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Jonathan Rauch, "Civic Theology" and the Church


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Posted

Do we have a transcript of what Rauch actually said? The last time this came up the coverage of it wasn’t a very accurate take on what Rauch actually said. Did Rauch say anything new or is this another take on what was already said?

Posted (edited)
On 1/27/2025 at 7:03 PM, smac97 said:

Jonathan Rauch, "a self-described atheistic Jewish gay man" would seem to be an unlikely advocate for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  

Why? I mean...he is an atheist. And we are LDS, that's kinda a bit of a day and night differends. 

For the rest i don't know the guy and i should look into it to figure out more about him which i don't really wanna do. 

Edited by Dario_M
Posted (edited)

From the above link, errors included, timestamps removed (you can toggle time stamps off by clicking the three dots btw).  If you prefer the time stamps, let me know.

Quote

 

well after an introduction like that the rest will be an anticlimax I am so

honored to be with you at BYU and there are more thank yous than I could

possibly deliver so I won't even I I won't try I would leave too many out I

would just say that without the guidance um of Paul

Edwards in bringing me into a deeper understanding of of his world without

the support of Elder cook who gave me an interview and helped me understand the

church without the Friendship of Troy Williams who's in the room of equality

Utah a kindred spirit as we search for solutions to our problems of justice and

Equity within the context of a constitutional order that requires

compromise and of course thanks to someone without whom a big chunk of this work would not have been possible who is

here today in spirit and that of course is President Oaks the core of this work of this book

is I describe it as two mistakes and a

correction so I guess we'd better start with the

mistake that's me age 16 um a good example of why we're all happy

not to be 16 at that point in my life I already

knew and had for some years that I did not believe in God I've never had I'm a

lifelong atheist um I was Jewish I am Jewish and I also knew there was

something profoundly different about me because I was in love with boys at my

age at that point I didn't know what to call it but something that I did know was

that I was marked as an outcast from The prominent and

predominant faith of my country Christianity I knew because anyone who

turned the radio dial on their car radio on a Sunday morning knew that people like me were a stench in the nostril of

God that God hated us wanted us to change and thought we were sinners and

outright sick I believed at age 16 that Christianity was a home of bigotry

hypocrisy and cruelty and I have to tell you standing here tonight sometimes it

was and sometimes it still is that's where I was coming from when I

met thatman that's Mark McIntosh we were thrown together as College roommates

these are the four of us from my freshman year site in college Mark was a profoundly devout

Episcopal and he was the first Christian I was ever exposed to who not only

talked the talk but walked the walk he was a brilliant

guy but also a person of great humility and compassion of course he had a temper

of course he could lash out but this was the first time I saw someone modeling

what Christianity could mean and that set me on a journey which led over time to a

change in attitude and change in understanding but unfortunately not enough of a change in

attitude this is an article I wrote for the Atlantic in

2003 and it is officially wait for it the dumbest thing I ever wrote

this article celebrated the rise of secularism in America I called it

apatheism people not caring about God one way or the other I said I believe

that the rise of apatheism is to be celebrated as nothing less than a major civilizational Advance religion Remains

the most divisive and volatile of social forces apatheism is not a lapse it is an

achievement now the context is in 2015 I wrote in

the Atlantic that Donald Trump would never be president this is

dumber I thought in 2003 that as religion which in America

means predominantly Christianity which means predominantly white protestantism as it faded from view as

people became Less in invested in Christianity more secular that we would

turn into kind of Scandinavia religion's a divisive Force so we'll get along better we'll be more enlightened isn't

this a nice thing well what I did not know was that in 2003 when I wrote those

words we were embarking on exactly that experiment for the last 20 years and

folks this is a recent phenomenon this is all in the last 15 or 20

years we've been embarking in America on an unprecedented wave of

secularization and a collapse or near collapse of Christianity as we've known

it so in this chart you see the number of adults it's the red line never

attending religious services this is overwhelmingly Christianity we're talking about of course that number

grows from 44 million to 85 million 40 million people

over the course here of only 14 years that's more people leaving religion than

entered during all three of the great Awakenings this chart is from Gallup

this shows the percentage of people who are church members among us adults and

what you can see there this goes back to the 1940s and you see right through the end

of the 20th century this number is more or less stable it declines a little bit but not very much it hovers around

70% of the population and that's why when I was growing up as a kid it was

routine to ask people when you met them not what job do you have what school did you go to where you from you might ask

those things but at least as commonly you would ask what church do you belong to well you can see what happens to this

line starting in 2000 it drops Like a Rock so that by 2020 only

47% of Americans are church members fewer than

half here's what's happened to Christianity specifically this is Pew data what you see here is in 2007

