#443 — What Is Christian Nationalism?

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Douglas Wilson about his book Frequently Shouted Questions about Christian Nationalism. They discuss Wilson's debates with Christopher Hitchens, the landscape of American evangelicalism, young-earth creationism, pre- vs. post-millennialism, the concept of dominionism, what Christian nationalism actually means, the supposed failure of secularism, the separation of church and state, religious tests for public office, women's suffrage, homosexuality and sodomy laws, capital punishment for adultery, the biblical case for slavery, the foundations of morality without God, Charlie Kirk's memorial service, heaven and hell as consequentialist frameworks, the nature of miracles, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe
0:21.9	at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely
0:27.3	through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider
0:31.8	becoming one. I'm here with Doug Wilson.
0:38.6	Doug, thanks for joining me.
0:39.4	Great to be with you.
0:39.8	Thank you.
0:43.7	So, yeah, you debated my friend Christopher Hitchens back in the day.
0:46.4	That was probably, I don't know, 15 years ago or so.
0:47.9	Did you remember what year you did those debates?
0:49.5	I don't remember the year.
0:51.8	It was a wonderful time, actually.
0:54.0	Christopher and I got along great, actually. Yeah, you seem to.
0:55.6	So I watched the documentary that was born of that collision, that it was literally titled
1:00.4	Collision. Right. And you guys were debating if memory serves whether Christianity is good
1:07.5	for the world. That was the kind of the focusing question. Yeah. Yeah, correct. So we won't, we probably won't recapitulate much of that. I mean, I think we might
1:15.9	fall into debate on a few topics. I think that's inevitable. But what I really want to start with here is
1:21.5	just to have you educate me in my audience about the American religious landscape. I just have a bunch of questions for you.
1:29.3	I should say you have a new book titled Frequently Shouted Questions
1:33.3	about Christian Nationalism.
1:35.3	So we'll get into that.
1:36.3	But just to orient us, maybe just the first question is,
	...

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