Jonathan Rauch

Welcome to The Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. Before we dive in, a quick word about who I am and why we're here. I'm Jim Bier, corporate lawyer and restructuring professional. I've spent the last two decades helping companies navigate their toughest transitions. And about eight years ago, I found myself having fascinating conversations with clients and friends about everything from venture capital to the broader shifts happening in our economy and society.

Those discussions were simply too good, so the puck was born. Now while we started on venture capital, hence the podcast name, the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, We've naturally evolved to focus more on the and beyond portion of the title. Today, we explore how business intersects with the bigger forces shaping our world. I still run my restructuring practice by day, but now I get to host these conversations by night. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

Today's guest continues that tradition. The most frequently repeated injunction in the Christian Bible, don't be afraid. You can't live a godly life if you're hunkered down in fear all the time. Christianity says stay calm. Liberal democracy, James Madison says, you might lose an election.

Stay calm. It's not the end of the world. You may be out of power for a while, but you're gonna learn something from the experience. You'll come back, and this whole cycle will make our country stronger. That's how we live together.

Today, I sit down with Jonathan Rausch, author, journalist, activist, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of the provocative new book, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. What if one of the most compelling defenses of Christianity's role in American democracy came not from a believer, but from an atheist. That's exactly what Rausch delivers, a powerful, clear eyed case for why America needs Christianity to thrive, even as he stands outside the faith. In our conversation, Rausch brings righteous honesty, offering tough critiques where necessary, but also deep admiration for the moral and civic foundations rooted in Judeo Christian values. We explore how to promote those values today, not through culture war or dogma, but through a civic ethic that resonates across traditions.

There's a lot to unpack, so let's get to it. Jonathan Rausch, welcome to the Puck. I'm happy to be here. Thank you. So can you take a moment before we dive in and just give us a little bit about your background?

Born in 1960, raised in Phoenix, Arizona. Went as far as I could to get away from Phoenix for college on the East Coast. I was, never never a believer in God. I did try at one point as a teenager. But from very young, you know, like age five or six, I knew that ideas about God didn't really seem to make sense to me, and I knew I was Jewish, of course, and still am.

And there was something else I knew, which is that I had this very strong attraction to boys and to men, this kind of childlike fascination. So I grew up, Jewish, atheistic, and gay in Phoenix, went to college with a really bad attitude toward Christianity because I'd seen so much cruelty and hypocrisy to minorities and outsiders, had the good fortune to land as a freshman year roommate, a man my book is co dedicated to, who was a real Christian. Didn't just talk the talk, but he walked the walk. And that was my first inkling that there was another side to Christianity that was not cruel or hypocritical or bigoted. But I still had a bad attitude.

In 2003, the dumbest thing I ever wrote for Atlantic was a celebration of what I called apotheism in other words, secularization. I said religion is fading from American life, and isn't that a great thing? Because religion is so divisive and dogmatic, won't we be better off without it? And that's even dumber than my article in 2015 confidently predicting that Donald Trump would never be president. So I guess you're a little bit out of the prediction business.

But then with your with your with your personal story, your new book Cross Purposes kind of focuses on the intersection of religion, critical thinking, and democracy. How how did Christianity bring you back into the fold, and what led you to writing the book? Well, I should certainly say I am no Christian. I am still very much an outsider. I'm still those three things that that I always was.

But, a few things brought me back into the fold, or I should say back into understanding that I was wrong. This, Jim, this whole book isn't really an apology for the dumbest thing I ever wrote. What I missed is that Christianity was and still is a load bearing wall in our democratic republic. And when it fails, a lot of other things get weakened and even start to cave in. So starting in 2003 when I wrote the dumbest article ever, we actually conducted the experiment of an unprecedented secularization in The United States.

The percentage of the public identifying as Christian dropped by a percentage point a year over that period, which is for a big variable like like religious faith, that is seismic. And those people didn't go to other denominations. They became nones, n o n e s, people who had no religious affiliation. Twice as many people now as fifteen years ago don't go to church. 40,000,000 people have left the church.

When I was growing up in Phoenix in the sixties and seventies, often the first thing you asked someone wasn't what's your job, where do you live, where'd you go to college, it was what church do you belong to. Through the whole twentieth century, 70%, 70%, of Americans were members of a church. A few, you know, synagogues and mosques, but overwhelmingly, a church. Just in this century, the first twenty years of this century, that dropped 23 percentage points. So it's now below half of Americans.

So we are trying this unprecedented experiment in dechurching and secularization. And the good things that I thought would flow from that have not happened. In fact, it turns out a lot of not good things have happened. We have seen increases in depression, anxiety, social isolation, loneliness, anger, anomie, all of which have crept into our politics. We've seen the rise of substitute pseudo religions.