78% of Americans identifies Christians only 14 years later that's

down to 63% that's a 15o drop in 14 years a percentage point a year we've

never seen anything like that where they go you can see that in the other line no

religion that's up from 16 points to 29 Points that's 13

points here's what's happening within Christianity this is Pew data now I want

you to focus first on white Mainline Evangelical

Protestants you should be able to see that Trend it's circled at either end of

the line and um this is ah that one's in the wrong

place um okay so what we're looking for here is the blue line

17.8% of Christians are white Mainline Protestants and that drops over these last 20 years to about 133% so that's a

drop but we all knew that the mainline churches are caving in that's a 20th century story what's different is what

you see here uh sorry about the labeling got a bit confused that Top Line there that's

white Evangelical Protestants and what you see is that what's happened over the same period is that they have followed

the same trajectory as the mainline churches and wound up at the exact same

place at the bottom of that curve they too are only 13% of the population only

20 years ago the story was the mainline churches are bleeding out but the Evangelical churches which are more

scripturally focused and more countercultural and hard-edged and giving people more of a reason to be Christian are thriving folks that is

yesterday's newspaper that is not what's happening anymore those churches white evangelicals are caving in um there you

see that where are they going this is people unaffiliated with any religion at all

the so-called nuns n o NES this is now America's predominant Faith that's over

a quarter of the population

well I was supposed to love this right whoopee great news Well I picked a few variables at random

you've seen all of these data yourself I am the first to agree than what I'm about to show you a lot of things

happened at the same time this is not all about the decline of verage and you had the the coming of cell phones and

you had you know overparenting and and social media and all the things people talk about but it can't be a coincidence

that for example over the same period you see this rapid increase in mental

health problems this is the number of not good mental health days and you can

see there that Top Line the red line that's people 18 to 25 look at that

Spike here's surgeon general's report 2023 epidemic of loneliness and

isolation here's what was going on at exactly the same period that we saw the collapse of

Christianity social isolation up social engagement with friends down way down

social engagement with others down companionship down I pull those at random there's there's you know there's

just pages of that stuff and it's dangerous it's really bad for you the Surgeon

General says lacking social connection is as dangerous as smoking up to 15

cigarettes a day and here's something else I didn't anticipate set setting aside Health

mental health and everything else another development in that same

period is this this is what political scientists call affective polarization

we've always been a society that's been divided on policy you know taxes too high too low government too big too

small foreign policy intervene Don you know all that stuff abortion whatever this is

different this is the percentage of people who hate and fear the other side

that's not about issues this has skyrocketed just in recent years to

these levels like we have never seen before this is these charts are from Pew again they're typical there's lots of

stuff like this the percentage of people saying that the other party is closed-minded has risen 69% and 83%

that's Democrats and Republicans dishonest 64% 72%

immoral 63% and 72% up from only 6 years earlier numbers

that were below 50 again ladies and gentlemen there's no precedent for this

in American life and the problem with affected polarization is it's not transactional you can't negotiate it

away it's one thing if you disagree with the other side then maybe you can work things out but if you hate them if you

fear them if they're a threat to your country to your very existence we're in a different world we're in a world that

is in fact becoming ungovernable well there are some people

who warned us this would happen and I wish I'd listen to them here are three of them John Adams George Washington

James Madison but they all said it Franklin Hamilton some version of this

what you see here are three quotations you may have heard them Adam says that the constitution is

wholly inadequate uh to a um to a people that's not moral and religious George

Washington this is from the Farewell Address reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National

morality can Prevail in exclusion of religious principle to suppose this is Madison

that any form of government will secure Liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea what

the founders were telling us here is not that this is a Christian Nation per se or that you have to believe in Jesus

Christ or any other religion to be a good America they're making a more subtle point about liberalism our form

of government liberalism the idea that people are created free and equal gives

us the Constitution which gives us a process for compromising and working things out and dividing power but the

founders understood that those principles are not self- sustaining they rely on an

underlying substrate of what they called Republican virtues virtues like

honesty civility forbearance law

abidingness and they told us those need to come from civil

society that means for example family it means social groups and it means

religion they expected that religion in America would do a large share of the

job of socializing us into the institutions that they gave us to

maintain and they assumed that that would happen and there's an even deeper reason I would argue perhaps even deeper

than that why there have been these consequences of the collapse of

Christianity I happen to come across this this is just from December this is something I just thought this was such a

beautiful statement by former German Chancellor Angela amle

who's asking the core question about liberalism because freedom is something

rather difficult because then all of a sudden you have to decide yourself I'm not only free of something I'm free for

something free to do something good for society and my experience is that makes

you happy our liberal democracy can make us free from tyranny

oppression but it can't tell us what we're free for what's our purpose on this planet

