often, an atheist, homosexual Jew. He was involved in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage and remains a dogged scientific materialist. He is not an evangelical preaching to godless liberals that they need us; he\u2019s a godless liberal telling evangelicals that, actually, our help is required. Americans today \u201clive in a society which, on both left and right, has imported religious zeal into secular politics and exported politics into religion, bringing partisan polarization and animosity to levels unseen since the Civil War,\u201d Rauch writes. If \u201cAmerican Christianity is no longer able, or no longer willing, to perform the functions on which our constitutional order depends,\u201d we are all in deep trouble. As John Adams famously wrote, \u201cOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People,\u201d and historically, the religion in question was Christianity. So the whole country suffers when American Christianity is, in Rauch\u2019s terminology, too thin (culturally weak, in numerical decline, losing theological conviction and distinction) or too sharp (\u201cpoliticized, partisan, confrontational, and divisive\u201d).<\/p>\n

But Christianity is only part of the American bargain Rauch has in view. The other part, despite the titular mention of democracy, is really liberalism, and his defense of it may be the best part of Cross Purposes . Rauch doesn\u2019t mean liberalism in the sense of progressive policies associated with the Democratic Party. He means \u201cthe modern tradition of freedom, toleration, minority rights, and the rule of law on which the American republic was founded\u201d: Some people use the term classical liberalism, but I want to indicate something even broader: the tradition, dating back to the seventeenth century, which grounds ethics in the proposition that all humans are created free and equal; politics in the proposition that the people are sovereign and government\u2019s powers are limited and consensual; and authority in the proposition that everyone follows the same rules and enjoys the same rights. This is the kind of liberalism that undergirds my politics too, and it was a pleasure to read Rauch\u2019s tidy demolition of the post-liberal critique that\u2019s presently in vogue. Post-liberals tend to argue that \u201cliberalism is inherently self-undermining because it cannot help but destroy the [private] institutions and norms it depends on,\u201d in Rauch\u2019s summary, by embracing \u201can all-pervasive cult of individualism.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Cross Purposes makes a strong case that liberalism never promised to supply those norms or institutions. It promised to create a society in which they could flourish without threat of persecution and other coercion, and it did exactly that. Also praiseworthy is Rauch\u2019s affection and humility in speaking about Christianity. His attitude toward our faith is visibly shaped by friendships with kind and faithful Christians, not least the late Tim Keller and Mark McIntosh, to whom Cross Purposes is co-dedicated. This book stands out among secular acknowledgments of Christianity\u2019s social benefits; it is exemplary precisely because Rauch doesn\u2019t try to claim cultural Christianity for himself, \u00e0 la Richard Dawkins. He knows he is observing from across a gap that\u2019s not to be minimized for political expedience. Who will take heed? Yet for all that care and familiarity with Christianity, and for all Rauch\u2019s insight about religion\u2019s relationship to liberalism, my constant question was about his intended reader.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the book, he speaks of four groups: mainline Christians, secular liberals, evangelical Christians, and Latter-day Saints (as many Mormons now prefer to be called). In many ways, mainliners feel like the natural readership, particularly given some of the writers Rauch cites. Lots of evangelicals read Jesus and John Wayne author Kristin Kobes Du Mez, for example, and many are appreciative of her work. But in terms of cultural coding, citing Du Mez probably puts him more in the market for exvangelical or mainline readers than for conservative evangelicals. Rauch does have a critique for mainliners; he briefly discusses, along the lines of Joseph Bottum\u2019s argument in An Anxious Age , how these Protestants\u2019 commitments became \u201cincreasingly social, not theological.\u201d But he doesn\u2019t envision a mainline revival\u2014whether spiritually or in terms of elite cultural influence. Nor does he address mainliners in his concluding exhortations.<\/p>\n

One part of those exhortations goes to secular liberals, and this appeal (to protect religious liberty and generally be more respectful of religiosity) is well made. It\u2019s the appeal to conservative evangelicals that doesn\u2019t quite land. Rauch\u2019s diagnosis of American evangelicalism, which relies heavily on the work of CT editor in chief Russell Moore, is that our movement\u2019s troubles in American civic life are mostly self-inflicted, particularly in the era of President Donald Trump. For too many, he argues, \u201cparty loyalty [has] elbow[ed] Jesus aside,\u201d so much so that \u201cevangelical Christianity [has] become, for many who affiliate with it, primarily a political rather than religious identity.\u201d This is the fruit of \u201cSharp Christianity,\u201d and Rauch describes it\u2014rightly\u2014as not only illiberal but \u201cinsufficiently Christian.\u201d But returning to the matter of sources, the kind of evangelical reader who readily receives Moore quotations as stirring encouragements to faithfulness is not the kind Rauch worries about. The Moore-friendly reader already shares Rauch\u2019s concerns about partisanship, polarization, loss of institutional trust, and so on. Meanwhile, it strains the imagination to envision Sharp-Christianity types taking Rauch\u2019s plea seriously. Partly this is a case of the disease impeding access to the cure.<\/p>\n