You know, some of them are kind of harmless, like, you know, Wicca and crystals and self improvement, you know, soul cycle. But they don't do the job of socializing people, moralizing people into a into a big scheme of of why we're here on the planet, and they don't provide opportunities for that rich social life that comes from group worship and and gathering together. And then there's this whole other set of pseudo religions, which are actively toxic to our democracy. And those, to me, include things like the MAGA movement, at least it's more idolatrous and extreme elements, the WOKE movement, which has, as John McWhorter and others have pointed out, has a very religious cast to it. You know, like racism is the original sin and you have to repent but you might not be forgiven and public rituals and shaming and all of that.

And just weird conspiracy stuff like QAnon. So it turns out people were searching for meaning and spirituality, and if they weren't going to get it from Christianity, the places they went to were worse. And then one more thing happened. I'll end my filibuster, which is as formal religion began to shrink, people began investing their partisan loyalty with an almost religious personal identification. Like becoming your party became sort of like your religion instead of just, you know, the general tendency of who you voted for.

And that got into politics, and so politics took on this religious cast where every election, every four years is an apocalyptic fight over the whole, you know, the whole country. And where people bring that religious zeal into politics, they've transferred it there. And politics is supposed to be about negotiation and compromise. It can't bear the strain of being invested with all this religious weight. So here we are in 2025, a nation that's having a lot of trouble governing itself, and I'm convinced that the collapse of Christianity is one of the causes.

So let's stay with that, recognizing that a lot of people think that the demise of religion is a good thing. But I do as well believe that Judeo Christian values are extremely important. And you in your book talk about this Christianity's broken bargain with democracy. Can you take a few minutes and help us understand how you think the role of Christianity historically has played in America and and why you talk about the broken bargain? Yeah.

I'd love to. But I'll start with a caveat. So someone's gonna say, Jim, this this guest of yours is just celebrating Christianity and not acknowledging all the harm it's done and all the flaws. So let's just stipulate. I am a homosexual American born in 1960, and what Christians did to gay people for the first, I don't know, three or four decades of my life was shameful and brutal and resulted in harmful consequences to a lot of people.

So I am not saying that becoming religious or being Christian makes you perfect. It doesn't even necessarily make you better as we're going to go on and discuss. But here's what I am saying. So the founders of the American Republic, the authors of the constitution, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, they all told us, we can write a constitution. We can give you a structure, but it will ultimately fail if there's not what they called republican virtue, enough of the right kind of character traits and moral traits in the citizenry to uphold a democracy.

And these are things like lawfulness and truthfulness, civility, equality. And what they told us is we can't give the constitution doesn't give it doesn't include that part of the package. To get those, you have to go to civil society, and that means your families and your community and your schools and, crucially, your churches. That's where they send people to get those things, and they there's an implicit, not explicit, but an implicit charge to Christianity, then and now America's dominant faith, which is if you guys in Christian world don't work to uphold those republican virtues, if you don't help people form their characters in ways that are pro democratic, nothing else will work. So with all its flaws for several hundred years, Christianity did that job.

It was where people turn for a sense of meaning in life. Why am I here? A question that, you know, secular liberalism can't answer. It gave answers as to the nature of good and evil, which also secular, in my opinion, secular materialism can't answer. I say that as a secular materialist.

I don't believe in God. And I'm not one of these people who says, God is stupid. I don't believe in it, but I'm glad other people do. I'm someone who says my worldview is incomplete, and I know it. So you need both of these things together.

You need the secular democracy, liberal principles, liberal small l, you know what I mean, not like modern liberal left wing progressive, I mean classical liberal Madison, Hamilton, those people. If you imagine two planks, one is liberalism, the constitution, and the other is religion, Christianity. They're both incomplete, and neither will stand up by itself. But if you can stand them up like this, they can support each other, and that's what the founders had in mind. And, of course, when one of these falls away, the other also falls, and that's where we are.

So I find it fascinating that you talk about the bad things that the church did. You talk about good versus evil, and you you talk about using Christianity in a sense to protect values, but then you're coming, as you said, from the perspective of a man who was, you know, homosexual. How do you view Christianity from this perspective of, I guess, what you described, the thin Christianity, the thick Christianity? I mean, how do you how do you have a critical thinking Christian world that that does tolerate, for instance, different lifestyles? How do how do you put all that together?

Well, you know, Jim, I've I've thought for a while now that it's not that religion makes people stupid. It's that people make religion stupid. And as I think we'll be discussing in in just a moment, if you look at actual scripture, if you look at the teachings of Jesus, he has nothing to say about homosexuality and a lot to say about love. And I think Christianity, as I said, it's done a lot of harm to gay people. And one of the reasons that secular liberalism and Christianity need each other is secular liberalism has helped correct a lot of mistakes that Christianity has made over the years.

It's shown Christianity some of its flaws. Just as Christianity was a leader in you think of Reverend Martin Luther King, but let's not forget, he was a man of the Lord. Christianity was able to show liberalism some of its flaws and shortcomings. So when they work in partnership, they're more than the sum of the parts. And and that's really what we're looking for here.