Are we more than just a passing clump of cells and most people and most societies

need an answer to that question and what I didn't understand in 2003 was that in the

absence of the great church teachings and the communal

worship the prayerfulness and the shaping of attitudes and souls that go with that in the absence of that we

would see the rise of substitute religions there's a wonderful book about this called strange rights by Isabella

terab Burton it's it's everything from you know wiah witchcraft to Soul cycle

DIY religions but they're very they're non-institutional they don't have

storied histories of theologies and deep moralities and all the Traditions that go with that and then you've also got

political movements that have taken on some of the roles of religion wokeness as John McCarter is one of them kinon I

would argue is another Maga has aspects of an idolatrous

religion these things they have their place but they are no substitute for the

great religious Traditions which date back hundreds and thousands of years and

are deeply rooted in evolved theologies now one of the things the book covers

which I won't cover in any detail is a little bit of defensive action because

there's a whole crew in America right now they're called post- liberals uh and integralists and other

things that look at the situation and say I'm to blame you secular people have

created a kind of a kind of tyrannical all-consuming individualistic

consumeristic anti- family anti-faith anti- tradition form of liberalism which

makes it impossible to be a good Christian or good religious person in our society I

agree that we in Liberal America consumerist America have made it difficult to be a Christian I would

submit it has never been easy to be a Christian I would submit that there's

evidence in the Christian Bible that it was not all that easy for Jesus Christ to be a

Christian and I like to quote our friend Ben who says when religion is good I

conceive it will support itself and when it does not support itself and God does not take care to support it so that its

professors are obliged to call for help of the Civil power is a sign I apprehend

of its being a bad religion the message from my book is yes Christianity faces

challenges but if we're going to have an honest conversation about the de churching of

America it would be helpful to start by Christians looking in the mirror

so what do we see if we look in the mirror now I'm an outsid of the church I hope it's clear that I come from a place

of of needfulness a place of respect and love I hope that's clear in what I'm

about to say but it is a little critical here is the trend that we have

seen since mid 20th century two waves of secularization the first was in the

mainline Church which got away from teaching the Bible got away from Doctrine got away from cultural distinct

this and became kind of a lifestyle choice and a political choice about social justice uh and so forth well

motivated but it turned out to be too weak and too secular to maintain the adherence and followers drifted away

into the larger society but then you had a second wave and this is the wave that has really hit

the white Protestant churches especially Evangelical churches I should say that in what follows I'm not addressing

Catholic um I am addressing white Protestant

evangelicalism you hunt where the Ducks are that's where the crisis is right now

what's happened there is a particular form of secularization which is

politicization starting in the age of Jerry fwell and Pat Robertson in the 1980s white evangelicals formed a union

with the Republican party they began to vote Republican that solidified

over time here's how that looks evangelicals have become more

Republican over the last two decades this is from Gallup data you can see

that steady Trend here is the Evangelical vote and

you can see that it's all it's leaned Republican for many years going back to

the 80s but starting in the same period we're talking about in this century it

swings over and becomes the most solid Republican voting Block in presidential

elections 80 plus% here's a really interesting chart

this one's a little tricky to understand but I will do my best this is from the religious demographer Ryan Burge who's

the best in the business so surveys asked people of

different Christian Stripes to place themselves on the ideal ological

spectrum and then also to place the two parties on an ideological spectrum and

see how they matched up and what you can see here in the upper left that's white evangelicals they are exactly precisely

in line with the Republican party that is not true of any other Christian group

non-white evangelicals main lines white Catholics non-white Catholics and down

there lower right the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints they have

historically been close to Republicans but look what happens in

2017 they differentiate what I wonder what happened in 2016

2017 so white evangelicals stand out and it's reached the point where Ryan Burge

tells us evangelicalism used to be a term that denoted a certain adherence to

a specific Theology and active engagement in a Protestant Community now

evangelicalism just means I am a Conservative Republican it's become little more than a cultural marker and

has little to do with any type of religious Devotion to the teachings of Jesus Christ so white evangelicals made

a bargain in the80s 90s but especially recently they made a

gamble that they could influence Unite with the Republican

party without the church being equivalently influenced by partisan

politics and it turns out that they were wrong about that over the same period when the

