The Long Game

Journalist Bonnie Kristian joins to discuss her new book, "Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community." "We've spent forty years dramatically increasing how much information the average person encounters daily, and we've made no effort to equip ourselves to handle that shift," Bonnie writes. "So now … we have this deep confusion around what is knowable and what is true and who is trustworthy." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

James K.A. Smith discusses his new book, "How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now," which released September 20, 2022, from Brazos Press. We discuss: the role of history in helping us learn discernment and live faithfully the ways that many Christians think they are living out ancient truths that are actually modern inventions how many Christians who "deconstruct" and end up leaving the faith are actually "rejecting the minority report" of the faith how Christian nationalism has "forgotten something very, very fundamental about what the Christian expectation of kingdom come looks like, which is precisely that it is not something that is engineered by us." how gardening helps us embrace our temporality and "experience God seasonally" Also check out James' book "You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit" See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The topic of Christian nationalism has been much in the news recently. Republican politicians like Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia both have claimed the term as their own, and Boebert in particular has loudly proclaimed that she does not believe in the separation of church and state. "I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk," she said. "The church is supposed to direct the government; the government is not supposed to direct the church." Perhaps the most aggressive Christian nationalist, despite his protestations about the term, is Pennsylvania's Doug Mastriano, a state senator who is the Republican nominee for governor in that state. Listen to Mastriano's comments in a 2021 zoom call a week before the January 6 insurrection, in which he baptizes conspiracy theories and his political will to power in the language of spiritual righteousness. That call was organized by a man named Jim Garlow, who is reportedly influential in something called the New Apostolic Reformation, which is a loosely connected network of men and women who call themselves apostles and prophets. These self-proclaimed divine emissaries claim that God speaks to them uniquely, and they claim authority over other people based on these grounds. Here's another example of the growing fusion throughout the country between religion and politics, in a way that confuses the two as one and the same rather than understanding them as separate but enhanced by one another if cross-pollinated in healthy ways. This is audio of an event this past July 1 in Atlanta, Georgia, in which two major figures in the NAR -- Lance Wallnau and Dutch Sheets, along with two other men, Mario Murillo and Hank Kunnemman, according to Jennifer Cohn of the Bucks County Beacon -- lead an audience in a vow to take over the U.S. government and impose a theocracy. Philip S. Gorski is an expert on Christian nationalism. He is the author of "The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy," along with Samuel L. Perry, a professor at Oklahoma University. Gorski is a sociology professor at Yale University and is the author of American Babylon: Christianity and Democracy Before and After Trump and American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present. Gorski has written this of Christian nationalism: it is "political idolatry dressed as religious orthodoxy." We talk about the ways that sometimes the term is used imprecisely to condemn anyone who is a Christian, and I ask him to help us explain the ways that political extremism, especially the growing willingness to discard democracy and pursue authoritarianism, can be motivated by this belief system. You can also check out David French's interview with Paul D. Miller about this topic here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Christine Emba's book, "Rethinking Sex: A Provocation," is written for younger generations whose experience of sex, she argues, has been disappointing. She revisits basic questions of what sex is for, and argues that casual sex has been a bad deal for younger people because it has been devalued and minimized. Chrisrine comes from a conservative background where sex was, she says, overvalued. She's trying to find a middle ground. Christine told me she wrote the book to explore "what was ailing our sexual culture, that these malaise-filled encounters had become so common. What assumptions were we holding about sex that weren't serving us, that might actually be false? Where did we think the sexual revolution should have taken us, and where did we actually end up? And the big question in this book, what ethic do we need to have good sex if consent isn't enough?" Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eboo Patel has spent decades thinking about interfaith work and buildnig an institution devoted to promoting it. In this conversation, we talk about his work building Interfaith America, his new book "We Need to Build," and how America can strengthen democracy by making faith more welcome in public life, not less so, by embracing its diversity of faiths as co-contributors to the common good. Here's the piece I mention by John Inazu: "Interfaith Doesn't Mean Compromise" Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Justin Giboney is co-founder of The And Campaign, an Atlanta-based advocacy and political training organization launched in 2015, with artist Sho Baraka and Rev. Angel Maldonado. Giboney has conservative views on abortion, but also is critical of the way Republicans have often focused only on making sure women give birth, without much regard for what government can do to help avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place and to alleviate poverty and improve women's healthcare and resources for poor families. A lot of our conversation is about Giboney's view that American Christians on the right and left have allowed political parties and tribalism to shape their political choices, rather than applying their faith to the issues. Giboney grew up Colorado and got his his start in politics working for former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. He's co-author of the 2020 book, "Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement." Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David French, my guest today, is senior editor at The Dispatch, contributing writer at The Atlantic, co-host of the "Good Faith" podcast with Curtis Chang. He is author of several books, most recently, "Divided We Fall: America's Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation." David has a long career as a lawyer who has fought for religious liberty of all faiths, but especially conservatives. He is super conservative himself, as you will hear in this conversation when he talks about his view of abortion. But over the last several years, French has become a pariah to many on the right. French has in essence become the target for conservatives who believe that America is so hostile to their views and their way of life that it is no longer possible to try to reach agreement and compromise and accommodation through the regular means of democratic processes. In short, David French has become a standard-bearer for conservatives who still believe in democracy, and a target for those on the right who range from skeptical that democracy can work for them anymore, to those who are outright hostile to democracy. In this conversation we discuss what David French and Curtis Chang are doing to try to rebuild the walls of christian conservative commitments to democracy and classical liberalism, which is different from partisan or political liberalism. Curtis was on this podcast last year to talk about his work on "Christians and the Vaccine." And then in the second half of this conversation, we talk about Roe v Wade and what happens next. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kristin Kobes Du Mez is a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University — a private evangelical college. Her book, "Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation," has caused a huge stir. The argument in Du Mez's book is that the attempt to infuse Christianity with more muscle, to make Christian men in particular more aggressive, has gone badly astray. Du Mez documents the roots of this muscular Christianity rising out of a response to industrialization and the loss of meaningful work for many men, over a century ago. Du Mez writes in the book that "for conservative white evangelicals, the 'good news' of the Christian gospel has become inextricably linked to a staunch commitment to patriarchal authority, gender difference, and Christian nationalism, and all of these are intertwined with white racial identity." In this episode, we discuss what Du Mez means by gender difference, and what exactly she's critiquing. It's not all gender difference but a kind of black and white thinking about what men and women can and cannot be. And we also talk about the connection between the deification of men in religious subcultures, and the connection to how abuses of power -- especially sexual abuse and harassment -- have been covered up by religious institutions. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Very few people are happy with the way technology has come to dominate our lives, argues author Andy Crouch, and he thinks it will take a while for humans to reclaim autonomy from machines. "I rarely meet anyone who thinks, 'Oh, it's really working quite well,'" Crouch, the author of a new book, said in an interview. "I just don't meet anyone who thinks we're in great shape and should just keep kind of on the path we're on." Crouch's book, "The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World," identifies one of the core problems of our time as a "breakdown of recognition." "Our neurology is actually wired for this kind of face-to-face encounter. It's when another person really attends to me and knows what I'm feeling, and in a way thinking, that I can fully be myself," said Crouch, a former executive editor at Christianity Today magazine who has written four other books on culture-making, the ethical and moral uses of power, and how to use technology rather than be used by it. There are, Crouch said, "fewer and fewer settings that I'm in where I can expect that another person knows who I am, knows what it's like to be me." Crouch has already written a book in 2017 called "The Techwise Family," which has plenty of practical advice. But his latest book is harder to categorize, as Crouch struggles with how to recover our humanity. His answers to this question are unconventional. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Richard L. Hasen is one of the nation's foremost experts on election law. He teaches law and political science at the University of California-Irvine. He is co-director of the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center. He runs the Election Law Blog. And he has written numerous previous books, including The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown, in 2012, Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court and the Distortion of American Elections in 2016, and Election Meltdown in 2020. Hasen's new book - "Cheap Speech: How Disinformation Poisons Our Politics - and How to Cure It" - lays out a diagnosis of the problem. "The survival of American democracy depends on the success of free and fair periodic elections in which voters have access to reliable information to make ballot decisions that are consistent with their preferences and interests, and where the losers accept the results as legitimate and agree to fight another day." The entire second half of Hasen's book is a fairly detailed examination of potential ways to ameliorate the problem. Several are legal and regulatory, and then a few have more to do with civil society. In the legal arena, Hasen says that the U.S. Supreme Court is a likely obstacle to several reforms. " Hasen said the court's conservative justices have an "outmoded" view of how to apply the First Amendment's free speech protections that relies on a "marketplace of ideas model in which citizens debate ideas publicly and the truth rises to the top." Hasen is skeptical that such a purely self-regulating marketplace of ideas has ever existed, but he is adamant that it does not now. "The marketplace of ideas is experiencing market failure," he writes. He says that the First Amendment is a vital "bulwark against government censorship," but adds that "the greatest danger today is a public that cannot determine truth or make voting decisions that are based on accurate information, and a public susceptible to political manipulation through repeatedly amplified, data-targeted, election related content, some of it false or misleading." In this conversation, we talk a little bit about some of his proposed reforms, and why the Supreme Court's conservative justices are a likely obstacle to them. And we also discuss why decisions by social media platforms to remove public figures is not, in his view, censorship. You can listen to Rick's previous appearance on "The Long Game," from July 2020, here. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/thelonggame. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.