We're looking for both of these systems to interact in a way that's positive for both. We want them to be aligned, not necessarily allied, because, you know, I believe in church state separation. We are not a Christian nation per se, so I'm not saying you have to have the church in an alliance with the government. And of course, Jesus preached against that. But you do need to have a reasonable amount of alignment because if the church is just pulling hard to the right and civil society is pointing hard to the left, not right left politically, but just out of alignment, They pull a society apart, which is where we are.

Does that answer what you were getting at? I'm not quite sure if I if I got to it. It does in that it it starts the discussion because I think that if you're looking at the change in the church today, for instance, and listening to a lot of podcasts from young Christian pastors, there there does seem to be, for instance, a movement away from the notion of salvation by the sword or or this, what I would call, black and white viewing of the Bible or the Torah where, you know, it says, thou shall not steal, you know, thou shall not commit adultery, thou shall not cheat on your taxes, or, you know, have have have have sex outside of, you know, marriage. And there seems to be a movement among younger people that to be able to hold two opposite thoughts at the same time, which is there's this objective desire for truth, but recognizing that none of us are perfect, right, that we are able to balance these kind of aspirational lifestyles, but recognizing that we all are, in a sense, you know, gonna fall short from that, quote, ideal, whoever sets that ideal.

And and to tolerate that imperfection, so to speak, and to be able to recognize that none of us are perfect and that we're all struggling to figure out how to live the best life possible. You said that so beautifully that I could only disapprove it. That is that is exactly right. And that is that is the spirit of Christianity that's best. People have told me that faith involves doubt and that you can't have faith without doubt.

I'm not a person of faith. I I think that faith is a gift, which I wasn't given, but it's a little like being colorblind. I think people who are spiritual experience a dimension in life that I really kind of don't, and I'm fine with that. I don't need to convert. I'm a very happy person.

But I am aware of this additional dimension that faithful people have, and I am aware that at its worst, it can it can do great harm. But at its best, it can give great inspiration. And that when a lot of people lack it altogether, when they don't really have an account of why am I important, why am I here, who needs me, do I matter, that that becomes, in some people's case, an invitation to nihilism and anomie and a crisis of meaning. A phrase, by the way, that Hillary Clinton used in 1993. Yeah.

Look look, I I think there are some people that have very, very strong faith. I think there's there's a huge continuum. I know from from myself, I struggle with it. I mean, I do experience periods of transcendence and and and a recognition that the fact that we're here at all, to me, is a miracle. Right?

And and the fact that there is somehow this notion that, again, the Jews have been around for three or four thousand years, notwithstanding the antisemitism that's been host upon them, so to speak, and that the fact that in America today, for instance, there is a large portion of the Christian movement that is very focused on Judeo Christian values and and and brotherhood, so to speak, with Jews, and and that there does seem to be some cross pollination and and working together gives me a lot of hope. But fundamentalism on the left, fundamentalism on the right still seems to me to be very scary for for, again, groups that don't kind of fit into that, you know, classic white Anglo Saxon Protestant, you know, Aryan view that Hitler had, and I think carving up this middle where you need critical thinking and where you bring people together to focus on values, I think is an amazing goal that you're pushing us towards. And I guess the question is, how has it been been received when when people hear your message? Well, it depends on which people. I have had a very hospitable reception from Christians, but my sample is skewed because the Christians who want to talk to me are the ones who are open to my message.

My book is is very critical of white evangelicals, which are the most it's where the heart of the crisis in in governability is today. This is America's founding church, and this is still the church that is most charismatic, small c, dynamic. It dominates the political world. So I'm very critical of white evangelicalism and the bargain it made for power to bond with the Republican party and focus more on the next election than on the next life. But that said, the Christians who I've done podcasts with are are themselves very concerned about the direction of the church, and they find it valuable for an outsider to kind of hold up a lens or a mirror.

So absolutely no complaints there. Interestingly, I get more pushback from secular liberals and and atheists, people like me, who, as one of them put it, a podcaster said, so aren't you kinda throwing in the towel on having a successful secular society? To which my answer is, yeah, I basically am. At least for the next, I don't know, twenty five, fifty, one hundred years, we don't seem to have a very good substitute for Christianity, and so we need to try to help it get back on track, get away from the politics and back to Jesus. And they like the part about getting Christianity back toward Jesus, but they don't really like the part about Christianity being still important and fundamental.

They still have this dream that I had, you know, twenty two years ago of a country without religion. I've given up on that dream. There's a third audience, which is members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, because there's a half of a whole chapter on what they're doing. And they're very happy because they feel they've been accurately portrayed in the book. And as you may know if you've seen the musical Book of Mormon Sure.

They are not necessarily accurately portrayed. Right. There's a there was an interfaith group called the Gabor Center, and the one of their postulates is, you know, many many paths, one truth. But the idea is that there are these kind of people of good faith, whether or not you wanna call them humanists and or whether or not they're Jews or Christians or Mormons or Buddhists or Muslims. But the notion is that they live according to values that at least follow the tenants of each person is created, you know, in in the image of God, so to speak.