church has politicized it has shrunk we've seen that happen a lot of people

who are there for non-political reasons who want to hear the gospel preached have been drifting away and something else has happened

others have entered the church not for the message of Jesus Christ but because

it's become part of the partisan conservative brand labeling Evangelical is something

that denotes who you are this is particularly interesting data from Ryan

Burge this is the percentage of non- churchgoing evangelicals they identify as

evangelicals but they don't show up this gives you some idea of the increase the

filtering into the church it's change in composition into a less Godly type of

follower you can see this goes from 5% in 2008 to about an eighth of

churchgoers today and you can see how that trend line is growing so we've seen

a change in the composition of the church we have also seen a change in the

attitudes of the church here is pole result you may have seen this is super

famous um this is from public religion Research Institute in 2011 what this

shows is is Christians of different denominations were asked if an elected

official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in

their public and professional life this is a little tricky because the answer in the question don't match in terms of of

whether they're stated negatively or positively but what this shows is that in

2011 white evangelicals were the Christians in America who most said were

most likely to say that character is important in an elected

official only five years later in 2016 they were the Christians who were

least likely to say that Character Matters in an elected official hm again

what happened in 2016 but here's

one that we really should think about potentially even more I call it the

Church of fear this is a percentage of people of

different religions saying that their religion is under attack in America and

you see that two lines in this chart stand out now this is taken in 2023

two-thirds of Jews think their religion is under attack you may agree with me that in 2023 with what was going on in

campuses and elsewhere Jews had some reason to answer yes to that question

but 2third of Evangelical Christians are also coming from this place of feeling

that they are under attack that they are living in fear and they're giving

answers to this this is something we've never seen before people are asked

whether they agree that immigrants entering the country illegal today are poisoning the blood of our

country as you can see there there is exactly one Christian denomination that

agrees majority with that sentiment and that's white Evangelical Protestants and

you can see that their answer to that question is perhaps not all that

surprisingly exactly the same as the standard Republican View

so I call this the Church of fear um here's an example of what it sounds like

this is a pastor named Jim garlo the the homosexual movement the

LBGTQ the transgender movement is being forced about climate change that forced

upon us that's taking our private property rights and you'll go to one country after another they use the same

language over and over Satan is not particularly creative in the way he's operating right

now I assure you the enemy would love to take this congregation out and they would get it

by going after him if a pastor will not stand the people should leave that

place there it is they're coming here they're coming for you they're out to

get you be afraid be very afraid and he goes on to say by the way you should buy

my book and you can get a whole case of it on discount

here's something else that comes from that these are promises made by Donald J

Trump in 2016 and 2024 during his campaigns I picked them at random he

says this again and again it's his core message to Christians Christianity will

have power um Christianity if I'm there you're going to have plenty of power you

don't need anyone else if I get in you're going to be using that power at a

level that you've never used before power in the Earthly world that's what

he's promising and what are the implications of the search for Power for

Christians and Christian doctrine well we don't have to wonder because his son

Donald Trump Jr told us we've been playing t- ball for half a century while

they're play playing hard ball and cheating right we turned the other cheek and I

understand I understand sort of the biblical reference I understand the

mentality but it's gotten us nothing okay it's gotten us

nothing it's gotten us nothing that guy who died on the cross what did

it get him what did it get his followers have you had it with being a sucker

that's the message we're getting well I'm not here to tell you this in my own

voice I'm an outsider I get that I'm being presumptuous but I've been listening to

Christians and their hearts are wounded by what they're seeing in the church

this is Russell Moore he is former senior official the Southern Baptist convention today he's

the editor of Christianity Today wrote a book called losing our religion It's a

Wonderful book um he's one of many Christians but he makes these points

particularly well he says the Frantic rage we can often display in supposedly

protecting Christian values might feel like strength but the world sees it for what it is fear anxiety and lack of

confidence they can also see that it's nothing like The Confident Tranquility

of Jesus he goes on to say

that sense of paralyzing fear can also fuel the loss of the Next Generation if

the only choices we offer are secularization and paganized that they choose one or the

other if the only choices we offer are secularization and

paganized that they choose one or the other this is causing not just the

diminishment of the church its Witness and the decline in its membership it's causing pastoral burnouts the people who

like this the least are the pastors the first wave of politicization came from the pastor from Big public leaders like

fwell and Robertson this wave is very different pastors are going to church and discovering parishioners watching as

the pastors say we get them for an hour a week if we're lucky cable news gets them for 12 hours the parishioners are

