From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

But I do think we're at a place where to hold specific Christian commitments is now no longer even sort of a net neutral or net positive.

It's seen as perhaps even antagonistic to broad societal perceptions of the of the common good.

This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the radio-free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale

College podcast network. That was Dr. Miles Smith, assistant professor of history here at Hillsdale

College. It also author of the new book,

Religion and Republic, Christian America, from the founding to the Civil War. We'll talk in depth

with Dr. Smith about that book on today's program. Dr. Smith, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Scott.

I want to begin by, this is at the very beginning of the the book and it's something that probably should be addressed.

We do it now.

The issue of the phrase, the hot phrase, Christian nationalism.

And this is not really what the book's about.

And you say at the beginning, throw it aside.

It should be set aside by historians and ministers alike, you say, because at this point it means nothing at all.

So this is not a book about Christian nationalism per se. No, it's not. It's sort of getting at maybe the debate that has prompted people to embrace the term Christian nationalism. But I don't like the term. I don't think it's particularly useful. I don't think it describes anything. And so even the kind of embrace of it by people on the right, I think it's a bit of a waste of time

because it obfuscates more than it clarifies. So let's talk about a different phrase.

Okay. Because early on in religion and republic, you say that the United States was a republic

of Christians that were committed to what I, you say that the United States was a republic of Christians that were

committed to what I, you have chosen to call Christian institutionalism. So how do you define

Christian institutionalism? Christian institutionalism is sort of what you might call normal American

life up until the last 20 years or so. I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina,

and there was Presbyterian Hospital right uptown in a neighborhood off uptown in Elizabeth.

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