And, again, we can debate what the term God means, but but it and the the notion of the golden rule, love your neighbor as yourself. And and it it seems to me at least that as a society, going back to the idea of allowing these different religions to coexist and to struggle and and to debate amongst themselves, and and even even to debate things like the 10 commandments, like, which which of the 10 commandments do we have a problem with? And instead of fight you know, fighting over, is is God the trinity, or is it polytheistic to be a Buddhist, or or or or anything else that essentially we're never gonna agree on, so to speak? But but can we have a dialogue about how we treat each other as as human beings and what the what those rules are? I mean, from your perspective, you you talk about Christianity as if it stands alone, but Christian values and the values that Jesus taught also do apply to Jews, and and many moderate Muslims would say that they are descendants of of Abraham and the same God, and that that even if they're distorted, they're the the a lot of those values there's overlap with.

That is so true, Jim, and it's so important. So my book is not a case for generic religion, people should be more religious because they'll have more friends and be less depressed. There are other people saying that. My book is specifically addressed to Christians, and it's about Christianity. And the core of my argument is that there are three central principles in Christianity, which you don't have to believe in Christ, that he was the Messiah.

You don't have to believe that to see that these principles are true. And these three principles also map very well onto the core Republican virtues that the founders asked us to inculcate. So you want the three? Absolutely. Let's go for it.

No one's turned that offer down yet, but I'm waiting. Someone will. Nah, forget it. So these are three things that theologians and pastors agree are essential to the core of Jesus' teaching. The first is don't be afraid, the most frequently repeated injunction in the Christian Bible.

You can't live a godly life if you're hunkered down in fear all the time. There's a famous passage in the Bible. Jesus and the disciples are on a ship and there's a terrible storm and it looks like the ship is about to sink and they're all going to drown and the disciples wake up Jesus to demand that he do something. And he just says, stay calm. That's his commandment.

And that's a metaphor for a world that is full of turbulence and fear. Christianity says stay calm. Liberal democracy, James Madison says, you might lose an election. Stay calm. It's not the end of the world.

You may be out of power for a while, but you're gonna learn something from the experience. You'll come back, and this whole cycle will make our country stronger. That's how we live together. The founders also said, be not afraid in another sense. The single threat that they worried most would kill our democracy was a demagogue, and demagogues mobilize fear.

It's the threat. It's the outsider, the or the interior threat. It's the Jew. It's the immigrant. It's the black.

Whoever it is, it doesn't matter who it is. And the founders the founders say, you've got to approach democracy with a sense of calm and resolve and not fear. Okay. So that's number one. Number two, be like Jesus.

Jesus' teaching is revolutionary because it says all people are created equal. Everyone's in the image of God, and everyone deserves to be treated with dignity. And Jesus also says, we judge our society by how do we treat the most marginalized, the least of these, the weakest, the diseased, the leper, the prostitute. Those are his people. So now you switch that over to liberal democracy.

The same two things are true. Those words, you've heard them before, all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, it's right out of Jesus, and it's a revolutionary idea that all humans are born free and equal. Also, liberal societies are different from majoritarian democracies because there are some things that majorities just are not allowed to do. If 60% of the American public voted to have slavery, they can't do it. Liberal regimes protect the weak, the minority, and the marginalized.

That's why we have a bill of rights. So this comes directly over. If you believe Jesus, you believe the core principles of liberal democracy. The third of these principles of Christianity is forgive each other. Judgment and retribution are for the Lord and not for us.

That comes over with a related commandment, which is forbearance. This is a word you don't hear that often. I should use it more often so that it comes to my tongue faster. Forbearance means sometimes you win an election, and your goal in politics and civic life is not to crush the other side and rid the world of them and salt the soil with the tears of their women and children. When you take power, you need to have forbearance and treat the other side the way you will want them to treat you someday when they're in power.

And this isn't just a matter of rotation in office, though you have to have it. It's a core virtue that you have to have in a democratic Republic. You can't just be out to win all the marbles all the time. So you don't have to be Christian to understand the importance of these three teachings to a liberal democracy. And that means someone like me comes along, and I see this in the gospels, and where I come from is secular, you know, James Madison, the founders, Alexis de Tocqueville.

And I look at this and I say, wait a minute. You mean to tell me that right here at the core of our major religion are the principles that if they were invoked could help strengthen and heal our democracy? So I find myself in this weird position of being the secular atheistic homosexual saying, we need more Christianity, not less. So I I love that. And I also, you know, can't help but say that again, going back to the Old Testament and or or the Jewish values, the the notion of courage and and forgiveness.

These values, you know, apply to both, again, Judaism and Christianity. And the way you describe these values complement and, obviously, as Madison said, would help sustain our democracy. And, again, I think you you talk about the idea of it's a count the values counteract the greed that can come from capitalism run run amok, so to speak. But we've also and I think you've written about how religion can slip into intolerance. So how do Judeo Christian principles guide us in responding to that extremism?

When whether or not it's in in in on the religious side or or on the the very far progressive left side, how do we do that and not become extreme ourselves? Well, this is why to go back to my analogy about the the two planks that can support each other but won't stand on their own. A liberal democracy, it's liberal. It's not just a plain democracy, but it's it's liberal because it has restraints on what the government can do. That's one of the core ideas.

