Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World

Michael McDuffee — formerly professor of historical theology at Moody Bible Institute, now living in Germany — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the seventh episode in the faith and politics series. The conversation starts with an essay by Jürgen Habermas. Habermas, a lifelong child of the Enlightenment, found himself after 2001 asking whether reason alone could carry the weight of a public ethics, and began describing modern societies as post-secular. McDuffie uses that as a way into the collapse of secularization theory: the assumption that modernization would inevitably shrink religion turned out to describe Europe, not the world. His sharper claim is that the secular was never a neutral condition but a strategy — a way of categorizing peoples and ideas that maintained a particular hegemony, and one whose vulnerability has opened room for voices it had kept out. They apply this to America, which McDuffee argues was post-secular before the term existed. The last stretch takes on 1776 and 1619 together, arguing both frameworks share a blind spot, and ends on coveting, idolatry, and Francis of Assisi as a model for finding a voice. Chapters: 00:00 Introductions 01:19 Habermas and an awareness of what is missing 06:21 Durkheim, France, and the durability of religion 08:38 Why secularization theory described Europe, not the world 11:43 Liberalism, neoliberalism, and the sovereign individual 17:47 Post-secular doesn't mean the secular is over 21:28 The secular as a deliberate strategy 25:00 From Hellenized being to deism to history to ideology 31:44 What post-secular opens up 37:31 Postmodernism gave voices the chops 45:50 A nation with the soul of a church 51:20 1776 and 1619 share a blind spot 57:17 Creation, not nature 1:00:27 Coveting, idolatry, and the inclusio of the Decalogue Follow and subscribe Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org  Website: www.thinkingchristian.org  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

James Spencer and Ashish Varma debrief their conversation with William Cavanaugh, and work out what he was and wasn't saying. They start with a tension: Cavanaugh sounded gentler in conversation than his books read, and both men try to account for it. The answer they land on has to do with audience — that Torture and Eucharist and Being Consumed are written to people who need to resist, while the broader project is aimed at those of us sitting near the center of a global economic order who don't notice we're being formed at all. Much of the episode turns on Cavanaugh's remark that he couldn't answer a question about the midterms without sounding partisan. James and Ashish read that carefully: not as a coded endorsement, but as a recognition that theological convictions will sometimes land incidentally on one side of a two-party ballot without originating there. From there they recover the older sense of politics — the life of the polis — through a piece of litter on the ground, a squirrel in the road, and Hebrews on efforts that matter without being ultimate. Chapters: 00:00 Why he sounded softer than he reads 02:23 The nation state as an ideology, not a neutral container 04:33 Why Cavanaugh reaches for idolatry 07:14 Formation, identity, and voices from the periphery 10:16 "I'm not sure I can answer that without sounding partisan" 16:52 Incidental alignment isn't partisanship 20:52 Recovering the polis 26:26 The litter on the ground 29:35 Creation care and the squirrel in the road 36:00 Amazon, Target, and picking your poison 40:13 Politics as art rather than science 44:16 We don't fix the world; we live faithfully in it 48:15 The fall as an optimistic doctrine 51:04 Hebrews: effort that matters without being ultimate Follow and subscribe Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org  Website: www.thinkingchristian.org  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

William T. Cavanaugh — professor of Catholic studies at DePaul, director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, and author of The Uses of Idolatry, Torture and Eucharist, Migrations of the Holy, and Being Consumed — joins James Spencer and Ashish Varma for the fifth episode in the faith and politics series. Cavanaugh begins where politics itself begins: not with elections, but with how people organize a shared life. He traces how the sacred trappings once belonging to the church migrated to the modern state, and points to the Apotheosis of Washington on the Capitol dome as a reminder that ostensibly secular nations still deify. Much of the conversation is about idolatry — why the word is worth recovering despite its colonial baggage, and what Latin American theologians saw when they applied it to economics rather than atheism. Cavanaugh works the argument through Amazon packages, cobalt mines, and Milton Friedman's definition of a free transaction, then answers the obvious objection about whether ordinary people can do anything at all. He closes on why the pursuit of Christian political power keeps producing the opposite of what it promises, with Hungary as the case in point. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome 01:24 Politics before it meant elections 03:38 Ecclesia: the church as a third thing 05:30 Migrations of the holy 08:25 The Apotheosis of Washington 09:12 We didn't have to end up here 11:30 Why the fall is an optimistic doctrine 14:58 Chile, Argentina, and the habits of a church 17:17 Kennedy's Pyrrhic victory 20:59 Why Christians think they need power 22:59 Recovering the word idolatry 27:08 Economics as theology 30:31 Amazon, cobalt, and what's invisible by design 34:51 If I don't buy the bananas, who eats? 41:06 Neither the status quo nor a treehouse 44:46 Mondragon and worker ownership 46:12 What you can actually do 48:12 A migrant ministry in Oak Park 51:13 Framing a midterm election 54:34 Hungary, Orbán, and what power costs the church 57:02 The churches everyone assumed were holding Follow and subscribe Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org  Website: www.thinkingchristian.org  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