bringing to that church and saying our way of life is danger we can't afford to lose the

battle for our culture our church needs to get into the culture War we need to fight fight fight a pastor I talked to

called this a battlefield mindset and this is one of the results of this this is a poll of pastors conducted a couple

years ago 42% had given real serious consideration to quitting full-time Ministry the last

year here's the reasons that they gave being a pastor is a hard job so the first two reasons are things like the

immense stress of the job and I feel lonely and isolated but there's number

three oops the the third from the top there current political divisions and I

talk to pastors they want to be preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ but

they dial into their email Monday morning and it's an inbox full of emails

saying what does this turn the other cheek garbage very discouraging

um this is the aforementioned Russell Moore but he's with David French another Evangelical he's a New York Times writer

now he's not clergy but he makes a point here which I want to listen to I want you to listen

to very closely because this is the hinge toward the

correction that I spoke about earlier the the fruit of the spirit are not just tactics to be deployed to win

people over they're they're the markers of who we are okay and then the last

thing I'll say is you cannot go into the political world and say you

know I know I'm a bit of soul on Twitter but you should see me in the soup

kitchen and and that's just not the way it works

you can't cabin off parts of your life

um you can all guess what the bleeped out word is so you get the message there Christianity like all of the great

faiths is not meant to be something you just do in your immediate environment in your home your your church maybe your

community it's meant to be a seamless garment it's meant to cover all your

life here is a term that I did not know I had never been exposed to until I started work on this book raise your

hand if you know know these terms are these part of the Latter-Day Saint

tradition discipleship is spiritual formation not so much in the Evangelical World these basically mean the same

thing and they mean forming your life and your character in word and deed in the image of Jesus

Christ discipleship in Jesus Christ so here's another breakthrough moment for me this is something that's said by John

Ward he's a journalist he was an Evangelical he recently converted to Catholic ISM author of a wonderful book

I can't recommend it too highly testimony inside the Evangelical movement that failed a generation and

here's something he said in a podcast one of the conclusions I've come to in writing the the the book that I've uh

finished recently is just that a lot of Evangelical churches do a pretty good job of discipling their members in

private virtue or private character within the family with not yes there

have been scandals and and Leadership scandals and scandals but I think broadly um evangelicals are are virtuous

people in their homes and in their local communities but they have not been discipled in how to exercise public

character so that's interesting right so we have this concept of spiritual

formation but it hasn't been extended by Christians in today's

America to the public realm it's spiritual formation in your own life but

it hasn't developed a Civic theology a Civic theology is a Doctrine a fully

articulated doctrine of how Jesus would want us to behave not just in our

community not just rebuilding the homes when the hurricane strikes but how we behave for example on social media how

we comport ourselves in politics not the positions we ultimately take but the way

in which we address our fellow citizens in politics there has been an immense

gaping hole in Christianity for lack of a fully

articulated Civic Theology and in the absence of a Civic Theology of how

Christians should address our common culture and politics there has been the inrush of all these other forces we've

seen such as toxic polarization and

partisanship meanwhile

H meanwhile it turns out Bible has something to say about

this here are the three principle teachings of Christianity according to

theologians um you know others say other things matter to you know Redemption repentance and so on but these are the

big three according to the theologians I can insulted number one don't be

afraid the most frequent injunction in the Bible number two be like Jesus

imitate him and number three forgive each other they say if you get those things right in your

life that's Christian discipleship so I'm an outsider I'm

looking at those three things and a light goes on where have I seen those kinds of Virtues talked about before

and here's where those three virtues Don't Be Afraid imitate Jesus and

forgive each other map quite neatly on three of the core tenants of madisonian

constitutional liberalism the things the founders told us we need to do to defend

the system that they gave us don't be afraid maps on to be willing to share power do not view the next election as a

fearful apocalypse understand you might lose an election but maybe you win the one after that and

maybe in the meanwhile you actually get the opportunity to learn and improve

welcome welcome the uncertainty inherent in sharing a

liberal Republic imitate Jesus Jesus is a radical

egalitarian he is concerned with the least of these he consorts with the most downtrodden and

marginalized and and he also preaches the equal and full Dignity of every

human being those are two core tenant of liberalism as it comes down to us from

John Lock Emanuel Kant all the way through John

rolls the basic equality of all humans and the fact that we treat every

human being in liberalism as an end unto him or herself never just as a means to

an end that's Emanuel Kant same idea finally forgive each other there's an

analog to that in Republican virtue and that analog is

forbearance sometimes you win an election when you win an election a good

citizen does not say we won we're crushing the other side we're going to

drink their Che their tears and rig the system so they can never come back in

Victory we say we continue to share the country we continue to give the other

side of voice first because we know someday they may be running the country

and we will seek the same kind of forbearance from them but second and most important because that's what