And those constraints apply to religious and non religious people. So it turns out if you can have a society that has a strong faith sector, but within the context of a liberal order that reduces the ability of any one faith to impose its values coercively on the rest of society, you have some good effects there. First, you have some competition among the different religious groups, and that's healthy for religion. And second, the secular values the things that we say in the Declaration of Independence, for example those transmit over into sometimes improving religion. An an ideal example of that is the movement for LGBT rights.

I was very much a part of that in the in the nineties. I was my my big commitment for fifteen years no, twenty, was gay marriage. And faith based community was, for the most part, dead set against that, And they're not anymore. I mean, white evangelicals are, but by a pretty narrow margin. And other Christians are accepting.

And that's because in secular society, we were able we had the freedom to make arguments about why same sex marriage not only made legal sense, but could help strengthen marriage and strengthen our culture. We showed the power of love and that we were not a threat and that our marriages wouldn't be a threat. We showed that homosexuality is not a sickness, a perversion that makes you immoral. It's just a fairly rare condition, a state of being that affects a small number of people and is no concern to anyone else. And by having this liberal template, free speech, free inquiry, pluralism, the ability to organize gay people into groups, that put us in a place where we could make our argument to people of faith and gradually win them over, and to a large extent, we have.

So there are your limits. You're asking about limits, where you get the toleration. You get it from the Constitution, and you get it from a liberal system that says no one should be in a position to rule the whole society. You're gonna have checks and balances in government and between layers and levels of government, and you're gonna have to be tolerant and compromise. Well, and that brings us to an interesting place, which is in the in the analysis that I've seen, whether whether or not you talk to people on the left or on the right, and I know David French writes a lot about this, this notion that each side sees the other as an existential threat.

And it's very hard to keep trust and communication open when you think that the other side is an existential threat. So a lot's changed politically in the last few months, and one of the things we're hearing a lot about is how, quote, the universities, for instance, have been hijacked, and that there used to be some percentage of, for instance, faith based religious people on these campuses. And but for Charlie Kirk, essentially, there is no, quote, Republican or religious values taught in our, quote, universities. How do you, in such a polarized world, bring these nuances back into a more public dialogue? We're we're having this discussion today, but we're not gonna reach the same number of people that Joe Rogan reaches, for instance.

And how do we have this dialogue in a broader sense? And and actually, for instance, to me, bring it back to the universities. Like, candidly, the only person I see doing it is Charlie Kirk. And in fact, Gavin Newsom was on char had Charlie Kirk on his podcast recently and tried to have this dialogue, for instance. And and we'll see where it plays out, but he's gotten a lot of flack from the far left, for instance.

And so I'm I'm wondering, like, are you optimistic the one where he talked about trans athletes? Correct. Yeah. I saw that. Yep.

Yep. And, again, I think what he was you know, he wants to run for president in 2028. He's, you know, pro gay marriage. He's he's definitely been seen as a liberal governor, and, you know, I think he he looked at the statistics, and he looked at the, you know, the from a poll perspective, right, the thing that was the least popular, right, which is which is which is transgender athletes, so to speak, playing in women's sports, and and again tried to have that discussion, rightly or wrong, and it's it's created a lot of flack, which, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm just asking you from the perspective of seeing more of that.

Are you optimistic that these conversations are are are are growing and and that there is an ability to kind of reach, for instance, at the level of of of our schools and universities? Because, again, young people today, for instance, you know, the the change in their views towards Israel is dramatic. Their their change towards religion is dramatic. And and the question is, how do we change the dialogue from the perspective of young people? Well, there there are a few things wrapped up there.

Very recent polling suggests that the flight from religion has finally bottomed out, And we have anecdotal evidence that Gen Zers are becoming more interested in religion and spirituality. And their spirituality, it won't look like my grandfather's cathedrals and megachurches. But that looks like they're becoming more interested. So that's interesting to see. You asked how you have these conversations.

And so, Jim, my book is very critical of white evangelicals. I argue that they made a tragic mistake by embracing partisan politics, and that although they may arguably have taken over the Republican Party, the Republican Party also took over them. And so you see a guy in power like Donald Trump who says, I will give you power if you are loyal to me, and they take that deal. Jesus in the Bible rejects that deal. He goes into the wilderness.

Satan takes him to the highest mountain top in the land, says, all of this can be yours if you'll bow down and worship me, if you're loyal to me. And Jesus walks away. So I am I am critical of white evangelicals, and so are a lot of Christians. My book is just all about the Christians who think they're off track, but I wanted to get that out of the way. Secular liberals like me, we have some real work to do too.

Not only did I fail to understand the importance of faith based institutions in general and Christianity in particular as a load bearing wall in our democracy, I think people like me, at best, we neglected faith, ignored it, overlooked it, and at worst, we were actively hostile to it. I think that we secular liberals need to take a more welcoming, open hearted, and friendly view of Christianity and faith. And that can be small things like why not, you know, you may not be a believer, but why not accompany a Christian friend to church or for that matter, an Islamic friend to mosque. It could be cultural things, like it's still important for corporations and universities to make everyone feel welcome, even if you don't call it DEI. But these programs never talk about religion.