James Spencer and Ashish Varma reflect on the previous episode's conversation with Veronica Roberts Ogle — and on what happens when Augustine gets recruited for arguments he was writing against. The starting point is a claim James has encountered in political speeches: that the two cities can be collapsed, and that a nation might become the city of God. Both men think this misses Augustine's whole point. The cities are distinguished by their loves, and a community formed by self-love doesn't graduate into the other by improving its policies. From there the conversation widens. James connects Augustine's ordered loves to the Old Testament grammar of love as loyalty, and argues again that the ordo amoris isn't a ranked list. Ashish brings in Balthasar on faith as resonance — the violin that sounds because it's attuned — and Tolkien's music of creation, which is like unto a chorus without quite being one. They land on the wedge that can't be closed: a nation is bounded by resources and space, while there is always room in the kingdom for one more. Plus: pilgrims versus tourists, and why Las Vegas may be America's most honest city. Chapters: 00:00 Reflecting on the Ogle conversation 02:00 When Augustine gets enlisted for a Christian nation 06:48 Love as loyalty: Deuteronomy 6 and 1 John 09:11 Ordered loves is not a dartboard 11:25 The Good Samaritan and the outer ring 1 1:50 Balthasar: faith as resonance and attunement 17:03 Why not a chorus? Tolkien and the limits of language 19:30 Can non-Christians love? 25:11 Sameness that improvises rather than repeats 28:45 Wholesomeness is not holiness 33:07 False theologies and the sacred function of the state 39:27 The wedge: bounded nations, unbounded kingdom 44:48 What the church can do that the state cannot 50:08 O'Donovan: governing authorities as secondary witness 53:43 Pilgrims and tourists 59:39 Provision, anxiety, and the faith muscle Augustine City of God, two cities, ordo amoris, ordered loves, Christian nationalism, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Tolkien Ainulindalë, Oliver O'Donovan, William Cavanaugh, pilgrim and tourist, political theology, church and state, Veronica Roberts Ogle Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

AI is already cutting the audio, designing the graphics, and answering questions people used to bring to their pastors. Troy Miller, president and CEO of National Religious Broadcasters, joins Dr. James Spencer to talk about what happens when a productivity tool starts getting marketed as a teammate. Miller lays out three buckets: AI as production efficiency for ministries and nonprofits, the industry push to make the tools feel more human, and the legal and ethical tangle of intellectual property, deepfakes, and platform liability. From there the conversation turns to NRB and Barna survey data on how much Christians already trust these systems, research on what cognitive offloading does to our ability to think, the energy and water costs of the data centers nobody is counting, and why the answer has to start with what it means to be created in the image of God rather than with the technology itself. If AI is forming us, the question is what it is forming us into, and whether analog practices like radio, print, and actually sitting in a room with other believers are worth defending. Learn more about NRB at nrb.org.  Follow and subscribe For more thoughts on AI, see James's Christianity.com article: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/current-events/christians-ai-spiritual-formation-discernment.html  Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org  Website: www.thinkingchristian.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Veronica Roberts Ogle teaches at Villanova and wrote Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine's City of God. She joins James Spencer for the third episode in the faith and politics series. She begins with why the book exists. Rome was sacked in 410, the first breach of the city's walls in centuries, and Romans wanted to know whether Christianity had cost them the protection of the old gods — while Christians, riding the high of a converted emperor, were asking why their God hadn't defended them either. Augustine's answer took thirteen years and twenty-two books. Ogle explains the two cities as loves rather than places: one formed by God's love carried as far as contempt of self, the other by self-love carried as far as contempt of God. She unpacks what "contempt of self" does and doesn't mean, and pushes back on reading the ordo amoris as a ranked list — everything is loved in God, not after God. The conversation turns to what this means for political life: why no political community has an eschatological end, why Augustine is no optimist about politics, and why he thought a judge should see himself as the woman caught in adultery. Chapters: 00:00 Introductions, and finding Augustine 04:01 The sack of Rome and why City of God got written 09:19 Nations can be healthier or sicker — but not transformed 13:54 Two cities, two loves 17:06 What "contempt of self" actually means  17:38 Ordered loves: not a ranked list 22:18 Political community and the peace it can reach 28:11 Is the church the same as the city of God? 34:41 What political participation actually is 38:39 Two kinds of father, two kinds of household 43:32 Augustine's letters to Christian judges 45:42 The loaf of bread: need and proximity 48:34 Compassion at a distance, and what we can actually do 53:25 Where to start reading Augustine   Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

