This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moly, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Dr. William Emboden is distinguished scholar, the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and he's also assistant professor

in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin.

He's also non-resident fellow with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Previously he served as Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council at the White House.

Dr. Emboden worked at the Department of State as a member of the Policy Planning Staff and his Special

Advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom.

He's worked as a staff member in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives.

He holds his PhD in MA degrees in history from Yale University and his baccalaureate from Stanford University.

He's the author of the book, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945 to 1960,

The Soul of Containment. And we're about to have one of those conversations you can only have with someone who has immersed himself in this material with the rich background of his own personal experience.

Will how did you find yourself attracted to the question of what was missing

in American foreign policy in its understanding during the Cold War? There know, there were actually two separate strains that both led me to the questions to animate this book.

The first was, before starting graduate school in history at Yale, I worked on Capitol Hill for several years,

and I saw a number of members of Congress who had very strong personal faith commitments,

and those faith commitments

seemed to shape their understanding of foreign policy and I saw a lot of

religious groups who are active on capital hill trying to influence American

foreign policy as well.

And so that just put some questions in my mind if in what was then the present day religious

...