And workplaces are full of people. It's not like there's a war on Christianity and everyone's hunkered down in fear. But a lot of Christians feel uncomfortable talking about their faith in the workplace because secular people think that's kind of a little bit weird. You know, what is this? We should express curiosity to people of faith.

We should make sure in our universities and workplaces that they feel comfortable. And the way you do that is just ask them. We don't need a secular people. And I'm a gay man, and I had my same sex wedding and all of that. But I don't think we need to insist that every single mom and pop cake baker in the country cater every single same sex wedding.

We just don't need that. At least in most places, there are other bakers who will. And I think we push too hard in the direction of of secularization in the law. And I'm not saying we should tear down the wall of separation between church and state, but I am saying there are reasonable accommodations that we should be making to people of faith so that they can live to the full of their consciences, and that those accommodations will rarely cost as much cost us much, if anything, and that we shouldn't approach accommodations from the point of view of, oh, gosh. I hate this, but we'll have to do it.

We should approach accommodations as, you know what? We value your faith, and we are here to help you celebrate it to the maximum extent that goes with our other commitments. So they're just all those are just some of the ways that we can change our attitude to open the dialogue and open our hearts, and I think that would have an effect. I think well, I know because the polls say it. Large numbers of Christians, and in fact, a strong majority of evangelicals, believe that their religion is under attack.

It's not under attack. The Supreme Court is more solid for religious liberty than it's ever been, but they feel they're under attack. They feel secular society is coming for them and overwhelming them. And, you know, their kids are gonna come home with a sex change. And when people are fearful, they become, well, let's just say it's not a good situation.

So I think if we show more open heartedness that maybe we can reduce that fear factor. And I think we should do that. I wanna push back on something. You've a couple times, said that you have a problem with white evangelical Christianity. And if we're going to bring back critical thinking or expand critical thinking, I do think that these labels that we all find ourselves, you know, using, orthodoxy, progressivism, the left, the right, or otherwise, that it tends to see things as black and white.

And I do believe there are white evangelical Christians that are able to, again, tolerate the sinner, whether or not that's somebody that cheated on their taxes, committed adultery, or is living a lifestyle that for whatever reason they don't think fits their ideal, and that that that there are within all of Christianity, I do think there is this movement towards critical thinking and a and away from this black and white thinking. And I'm wonder I'm wondering if if you think there's room for that. Oh, of course. And that's that's so important. So the label white evangelical is something cooked up by pollsters and demographers, and it's based on self identification as white and as evangelical.

And there's lots of data showing white evangelicals really are different from other denominations. They are much more politicized, much more aligned with the Republican party than, say, black evangelicals or white non evangelical Christians. And they have been the core of the constituency of the so called Christian nationalist movement. So I'm a journalist. And when I'm trying to write about a crisis in our democracy and Christianity, I hunt where the ducks are, and that's where the crisis is right now.

But you're absolutely right. The people I quote in the book, including David French, who you mentioned, are white evangelicals who are unhappy with the direction of the church. Many, many pastors are unhappy with the direction of the church. What's happening is not, for the most part, pastors getting up there and saying, we're taking our church into the culture wars, and by the way, vote Republican. Nothing like that.

They wanna preach the gospel. A survey that was done a couple years ago, pastors by a company named Barna, asked pastors if they've thought seriously about quitting in the previous year, and the answer is 42% of them said yes. And when I asked pastors that question, pretty much they all said yes. And the number three reason that they gave for wanting to quit, numbers one and two were I don't remember, but it was routine stuff like high stress and low pay. But the third reason was politicization.

A lot of pastors are getting hammered by church members who, as the pastor say, you know, we get them for two hours a week if we're lucky, and cable news gets them for twelve hours, and social media gets them for the rest. So they're bringing that to church. They want church to become a place where they can push ahead with the culture wars, and the pastors just hate that. But there's also this thing that you just alluded to, which a pastor described to me as the church within the church. And that's the very substantial number of people, a lot of people, a lot of people who are there for the message of Jesus.

And they tend to be quieter. They're not as organized. They're not the people who are gonna bombard the pastor on Monday morning with emails about why are why are you sounding so woke in your sermon. There's actual cases where pastors cite the Sermon on the Mount, and they get pushed back. This is so woke.

And that's the group where the hope lies, and that's the group that's become critical of the direction of the church, and that's the group that is beginning to form what I call a civic theology, starting to ask the question that Christianity, white Christianity, has failed to ask. Martin Luther King asked it and answered it. But that question is, what is it that Jesus expects of Christians, not in their personal life, their church life, their family life, their community life, but in their civic life? How should they behave on social media and in politics? How does being Christian inflect that?

We're not talking about the positions you take on abortion or gun control or, you know, immigration. We're talking about what's the spirit with which you engage your fellow citizens. Do you do it come from a sense of fear? Do you seek out conflict and confrontation? Are you always in a state of maximum alarm?