David Koyzis returns to the show for the second episode in the faith and politics series. He's a member of Global Scholars Canada and the author of Political Visions and Illusions, We Answer to Another, and Citizenship Without Illusions — and he spent his first thirty years in the Chicago area before moving to Canada, which gives him an unusual vantage on American national feeling. Koyzis starts with divided loyalties: we belong to families, congregations, workplaces, and nations, and none of those communities exhausts who we are. The political community isn't higher than the others. From there the conversation turns to what makes American identity different — the pledge, the anthem, the flag in the sanctuary — and why "Canadian first" is a phrase that would get you laughed at. James raises Robert Bellah on American civil religion. Both men admit to a season of refusing to sing the national anthem, and neither holds that position now. They also discuss why hope is not optimism, why presidents get credited with powers they've never had, and gratitude as the alternative to a posture of constant complaint — the subject of Koyzis's forthcoming book on the Heidelberg Catechism. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome back 01:55 Divided loyalties, and what none of them can define 03:48 "First allegiance" isn't a pie chart 06:01 Living the whole day before the face of God 09:40 What's different about American identity 14:20 The pledge, the anthem, and inculcating a nation 16:05 Bellah on American civil religion 19:31 Pride, and the hope it starts to cultivate 21:07 Hope is not optimism 21:38 Why we expect presidents to save us 24:53 Flags in the sanctuary 29:08 The Heidelberg Catechism project 33:48 Public life is wider than politics 34:57 Toward a politics of gratitude 36:20 Deuteronomy 8 and forgetting the source 40:03 Inconspicuous patterns, and what we take for granted 43:10 Formation first, politics second 46:10 Advice for an election season Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

The first episode in a series on faith and politics running through the midterms. James Spencer and Ashish Varma set the terms before the guests arrive. Ashish starts with the word itself: polis, the city — the shared life of a community, of which party politics is only a narrow slice. That opens the question the series will keep returning to. Paul had no power to abolish slavery, but he could tell Philemon that Onesimus was returning as a brother, and in doing so redraw a line the empire had drawn elsewhere. That is political work, done without any political agency in the sense we usually mean. James argues that voting is a voluntary right rather than a sacred duty, and explains why he doesn't always exercise it. Ashish tells the story of asking a pastor why the people who filled the building for ESL classes on Tuesday were absent on Sunday. Both land on 1 Corinthians 7: you don't have to change your situation to serve God where you are. Guests across the series include Kevin Flatt, Veronica Ogle, William Cavanaugh, Vincent Bacote, and others. Chapters: 00:00 Why this series, and what it won't do 03:06 What students expect from a political theology class 04:37 Polis: the city, and what "political" actually covers 06:00 Is the gospel political? 08:26 Paul's constraints, and ours  09:51 Political agency without political power 11:35 "The poor you will always have with you" 13:25 Nested authority: everything under God's 16:13 Philemon, Onesimus, and redrawing the line 17:43 Reimagining: children, packaging, and a can of Coke 21:06 Voting as a right, not a sacred duty 25:24 Pro-life advocacy and the children who age out 28:16 A church on the boundary lines of Chicago 32:02 1 Corinthians 7: serve where you're called 36:22 New eyes, new ears 37:39 Who's coming on the series Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

