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CROSS PURPOSES by Jonathan Rauch

CROSS PURPOSES

Christianity's Broken Bargain With Democracy

by Jonathan Rauch

Pub Date: Feb. 4th, 2025
ISBN: 9780300273540
Publisher: Yale Univ.

A call for American Christianity to be an essential component of liberal democracy.

Although Rauch, gay and Jewish, frequently notes that he may be an unlikely dispenser of advice to churchly Christians, he observes that American Christianity is in a historical state of crisis: fewer and fewer people identify as Christians, while church attendance is sharply down. This has reverberations in secular society, Rauch holds, because the Founders, while allowing that “religion’s job is not to support republican government,” held that religion “teaches virtue and thereby makes Americans more governable,” an entwinement of public governance and public morality. Religion writ large, Rauch holds, still has this role to play, addressing questions of the here and now while pondering the larger issues: Why is there death? Why does evil exist in the world, especially if there is a loving God? Rauch hastens to add that liberal democracy is not strictly dependent on the religious—as witness the secular societies of Japan and Scandinavia—but ideally, in a heterogenous society such as America’s, religion is an important provider of “cultural and spiritual infrastructure.” Of course, he adds, the militant arm of nationalist Christianity fails in this task, presuming that negotiated democratic agreements are immaterial when God and earthly preachers are issuing the commands. “Absolutely nothing about secular liberalism required white evangelicals to embrace the likes of Donald Trump,” Rauch argues, yet there we are, surrounded by what he calls “Sharp Christianity,” adding that it is “literally a Church of Fear.” Interestingly, Rauch looks to Mormonism as a model for negotiating moral stances by way of compromise, “a conciliatory approach [that] is conspicuously countercultural in the conservative religion world,” especially in its support of LGBTQ+ rights and other progressive social causes.

A cogent argument for reframing Christianity as an ally and not an enemy of secular society.