Or do you approach civic life with those three core pillars that we talked about earlier in a way that is not fearful, that looks for negotiation, compromise, way to solve problems together, and that does not seek to dominate, that instead seeks to share. So that kind of theology, that could be attractive, and it could help heal Christianity, and it could help heal democracy. Totally agree. And I think one of the challenges that we face today is you you list fear, you know, in the three important, you know, principles. And I think that these algorithms and this ability to get us angry on social media is an existential threat, and it's a challenge.

And and technology can be neutral, but we as a people have to recognize that we're being made to be afraid. And I I spent a lot of time going on the, what you would call, right leaning media sites or on the left leaning media sites, and they'll take the exact same fact pattern and skew it in a manner to make you afraid. And we as we as a people I mean, first of all, we have to wake up and realize we are being manipulated, and and people are writing about it more and more. But if we don't recognize that we're being manipulated, it it it is it it I don't know what your perspective is, but it seems to me it's gonna be very hard to, again, go to church and spend that time really listening to the sermon when we're we're going in there in this very heightened state of anxiety. Well, that's right.

And the pastors I interviewed talked about social media a fair amount. And it's one of the routes it's not the only route but it's one of the routes that is energizing this sense of fear and being under siege. A lot of it, though, is coming from politicians on the left, and now especially the right. I think it's a bigger problem on the right who are mobilizing fear. That's what demagoguery is, right?

You get people afraid, and then once they're afraid, they give you power. So that's what we're fighting. But one of the reasons that I address this book specifically to Christians is Christians have this doctrine, be not afraid. If anyone understood how a sense of calm and thoughtful engagement with the world and a sense of larger perspective, if anyone understood the positive effect that bringing that mentality into your life and into your politics can have, it's Jesus Christ. Right?

He embodies that. He is not afraid even in the face of the worst possible thing that could happen to a person. He stands there and accepts that without fear. So I'm not saying that anyone should go out, you know, and get crucified. But I am saying that at its best, Christianity can be at least a partial anecdote to the constant bombardment of fear.

And at its worst, it's going to heighten all of those fears. And that's that's the fork in the road. I love that. And and I agree. So let me switch to something with with our few minutes left.

You you wrote another book that was called the u curve of happiness, and you suggest that life satisfaction often rises as we get older. And so it's a it's a it's a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about as well, but I'm I'm really interested in what why do you think that is, and and do you still believe that? Yes. I still believe it. There's a lot of evidence supporting it.

The so the book is called, The Happiness Curve, Why Life Gets Better After 50, and it's all about how the aging process affects our happiness all by itself, not depending on, you know, do you get a good job or a bad job, are you rich or poor? All of those things matter, but your age by itself matters because over time, the brain changes and we go through a cycle of expectations, and we learn as humans this U shaped pattern from which happiness tends to be at its bottom on average in midlife for humans, it's statistically around age 47. Of course, your mileage will vary. That also turns out to be true of great apes chimpanzees and orangutans. In middle age, they show more signs of depression and anxiety.

Turns out, you can measure this. So that book is about what's going on here. Why would middle of life be so challenging emotionally in so many ways? And midlife crisis is not really the answer. So that's what that book is about.

And the other thing it's about is aging is the opposite of what you expect, at least emotionally. People think that aging is about decline and despair and depression and death. And in fact, it's not. Late adulthood is the most satisfying and prosocial time of life. And we're getting the best news on the planet right now is that we, and especially the next generation, are getting ten, ultimately fifteen, maybe twenty years of additional life in the most prosocial and satisfying part of life, and that's late adulthood.

People will be living to 100 routinely in another generation or two. So the question is, can we use that time? We're gonna have to rewire a bunch of society so that we, you know, it makes no sense to quit work at 65 and just stop. And younger generations don't want that anyway. They wanna keep giving.

They've got, you know, there's so much value. There's so much wisdom in age. So basically, that, yeah, that book says everything you think about aging is wrong. Midlife is not a time of triumph. It's often a time of vulnerability.

And later life is not a time of despair. It's a time of rebirth and regeneration. And for young people listening to this and for people that are, you know, despairing from the challenges of today. It it's a it's a wonderful I I find the same thing, by the way, I mean, that I've experienced, and I'm happier at at 66 than I than I was in in my forties for a lot of reasons. I I also think, though, that it's a little like a good bottle of wine, which is that if you store it properly and you, you know, you you create the right balance that it gets better with with age.

I I look at people that don't take care of themselves, that don't develop their critical thinking skills, that don't work with their partner to try to, you know, build a a life together where they, you know, overcome their narcissistic tendencies or what whatever it is that that that it it can be a very, very happy time, and and it's something to look forward to. But I also think that I know what your experience is, but I think doing the critical thinking and the work to take care of our ourselves is is also a big key to that. Oh, of course. Doing the work is important. Having strong relationships with other people, super important.

