An atheist explains why America should 'become more truly Christian'

22 December 2024

In a recent episode of "The Opinions" by The Salt Lake Tribune, longtime evangelical and New York Times columnist David French, and Jonathan Rauch, a Brookings Institution senior fellow — and atheist — discussed Christianity's past and present role in American democracy.

"You’re an atheist," French began. "You don’t believe in God, but one of the points to your book is for American democracy to flourish, you argue that we need better Christianity. You’re not trying to say that the solution to the crisis in American democracy or problems in American democracy is becoming an atheist. You talk about a solution that is actually about a better version of Christianity, or Christianity living up to its ideals."

The Times columnist commented, "I found that fascinating," asking, "Why is it that you took this approach that said a better Christianity is the answer, not no Christianity?

Rauch replied, "Well, I wouldn’t even say 'better.' The way I think of it is: What really needs to happen to get our country on a better track is for Christianity not to become more secular or more liberal, but to become more like itself, to become more truly Christian."

He added, "I came to that for a few reasons, but one of them is knowing people like you and other Christians who showed me that the three fundamentals of Christianity map very well onto the three fundamentals of Madisonian liberalism. And one of those is don’t be afraid. No. 2 is be like Jesus. Imitate Jesus. And No. 3 is forgive each other. And those things are very much like how you run a constitutional republic."

French then asked Rauch, "How does the failure of American Christianity translate into a failure of American democracy?"

The Brookings fellow replied, "It turns out that Christianity is a load-bearing wall in democracy, and the founders told us that. They didn’t specify that you have to be a Christian, per se, but they said that our liberal, secular Constitution, it’s great, as far as it goes, but it relies on virtues like truthfulness and lawfulness and the equal dignity of every individual."

Rauch e continued, "And they understood that those have to come from an outside source. The Constitution won’t furnish them. And the source that they relied on principally was religion to teach those things and to build and transmit those values. And it turns out that for most of our history, Christianity has been pretty good at that. I mean, lots of exceptions, of course."

Check out the conversation here.

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