Washington and Madison and the Constitution require us in order to make

this country work okay so I'm looking around and

looking for examples of this Doctrine meanwhile on a separate track and if you recognize that picture

raise your hand if you know what that is someone shouted

out yeah that's the Utah compromise that's March of 2015 the person you see

there at the podium is TR Troy Williams who is present in this room head of equality Utah the people behind him you

will recognize as senior leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints you've got legislative leaders

behind them you've got eventual Governor uh Spencer Cox in that room and they

have just agreed to a landmark compromise that I in 2015 from my point of view it came out of nowhere it was

the product of years worth of work you've all heard about it but this was a this was a

compromise which created anti-discrimination Provisions for lgbtt people in Europe in Utah excuse me in

exchange for carefully targeted exemptions for religious entities like the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday

saints and Troy Williams will tell you that the effect of this compromise has been Galvanizing in this state in

creating a friendly culture for LGBT people not just a legal change but a friendly culture here's I love this

picture this is the signing at the capital all those people those are LGBT

couples so in 2015 I'm looking at that and I'm thinking where the heck did that

come from and then something happens in 2021 which gets my attention and

probably got yours too you all know that man he gives a speech at the University

of Virginia uh it is a remarkable speech it is deeply conversent in the doctrines

of madonian pluralism as you might expect from a former state supreme court justice and legal

Authority um but he doesn't just come to the conclusion he works through the

logic we've always had to work through serious political conflicts

but today too many approach that task as if their preferred

outcome must entirely Prevail over all others Even in our pluralistic

society we need to work for a better way I come to you not as a lawyer with

the experiences already mentioned by Rick Turley but as an apostle of the Lord

Jesus Christ whom many of us worship I advocate the moral and political

imperative of reconciling existing conflicts and avoiding new ones not to

promote my favored outcome in any particular controversy the goals of both

sides are best served by resolving differences through mutual respect

shared understanding and good faith negotiations and both must accept and

respect the rule of law what I have described as necessary to going forward

namely seeking Harmony by finding practical solutions to our differences

with love and respect to all people does not require any compromise

of core principles both religious and secular rule are ordained of God for the good of

his children reconciling adverse positions through respectful negotiations is a virtue what if the

conflicting demands of civil and religious law are such that they cannot

be resolved by negotiation such circumstances rarely

exist if they do the experience of the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday

saints suggests that a way can be found to reconcile Divine and human law

through patience negotiation and mutual

accommodation patience negotiation and mutual accommodation

not merely in order to get a certain end but because that way of life is what Jesus

Christ tells us to do it's a virtue in and of itself to practice what I've been telling students

in two classes today is that it may be hard for people here within the church

to quite grasp how countercultural that message is in today's white Christian

America and the church has not only talked the talk it has walked the walk in I think

an even more remarkable development than the Utah compromise the church put its

back into the job of helping get through the 2022 respect for Marriage Act which

enshrines my marriage to Michael in federal law in case the Supreme Court

ever changes its mind it did this despite the fact that homosexuality is is

sin in Latter Day Saint Doctrine and same-sex marriage is not

allowed I can tell you that the bulk of the Evangelical community and U the

conference of Bishops did not behave this way they opposed that bill but this church said in a pluralistic society and

in exchange for some very significant religious liberty protections which were voted on by an overwhelming vote of

Congress including every Democrat in doing that the church set

out a very different path and it said if we have the freedom internally to pursue

our vision of what Jesus Christ wants us to do it is incumbent on us to allow

Civil Society to reach its own conclusions about the way other people behave and it is our job as a church to

work for masonian pluralism if there's ever been a better and clearer statement

of M bonian pluralism I have never heard it than the one you hear right

here and I mentioned Civic theology one of the reasons that I'm

here is that in all of Christian America I can

only think of one church that has worked out an

articulated Civic Theology of how Christians should address

politics and the public world and you heard it here yesterday from Elder Stevenson it is this church and it's not

just the conclusion it is a fully articulated chain of reasoning now that's

filling the Civic spiritual formation Gap I am not here to say that other

Christians have to become Latter-Day Saints that they have to use the same logic the same theological assumptions

nothing like that but I do believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday

Saints and the teaching of D Oaks and president Nelson and others I believe

that that deserves the audience the hearing of the country not just the church and I believe that theology

behind it can Inspire other Christians to begin filling the same

gaps in their own theology asking and answering the question of how would

Jesus Christ want us to behave on social media and fortunately other Christians

are beginning this work there's a bunch of groups now you know this is small it's budding but they realize this Gap

is present I can throw a few of them up here this is redeeming Babel this is

Curtis Chang's movement um Center for Christianity and public life which was

founded a couple of years ago by Michael wear recently wrote a wonderful book about how to integrate Christian

teaching into our public life the one America movement this is Andrew hanau movement this is um this is

working with pastors to give them tools to depolarize their conversations and bring more Christlike dialogues to their

own churches and maybe also help with the pastors quitting problem this is the

Afterparty this is U David French and Russell Moore and also Curtis Chang this

is a curriculum for church small groups that's where evangelicals do the bulk of

their spiritual formation this is you know the Bible studies and this is discipling them in a

different way to talk about politics it is not a political agenda there's nothing in here that's partisan or about

RS or D's or public policy but it's about how do we talk to each other across these divides as Christians ought

to do here's one I just found out about I'm having lunch with this guy in a couple weeks the center for Christian

Civics I didn't even know about them and there's more all of these people are in

the space where I think Christianity must go if it's to uphold the bargain that it implicitly made with our

Founders I cannot do that work only Christians can do that work um but I do

have something to say to secular liberals like me I mentioned earlier that yes we have our share of the blame

for this for far too long we took Christianity for granted we assumed that

the churches would always be there we assume that their role in public life was either inconsequent quential or

negative we assumed as I did that if Christianity would collapse that nothing else would go wrong well it turns out

Christianity is still a loadbearing wall in our democracy and it turns out that secular

liberals like me need to do a better job of valuing and welcoming and cherishing

our religious and especially Christian Fellow citizens and that means we need

to go from Mark McIntosh to Mark and

me we need to do more introspection about have we really made people a faith

feel welcome in our workplaces the answer is often no I've talked to Christians who say they kind of keep it

on the download they wouldn't face discrimination but people think they're weird if they talk about God that's

wrong why isn't Faith the routine part of diversity and inclusion efforts

making sure that people of Faith feel welcome identifying that as an Institutional priority why aren't

universities and employees surveying their employees of Faith to see ask them

are you comfortable here is there anything you need it wouldn't kill secular atheists like me to accompany

friends to church or for that matter mosque or synagogue it wouldn't hurt us

to show more curiosity to people of Faith as a way of showing that we care

about them and that we value their beliefs we have a job to do too but that

is not mainly the message for this room the message for this room is I hope I've

made abundantly clear in conversations all through the day today in this talk

and also with senior leaders of the church who were kind enough to give me time

yesterday I believe that the discipleship that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has embarked

on has National Civic implications I believe that it deserves

an audience outside of the church not just inside the church I believe the

work that it is doing to articulate not just the conclusion which is be

peacemakers but how you reach the conclusion why that's what God wants

that theological element is crucial because that's instructing the world in what it actually means to be like Christ

that work you're doing is important and I will say as a sec person if I can help

spread the word the gospel as it were um I will do my best I have written a book

for that purpose and I hope I can Elevate and magnify the work you're

doing and above all I hope that you can continue that work uh D Oaks is not a young man uh but

but he mustn't be alone as he told me yesterday this message of his needs to

be carried forward by the Next Generation and the Next Generation after that in their own

voices that was a charge he told me that he was laying on the church and as I

told some BYU students today I hope and believe that they can carry that charge I have to end on a personal note

this always chokes me up I hope it always will I want to

dedicate this talk to the the

the memory of Mark McIntosh he got ALS lugar's disease

became completely paralyzed from the neck down fortunately was able to speak

and even continue writing thanks to Dragon dictation software this is a picture of him about two months three

months before he died in Memorial thank you all for hearing me

out [Applause]

well John thank you so much um you've really honored Us by giving us

tremendous food for thought and um and taking time to listen so

carefully to um to our own teachings here let's take some time to um to go

through some questions here that have been posed by members of the audience and I'll I'll ask a few as as we get

underway here I I will try to be brief so um first of I just the um so much of

your work I'm going to back up a little bit here so much of your work is motivated by James Madison and um just

kind of interested in how is it that you discovered James Madison as such an

inspiration for not just this work but things like constitution of knowledge

and other things it came as an outgrowth of being

a journalist in Washington and writing about Congress in the 80s when the system worked it