Some people say that's the real key to happiness. And one of the things that helps is people have a stereotype that because old age is terrible, if they're not feeling great at age 45, it's all downhill from there. But in fact, it's very natural. Midlife is a transition. It's not a crisis.

You're moving from one set of values, which is values very organized around climbing the greasy pole of accumulating status and wealth and that great job and building, you know, that great home and the spouse. You go from this period of social competition and accumulating. The latter portion of life is much more about community, cooperation, mentoring, coaching, giving back, And your brain actually changes in ways that makes that more likely. But in between, there's this transition period where the old values don't seem rewarding anymore. You know, you're 45 and it just doesn't seem that great anymore to get one more promotion.

And you sit there. You look at your life and say, what am I doing? What's the meaning of this? Have I wasted my life? That's completely natural because you're in the process of a transition to a different set of values, which really start to kick in later, which are more focused on cooperation than competition, more focused on figuring out the core relationships in your life and building and treasuring those exactly what you just said, Jim.

And we get the good news is we get better at that as we age and we do more of it. So part of what needs to happen is people panic when they're unhappy in middle age. They think I must be having a midlife crisis and everything's gonna get worse. And the opposite is true. It's just a transition.

It's like adolescence. It's a pain in the ass, but you get through it. And outside the other end, there's there's a reward. Well, can we tie that back to this whole discussion about the polarization movement we're in right now? And as a country, can we say we're in that middle aged period where we're we're we're we're afraid and we're we're we're not aware that there is this better period that's to come?

And that following on what you just said to recognize that we as a people can get through this middle period, so to speak, where a young you know, a middle aged democracy, so to speak. When you look at the history of the world, there haven't been that many long standing democracies. May maybe the maybe part of that message here is that it is gonna be a little messy messy right now while we're in this midlife crisis period, but we shouldn't throw out the baby with the back bathwater. We should come together and realize that that the the best is yet to come. Well, a bit of a stretch there, but I like it.

You know, the the thing about our democracy right now, Jim, is it's very, very seriously troubled, and I think it's a risk. I'm one of those people who think this is a three or four alarm fire. And I'm not sure what condition we come through in terms of the rule of law, for example, and our standing in the world, the alliances that we've invested so much in. I really don't know. But I hope you're right.

And one reason that I wrote this book about Christianity is that I think if it steps up and if it moves back to the three pillars we discussed, it could be a major driver in reducing the fear and the polarization and the toxicity. And it's all right there in the gospels. I tell people, you know, I'm not asking Christians to become more conservative or progressive or Republican or Democratic or secular or anything like that. I'm just asking if they become more Christian, because that's what we need right now. And I think that's a beautiful message, but for our atheistic, Jewish or not, progressives, Christian or not, for those Americans who don't fit into any of these categories, those principles you talked about with respect to not being afraid and, you know, forgiving, I I think they apply to all of us, and I think we all have to fight our fears and our demons and recognize that each side.

Right? The Republicans are afraid of the Democrats, and the Democrats are afraid of the Republicans, and the non Christians are afraid of the Christians, and the Christians are afraid of the non Christians. And and I think you made the point early on that the fear, right, overcoming that fear has to apply to all of us. Amen. And, you know, the the reason the reason I came back to that, Jonathan, is is that I have three adult kids.

And during COVID, I took a walk with one of my kids, and he said, dad, I need to spend less time with you. And I'm like, why? And and he's like, every time I'm walking with you, you talk about how the sky is falling. And and I realized that that I I don't always feel that way. I I, you know, I I can have anxiety like the next person, but venting that anxiety with my kid was probably not the right strategy.

And I realized that that you talked about this this older period, right, and that it can be a better period. And and we have to remind the younger generation of that to give them something to look forward to. And so it really reminded me once again to redouble down on your message about not being afraid and and to really, really focus on the fact that we're still here. It's you know, in the Jewish Bible, it's the year 5785. And, you know, I really do think as a student of history, if you look at any time to be alive, whether or not you're gay or you're white or you're black or you're a woman, I don't care who you are.

If you had a time machine, I don't think there's a period that any of us would wanna go back to. You know, if you're a gay American born in 1960, you wake up every morning feeling a sense that there's been a miracle, a transformation in this country. I wrote an article for The Atlantic. Maybe you can put it in the show notes. But it's about the sixty plus years of the American war on homosexuality and why it was genuinely, this is not an analogy, genuinely totalitarian.

It mobilized every aspect of society, government, medicine, law, social attitudes, religion. It mobilized them all in a campaign to eradicate homosexuals. And here we are, and I have been married to a man for, what, fifteen years? And if you had told me that thirty years ago, I would have said you were crazy. So every day I get up, and despite the trouble that we're all in, I I try to remind myself that you're right.

There is no earlier time when I would rather be an American, and there is still no other country that I would rather be committed to. Yeah. The POC Venture Capital and Beyond is produced by CMVG Advisors. If you enjoyed the conversation today and haven't yet subscribed to our show, you can find us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, and SoundCloud. Feel free to leave a review while you are there and maybe even a five star rating.

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