Jon Rauch On Evangelical Christianism
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jon and I go way back to the early days of the marriage movement. He’s currently a senior fellow at Brookings and a contributor editor at The Atlantic. He’s the author of many books, including Kindly Inquisitors, The Happiness Curve, and The Constitution of Knowledge — which we discussed on the Dishcast in 2021. His new book is Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy.
For two clips of our convo — on fear-based Christianity, and the growing tolerance of gays by the Mormon Church — see our YouTube page.
Other topics: how Jon tried to believe in God growing up; his Christian roommate in college, Rev. Mark McIntosh; how I kept my faith through AIDS crisis; the doubt within faith; Fr. James Alison; parallels between Christianity and liberal democracy; the Reformation; Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration; Christ’s aversion to property; church/state; the federal persecution of Mormons in the 19th century; American Primeval; Vatican II; Catholic toleration of divorce but not homosexuality; Anita Bryant; Prop 8; the gay wedding cake controversy; wokeness as a religion; Biden’s DEI as a kind of religious indoctrination; left-wing Christianity; Bishop Budde; her shrine to Matthew Shepard; the Benedict Option; the Utah Compromise; whether the LDS is truly Christian; the Respect For Marriage Act; Dobbs and Obergefell; authoritarianism abroad; the J6 pardons; Trump firing IGs; Don Jr against “turning the other cheek”; Pope Francis against proselytism; eternal truths vs. political compromise; declining church attendance; and the loss of enchantment in Christianity.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Yoni Appelbaum on how America stopped building things, Chris Caldwell on the political revolution in Europe, Nick Denton on China and AI, Francis Collins on faith and science, Ian Buruma on Spinoza, Michael Joseph Gross on muscles, and the great and powerful Mike White, of White Lotus fame. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hi there. Welcome to another fabulous fish cast in a slightly thawing Washington, D.C. |
| 0:36.1 | It's actually kind of nice out after our little Arctic blast. |
| 0:39.5 | We're doing great. We're edging towards 200,000 total subscribers, which is incredibly exciting. |
| 0:46.4 | Thank you very much for subscribing. If you haven't, you will find that this riveting conversation |
| 0:51.8 | that's about to happen will end halfway through |
| 0:54.3 | and you'll want more, which case you'll have to subscribe. So why not subscribe right now, |
| 0:59.6 | then you can visit a whole podcast and every other podcast in full and get all the major dish items, |
| 1:05.5 | all the contest, all everything that you miss otherwise with a full honest subscription to the weekly dish. |
| 1:12.9 | We're most grateful. We have some really interesting guests coming up. We have Evan Wolfson |
| 1:17.6 | is coming on to talk about the history of marriage equality and his role in it. And we'll get a |
| 1:22.7 | very personal view from the person who probably was most significant in pushing for marriage equality |
| 1:30.2 | from the 80s onwards, and that should be fascinating. Yoni Applebaum is coming on to talk about |
| 1:35.2 | why and how America can't build anything anymore. We have Nick Denton come on to talk about |
| 1:41.6 | new media and where he is right now in the world. It should be kind of |
| 1:44.3 | interesting. And the great and powerful Mike White, the White Lotus creator and a man with a |
| 1:53.0 | fascinating life and actually a major dishhead, I'm happy to say. So we're thrilled to have him. But |
| 1:58.9 | today we have an old friend of this, old friend of mine, |
| 2:02.0 | coming back who has a new book. The great and powerful, as Joe Reagan would say, Jonathan Raus, |
| 2:09.6 | he's back. And we go back a long, long way. And he's currently a senior fellow at Brookings |
| 2:15.3 | and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. |
| 2:18.3 | He's the author of many, many, many books, including the epic, kindly inquisitors, |
| 2:24.0 | one of the best ever defences of free speech I have ever read, |
... |
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