But it is also possible to imagine, with relatively few tweaks, a version of Cross Purposes that would have stood a far better shot at reaching the edge-case reader, the evangelical whose faith is maybe a little sharp but not irreparably so. What kind of tweaks do I have in mind? Well, for example, Rauch approvingly quotes a summary of core Christian guidance as \u201cdon\u2019t be afraid, imitate Jesus, and forgive each other.\u201d This isn\u2019t bad; it hits some important and biblical notes. It also ignores the fact that Jesus already gave us such a summary, and his first and greatest instruction was to love God (Matt. 22:37\u201340). Rauch\u2019s summary, by contrast, could be followed by an atheist. Similarly, Rauch outright dismisses miracles\u2014 all miracles. It\u2019s not clear to me how this serves the argument of the book, but it is clearly off-putting for Christians, as our faith can\u2019t exist without the miracle of the Resurrection. As the apostle Paul wrote, \u201cIf Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith\u201d (1 Cor. 15:14). Rauch makes other counterproductive claims too. Take, for instance, his assertion that in the liberal public square, no one is \u201centitled to believe whatever we please\u2014that 2 + 2 = 5, or that the world was created in six days, or any other illogical or empirically false proposition.\u201d Or his contention that in answering questions about morality, religions \u201crely on a cheat, which they call God,\u201d to disguise their relativism. These and similar passages do nothing to advance the core contention of the book and are likely to alienate Rauch\u2019s most desired readers.<\/p>\n

Yet far more consequential than any one passage is Rauch\u2019s invoking of the Latter-day Saints (LDS) as a model of patient, diplomatic, and faithful engagement in American politics. The choice is understandable: Here\u2019s a conservative religious group that has charted an unusual political course. They\u2019ve scored some significant wins along the way, most notably Utah\u2019s legislation combining LGBTQ antidiscrimination protections with religious liberty safeguards. The problem for Rauch\u2019s aim to persuade evangelical readers is twofold. First, as he briefly acknowledges, \u201csome evangelicals do not regard Latter-day Saints as Christians.\u201d I would venture to say nearly all evangelicals think that way, and many would label the LDS heretical, a cult, or both. The LDS beg to differ, of course, but that is the dominant evangelical view, and it matters more than Rauch seems to realize. \u201cNo other church shares the Latter-day Saints\u2019 theology, scripture, or hierarchy,\u201d he grants. But that\u2019s immaterial, Rauch argues, because \u201cI am asking evangelicals to emulate what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does , not what it believes .\u201d<\/p>\n

The second part of the problem is that this is not a viable distinction when we\u2019re talking civic theology. In addition to having other scriptures, the LDS believe the US Constitution is divinely inspired. This goes well beyond the way some evangelicals will speak about biblical principles and culture informing the Founders. The LDS view America\u2019s governing charter as \u201cestablished forever\u201d by God. In their thinking, as Rauch says, \u201cscriptural and constitutional values\u201d are aligned \u201cas an intrinsic element of God\u2019s plan.\u201d Some strands of evangelicalism could independently produce a civic theology like that. Others couldn\u2019t. But in any case, borrowing inspiration from the LDS is not a realistic path to better evangelical politics. Rauch proposes an imitation of behavior, not beliefs, but they are not so easily separated. Evangelicals cannot\u2014should not\u2014begin by admiring another religion\u2019s function, then attempt to retrofit a workable substitute from our own resources. That\u2019s not to say Rauch is wrong in urging Christians to put our own house in order. Informed by Michael Wear\u2019s The Spirit of Our Politics , he\u2019s correct that discipleship in the American church should more often include Jesus-centered civic formation. I don\u2019t think Rauch is close enough to evangelicals\u2019 theology and subculture to make this pitch accurately, but the pitch itself is the right idea. American Christianity\u2019s problems now\u2014as ever\u2014would indeed be best addressed by the imitation of Christ. If Rauch would like to learn about this from the inside, he would be more than welcome. Bonnie Kristian is editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today .<\/p>\n

This content was originally published here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We agree A quarter century ago, author Jonathan Rauch wasn\u2019t very worried about the prospect of Christianity declining in public influence. Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy 168 pages $24.75 But in his latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity\u2019s Broken Bargain with Democracy , Rauch admits to changing course. \u201cI was smug,\u201d he writes, \u201cabout […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2393,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kHU7-Cz","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thelight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/An-Atheist-Urges-Christians-to-Help-Save-Democracy-Christianity-Today-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2391"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2394,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2391\/revisions\/2394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thelight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}