The Long Game

Jonathan Rauch is an important voice for our time. He was for free speech and free thought way before it was cool. In 1993 , he published a book called Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought . It was while reading his latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain With Democracy , in preparation for this interview, that I realized that Jonathan's work over the past few yea...

Eliza Griswold's new book Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church is about a church in Philadelphia that was started by a couple who became dramatic converts to Christianity in the 1970's. They became Jesus people. And unlike many others in that movement, they stayed pretty radical. Griswold's book tells the story of this couple's attempt to hand the church...

Major Garrett is chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, and as he told me in our conversation, he is an "accidental television journalist" who "never imagined" working in TV and "never wanted it." He was a print reporter for 17 years before entering the world of television. Since then, he's proven to be one of the most formidable, best prepared interviewers in journalism. This dude is rigoro...

Aurelian Craiutu is the author of Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. Craiutu is the chair of Indiana University's political science department. He is reclaiming a word and idea — moderation — that is typically despised and criticized as weak and cowardly. This is a misunderstanding of what moderation is, he insists. Moderation is not for the weak or the indecisive, Craiutu says. Instea...

It is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I just finished watching the ceremony in France, where they honored WWII vets who still live, and those who never came home. It was incredibly moving.  But we can't just look back and grow emotional during inspiring video montages. We must think about how to avoid the paths of division that could send future young men and women to similar fates. We can honor th...

John Inazu's new book is Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect . John teaches on criminal law, law and religion and the First Amendment at Washington University in St. Louis. He is an expert on religious freedom. And he is a senior fellow with Interfaith America. He is also a former Air Force officer who was working in the Pentagon on 9/11 whe...

We keep looking at our broken political system — the politicians who show up on our TV's and our phones, the lawmakers who end up in Congress, and the general lack of solutions to our biggest problems — and we shake our head. We promise to vote the bums out. We vow to drain the swamp. We pledge to overturn the plutocracy. But we don't think about our assembly line, the system that gives us the cho...

Break the system.   That's what one New Hampshire voter, a 58-year old retired Army officer, said he wants the president to do, in an interview with Politico Magazine .   It's only the most obvious example of many of us tend to do from time to time. We pretend, or actually believe, that politics is a form of magic.   In other words, we think we can elect a person, or pass a law — as if we were wav...

The 1950's and 60's were an age of widely shared prosperity in the U.S. — across class and economic lines — that have never quite returned. Things were improving for all parts of society during the post-war period, and for all groups including Black Americans, despite the real presence of racial bias and discrimination against them. And things have not improved equally in recent decades. Things ha...

Tim Alberta's new book: The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals In An Age of Extremism, is a sobering look at the results in history when a religious movement morphs into a political movement, and allows its identity to be taken over by political imperatives and goals. Alberta's book documents the spread of Christian Trumpism, aided and abetted by conflict profiteers who have...

This is a Builders conversation. I'm doing these about once a month to highlight people who are not just cursing the darkness but are also building up their local community — and the country — through making something beautiful, through problem-solving, and by stitching together places of belonging and meaning. (Thank you Joy Moore for the inspiration!) This past summer, we took our kids to visit...

This week's podcast interview (audio above) is with Ruy Teixeira, about his new book with John Judis, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes . It is an argument that both parties have been co-opted by big business. It spends all its time blaming the Democrats for their part in this, but that's because the authors believe the Democrats used to be the party...

I have never cared all that much about the debate over evolution. But I grew up in an evangelical home and church. So in my world, the origins of the species were definitely up for question. To me, it all seemed rather silly. I didn't see any conflict between evolution and the Christian faith, or even between evolution and the Bible. But I have known others who said quite openly that if they ever...

In American politics, we saw the latest sign of total dysfunction in Congress, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted for daring to pass a bipartisan solution last week to avoid a government shutdown. Many people are desperate for a new kind of politics, and Joel Searby has dedicated the last several years of his life to that cause. Joel worked on the Evan McMullin presidential campaign in 201...

I've interviewed Yascha Mounk about his book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time , which was released this week. "Mounk has told the story of the Great Awokening better than any other writer who has attempted to make sense of it," The Washington Post wrote in a review . Yascha's book says that we can reach across our differences and understand one another, and that we need to...

Shannon Harris is on the podcast this week. We talk about her new book The Woman they Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife I have a particular interest in this book because it's a behind the scenes look at the culture of the church I grew up in: Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland. There is national relevance for Shannon's story, however, because she was married to...

Andrew is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (theARDA.com) at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Here's Andrew's Substack His first book in 2020, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States , with Samuel Perry, was a data-heavy soci...

Large numbers of Americans are unhappy with the idea of a Biden vs Trump rematch,  polls show , but both the Democratic and Republican parties appear to be paralyzed, unable to do anything about it. There's a reason why. Both parties are  shells of their former selves , and strong political parties are the foundation of a healthy democracy, many  political experts agree . For too long Americans ha...

Karen Swallow Prior is the author of multiple books, including On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Her new book is called The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis . It's out August 8 from Brazos Press. She is a professor of English literature and a popular speaker and writer. Karen's new book argues that "so much ... that what...

I interviewed Russell Moore on the podcast this week about his new book Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America , which is out next Tuesday, July 25. In his book, Moore refers to the "post-2016 era" as an "apocalypse." Now, you hear that word, and you might think Zombies! Both those reactions to the word "apocalypse" have to do with the end of the world. Yet that's not how Moore...

I don't know if I've ever read a book quite like John Blake's "More than I Imagine." The subtitle is: "What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew" John is a senior writer at CNN. In this conversation, John and I talk about: his very difficult childhood growing up in West Baltimore in the 60's and 70's how he grew up disliking white people even though his mother was white, in...

A new book, "The Big Break" by Washington Post feature writer Ben Terris, is a story of how many institutions in Washington are failing those within them. But it's also a cautionary tale of how the idealism and passion of youth is being squandered in today's politics by our focus on individualism and our deemphasis on institutions. Ben's book traces the story of several characters over the period...

Nobody has covered the Stanford free speech incident more closely than David Lat. He's a legal affairs writer at his Substack, Original Jurisdiction . David is a Harvard undergrad and a Yale law school graduate who has a fascinating backstory. He was originally an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted federal crimes under former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who of course went on to become govern...

This interview is with Matthew D. Taylor, who wrote and created a recent podcast series called " Charismatic Revival Fury ." Taylor is the Protestant Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, in Baltimore. We know about the Proud Boys, and the Big Lie, and former President Trump's role in spreading it and deceiving millions of Americans into believing the 2020 election wa...

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) represents Maryland in the U.S. Senate. He was in the middle of the fight over the debt ceiling in 2011, as a member of the House. That was the first of several fiscal fights over those years. Now, we're back in another debt ceiling showdown, and I talked with Van Hollen mostly about that. If you want to read what I wrote about this interview, you can click here . See Pri...