A Billy Graham Center survey of Gen Z reported that nearly half of respondents agreed that Christian support for Trump has made them less likely to attend church. The survey offers no follow-up on why — whether the objection is to a candidate, to partisanship generally, or to something deeper about how the church understands its own order. James Spencer and Ashish Varma take the finding as a starting point rather than a conclusion. The conversation reaches back to Constantine and the first council called by an emperor, to Augustine's two cities and the early church's refusal of military service, and to the medieval contest between papacy and throne — arguing that the entanglement of theology and politics is old news, not a recent American invention. From there: why neither conservatism nor liberalism has room for Christ at its center, why "care for the poor" collapses so quickly into a debate about welfare, what the three people at a Wednesday night prayer meeting say about arguments over prayer in schools, and a reading of Ahaz in Isaiah 7 — a king who had already decided, and dressed the decision in piety. Chapters (part-two offsets assume the recordings join cleanly at 28:00 — verify against the export): 00:00 The survey, and what it doesn't tell us 03:25 "Politically motivated" — who gets the label 06:28 Constantine, Nicaea, and the entanglement begins 10:09 Sacred social order and the scope of government 12:33 When political procedure starts discipling us 14:54 Care for the poor, and why it becomes welfare 16:48 Augustine's two cities 18:56 The early church and military service 22:12 Bezalel: creativity constrained by a given pattern 25:32 Selective use of Scripture as a rejection of authority 26:30 Conservatism has no place for Christ 28:00 Two sides of the same coin 31:00 Where do our ideals actually come from? 36:00 Reparations, history, and what we're actually called to learn 36:30 Engel v. Vitale and the Wednesday night prayer meeting 39:40 The government has no interest in informing you 42:00 Housing, highways, and the history nobody teaches 46:40 When the platform changed and nobody blinked 48:50 Isaiah 7: Ahaz had already decided 53:20 McGilchrist, Deuteronomy 30, and knowing what we don't Follow and subscribe Subscribe to Thinking Christian: https://episodes.thinkingchristian.org  Website: www.thinkingchristian.org  Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

James Spencer and Ashish Varma return to the diagnoses that narrow the church's vision, this time with fragmentation — the way faithful Christians end up separated from one another not by heresy but by tradition, idiom, and the slow drift of communities that no longer talk across their boundaries. James opens with a job interview from 2005 where a pastor announced he wanted no one in the role who wouldn't bleed for the Southern Baptist faith. Both men are clear that boundaries have real value; the question is what happens when a community's distinctives quietly become the test of who counts as a Christian at all. The conversation leans on George Lindbeck's argument that doctrine is second-order — an attempt to make sense of the biblical narrative rather than the thing itself — and on what gets lost when that ordering flips. Along the way: the ecumenical councils and why some councils didn't make the cut, the filioque and the East-West split, Genesis 22 and whether its tension sits in the text or in front of it, and why James has traded getting it right for getting it plausible. Chapters (approximate, from speaker turns — verify against the final cut): 00:00 What fragmentation is, and what it isn't 02:29 Church history as the place to start 04:25 "Bleed for the Southern Baptist faith" 08:35 When boundaries are legitimate 11:03 The ecumenical councils and what made them ecumenical 13:53 Insularity, and the cost of never crossing traditions 16:24 Doctrinal distinctives become vested interests 21:05 Lindbeck, Vanhoozer, and doctrine as second-order 23:19 East and West: the filioque and the split 25:16 The Reformation and the explosion of denominations 29:37 Inversion: when doctrine climbs on top of the text 31:15 Genesis 22 — "now I know that you fear God" 36:40 Is the tension in the text or in front of it? 41:13 Written in pencil 42:57 Reading the Bible without the systematic categories 47:38 Nobody reads from nowhere 49:18 The cloud: how secondhand narratives harden 54:11 Petitions, feedback loops, and doctrinal echo chambers 55:35 From "getting it right" to "getting it plausible" 57:37 The Nicene Creed as a broad boundary Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.