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Good Faith

Pete Wehner: Navigating Political Exile, Faith, and Identity

Good Faith

Good Faith

News, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

5 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Everyone wants love and community in a fractured world. What happens when they are lost?

 

Host Curtis Chang and Pete Wehner, a columnist for The Atlantic and former White House staffer, explore the deep sense of political, cultural, and spiritual exile felt by many Americans. Reflecting on Pete’s journey from shaping policy during 9/11 to breaking from the Republican Party over Donald Trump, they discuss the challenges of shifting identities while staying true to one’s convictions. Drawing from the Psalms, cognitive psychology, and Christian history, they offer a vision for engaging culture and finding new purpose amid political disillusionment and feelings of living in exile, even in the place you call home.

 

This episode revisits a past conversation to examine cognitive dissonance and the pursuit of truth in times of uncertainty.

 

Send written questions or voice memos for “Ask Curtis” episodes to: [email protected]

 

Get a 25% discount when you buy The Art of Disagreeing by Gavin Ortland at thegoodbook.com with code: GOODFAITH

 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

None of us lives easily with cognitive dissonance.

0:02.3

That is, if we feel like we're at odds with who we fundamentally think we are,

0:06.2

if we hold views or we're having actions, they're at odds with what we think we are,

0:12.0

we can't live easily with that.

0:13.8

And something eventually has to give. Welcome to the good faith podcast. I'm your host, Curtis Chang. And on this podcast, I talk with my friends who love Jesus, and we together

0:40.1

try to make sense of this world. And my guest for this episode is a friend who has been

0:46.5

helping many people over many years make sense of the world. He's Pete Wainer. He's a writer

0:52.4

for the Atlantic, for the New York Times, also a senior

0:55.4

fellow in residence with the Trinity Forum. So welcome. Thanks for coming. It's great to be with

1:01.2

you, Curtis. I admire you and your ministry and all you've done in your life. And so it's great

1:07.3

to have a conversation with you. Well, Pete, I wanted to have you come on to discuss a topic that I think is central to good faith.

1:17.6

And the topic is the experience of being in exile.

1:21.6

And so an exile is someone who has lost their home in some way and are in a state of waiting. And the reason why I

1:31.3

believe this topic is so central to good faith, we get a lot of emails from our audience basically

1:37.7

conveying some sense of homelessness. A lot of it is political homelessness. We have, I think,

1:43.5

a disproportionate number of conservatives who feel like they don't have a political home anymore, but also some from the left.

1:51.6

Some cultural homelessness feeling like they're looking out on the landscape of how Christians are engaged and viewed in the culture, and they feel like I don't have a home there in that

2:01.6

landscape. Some are experiencing spiritual homelessness. They are questioning spiritual

2:07.7

attachments or church attachments. And the vision I have of good faith is that our listeners

2:13.8

are sort of throughout the week like journeying and wandering or trekking through the wilderness of various sorts, political, culture, or spiritual.

2:24.2

And I had this vision of the Good Faith podcast as like a weekly campfire where those trek of the wilderness could at least find each other, gather around this campfire, and listen to friends.

2:37.2

Listen to friends talk about making sense of this world

...

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