Hello and welcome to Jesuitical, a podcast from American Media for Saints and sinners.

You can join us each week for honest conversations about the Catholic Church and our world today,

sometimes over drinks.

I'm Ashley McKinless, and I'm joined today by Father Sam Sawyer, the editor-in-chief of American

Magazine. Welcome, Sam. Good to be here. Good to have you. And today we're having a really

important conversation with David French, who's joining us from Chicago instead of his native Nashville.

David is a former attorney,

an army lawyer, who served in Iraq in 2007 as a judge advocate. He's also a political

commentator and currently serves as an opinion columnist at the New York Times. Welcome to Jesuitical,

David. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

David, we're speaking to you at what feels like something of a turning point, although,

I suppose one in a series of turning points for the country.

So today, you know, we're recently coming off the events in Minneapolis, which we'll get

to in more detail later, you know, a little bit farther back than that,

the Trump administration's operation in Venezuela, threats against NATO allies, and it's still,

it's still January. We're less than one month into this year.

Don't remind me. Please don't remind me. It's still January.

So in that context, but really also looking at the, you know, the course of the

last 10 years or so, we wanted to talk to you today about the state of Christianity in the United

States and what a healthy Christianity looks like and might be able to do in the age of Trump.

So nothing contentious, nothing complicated. Very easy today.

Oh, something that simple. Okay. Okay. I'm ready.

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