February 12, 2025

Christianity and Civic Upkeep

Christianity doesn’t exist to prop up any particular political order or governing regime. Some are decent and humane. Others are corrupt and oppressive. But none are meant to last forever, and those who kneel before the world’s true and eternal king can regard their coming and going with a certain equanimity.

Yet Christians have ample reason for gratitude when considering the blessings secured by Western societies that attempt, however imperfectly, to recognize human dignity and restrain illegitimate authority. The have ample reason, too, for seeing Christianity as one reason such societies exist and endure.

Political writer Jonathan Rauch shares this sense that the fates of Christianity and liberal democracy are intertwined, even though he identifies as an atheist. In his latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy, he faults believers on the political left and right for maladapting their faith to the imperatives of civic upkeep.

Reviewing the book for CT, Bonnie Kristian worries that Rauch’s worthy appeal isn’t sufficiently calibrated to change the minds that most need changing.

“For all Rauch’s insight about religion’s relationship to liberalism,” she writes, “my constant question was about his intended reader.

“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’s argument in An Anxious Age, how these Protestants’ commitments became ‘increasingly social, not theological.’ But he doesn’t envision a mainline revival—whether spiritually or in terms of elite cultural influence. Nor does he address mainliners in his concluding exhortations.

“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’s the appeal to conservative evangelicals that doesn’t quite land.

“Rauch’s diagnosis of American evangelicalism, which relies heavily on the work of CT editor in chief Russell Moore, is that our movement’s troubles in American civic life are mostly self-inflicted, particularly in the era of President Donald Trump. For too many, he argues, ‘party loyalty [has] elbow[ed] Jesus aside,” so much so that ‘evangelical Christianity [has] become, for many who affiliate with it, primarily a political rather than religious identity.’ This is the fruit of ‘Sharp Christianity,’ and Rauch describes it—rightly—as not only illiberal but ‘insufficiently Christian.’

“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’s concerns about partisanship, polarization, loss of institutional trust, and so on.

“Meanwhile, it strains the imagination to envision Sharp-Christianity types taking Rauch’s plea seriously. Partly this is a case of the disease impeding access to the cure. 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.”

Ross Douthat on Religious Belief

After well over a decade on the job, it’s rare to see a listing in an evangelical publishing catalog that occasions genuine surprise. But last summer, while browsing a collection of forthcoming titles from Zondervan, I was fascinated to find Ross Douthat’s name among the authors.

This was an unexpected (though welcome!) revelation for a couple of reasons. Douthat, for starters, is Catholic rather than evangelical. And his pedigree as a celebrated New York Times columnist gives him an inside track to secure book deals with major secular publishers, as he has in the past. Every now and then, you’ll see a leading evangelical figure, like the late Tim Keller, break into that elite stratosphere. But I can’t recall a non-evangelical with Douthat’s stature crossing over into the evangelical publishing orbit.

Anyhow, kudos to anyone at Zondervan who had a hand in arranging that partnership. Despite our clear theological differences, Douthat has legions of fans among evangelicals who appreciate his winsome, socially conservative witness among secular, progressive audiences.

The book, which came out just yesterday, is called Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. Theology professor and regular CT contributor Brad East commends it in his review.

“Douthat,” says East, “is not primarily writing to Christians or even to members of other religious traditions. He is writing to atheists, to agnostics, to open-minded but decidedly nonreligious seekers. More than anything, he is offering a permission structure, from one reasonable modern to another, for people to take their first steps toward the supernatural without feeling as if they are betraying their class, their education, their own minds. And he’s trying to capitalize on this odd moment for as long as it lasts, while strict scientism is in retreat and a broad spiritual openness is on the rise.

“If Douthat were preaching, I’d be the choir. But he’s not, so the question is whether he succeeds for a reader who isn’t a Christian, much less a theologian. He does, for at least three reasons.

“The first is the modesty of his goal. He isn’t demonstrating with certainty that God exists, in the manner of William Lane Craig or Edward Feser. He’s standing alongside readers, directing their gaze to a transcendent explanation for their own observations and experiences. There’s an audience for precise logical deduction, but the audience for this kind of argument, rooted in ordinary features of daily experience, is bigger by far.

“Second, Douthat’s interreligious generosity is unfeigned; he really would prefer a reader embrace a religion other than Christianity than remain irreligious, agnostic, or noncommittal. And Christian convictions anchor this preference: For Douthat, the truth of Christian revelation is not an all-or-nothing affair. Neither the Shema nor the Nicene Creed requires the total falsehood of every idea, text, and practice of every other spiritual tradition in the world. Much good and many true things may be found there, and adherents are not wrong to prize them.

“Further, Douthat believes in divine providence. A step toward Christ outside the church is nonetheless a step in the right direction. In this he takes Christ at his word: ‘Everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened’ (Matt 7:8).

“None of this is to suggest Douthat is nonchalant about idolatry or the dangers of the demonic. On the contrary, he warns readers about excessive interest in the occult and defends belief in hell, the Devil, and exorcism. Yet he sees the spiritual lethargy of hard materialism and the listlessness of agnosticism as the true enemy of our time. The same Christ who promises to meet every honest seeker face-to-face also promises to vomit the lukewarm out of his mouth (Rev. 3:16). Douthat wants readers of his book to be hot or cold by the end, with no one left in between.”

Matt Reynolds

Senior Editor, Books

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Cover of the January / February 2025 Issue

This first issue of 2025 exemplifies how reading creates community, grows empathy, gives words to the unnamable, and reminds us that our identities and relationships proceed from the Word of God and the Word made flesh. In this issue, you’ll read about the importance of a book club from Russell Moore and a meditation on the bookends of a life by Jen Wilkin. Mark Meynell writes about the present-day impact of a C. S. Lewis sermon in Ukraine, and Emily Belz reports on how churches care for endangered languages in New York City. Poet Malcolm Guite regales us with literary depth. And we hope you’ll pick up a copy of one of our CT Book Award winners or finalists. Happy reading!

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