believe it or not friends this isn't rosecolor of glasses there was a time when Congress was remarkably good at

becoming a forum where people of different regions and ideologies and

priorities um and and and demographics could work things out and I work my way

Sideways from that to understanding that that James Madison was the guy who had the greatest political Insight of all

time which is that you can harness disagreement if you force people to compromise but it actually came through

practical experience um how is it I mean just say a few more

words about Madison's uniqueness in political thought um so yeah James

you all know James Madison right father of the Constitution as he called as he's

often called there's no shockingly in a way shockingly there's there's no

Madison Memorial in Washington unless you count the name on one of the library of congress's buildings but in a way

that's not shocking because as the saying goes in Washington if you want to see Madison's monument look

around um Madison was in my opinion A Space

Alien or was directly Sent From Heaven Because he pops up at just the right

time with this political Insight unprecedented political insight about how you can build a large Republic not

by suppressing conflict but by harnessing Conflict by forcing compromise and if you had to

boil down the Constitution to one phrase that's what it does it's a compromise forcing device and it understands

compromise Madison sees this this is so brilliant compromise is not splitting

the difference and getting a result no one likes it's a dynamic creative process where when I sit down with Paul

I have one idea which he doesn't accept he has one that I doesn't don't accept but then we say what if we try this

third thing or Elder cook comes along with a suggestion says you know my group can help work this out what we leave

with is better than what we entered with this is a dynamic creative

process thank you um let me let me go to some questions here Justin Maxwell a

student here asks and you got a lot of these questions today in class um and you've shared a little bit already but

how do I as a college student meaningfully participate in

democracy there are so many ways and I think this student

if the student sat down with a pad of paper for one hour could come up with at least three things that that they could

do there are all kinds of Civic groups that are now working in the depolarization space one of them braver

Angels proud to say I was an original board member and still an evangelist has done work here in the form of a braver

angel debate that's our best program because it actually acclimates students to the process of disagreeing in a

healthy way students love it there's lots of groups there's a student group it's called Bridge USA they've got

chapters in what I think 60 or 70 universities around the country they are dedicated to bringing an ethos of

empathy to Mutual relations among students and then radiating from there

outward into the world so there's lots of Civic associations you can join you can bring braver Angels debates to

campus I think one of the most important things that people can do is in their personal lives which is to model the

values of madisonian liberalism and that is to approach the people you disagree

with and ask them this question this is scientifically proven no kidding folks

but this is the question to ask if you want to have a productive and joyful

conversation with someone you disagree with try this in real life if you take one thing

away what is it about your life experience that led you to this opinion that you have

once you come at people not with I disagree but with tell me a story about

yourself you've you've translated the axis from arguing about facts to

narrative to storytelling that's our natural home as humans and you've shown care and

curiosity about the other person and you will be amazed at how that can break

down barriers here's another thing you can do if you're a Christian

how about imitate Jesus I believe so I understand that

that Christians are in a very challenging environment right now there's all kinds of pressures make

things make it hard to imitate Jesus but one of the things I've learned from

listening to Christians like David French and and Mark

labberton is that Christianity is at its best when it is an exilic Faith now you

all know something about an exilic faith and my people the Jews do as well Christianity is not at its best when it

holds or seeks power it's that it's best when it's orthogonal to the whole rest of the universe when it's radically

countercultural setting a shining example of a different way to live and you guys can do

that do um you must know Monica Guzman yes um she provides actually a really

nice manual on how to even have these conversation yes yes she wrote a

wonderful book I recommend it it's called I never thought of it that way yeah um Monica we just learned will be

with us in May here on campus so we and she's a braver Angels person as well

yeah um I thought this was a a very thoughtful question from um Isaac Smith

on the BYU faculty it says here you talk about disagreeing with your own 2003 three

article what advice do you have for individuals wanting to get better at

changing their own mind walk out into the

world in my case with a reporter's notepad but in your case with your eyes and ears ask questions and learn just be

curious it's it's just really that simple if you're not interested in correcting yourself you're not

interested in learning curiosity is I've thought since

actually since kindergarten that one of my gifts I saw this in myself early and I liked it was

curiosity just try to find out stuff that you don't already know and at first

you know you'll resist the things that don't fit into your existing template but over time you'll begin to integrate

these other ideas you'll understand why you were wrong and how you can become more right and and let me

tell you as hard as it is to admit that was foolish in the

past more than that it is joyful to be able to understand that I think I've

grown in my understanding okay you know um as you leave this evening you all

have an opportunity there may be sort of a mad rush over to this corner here we

have a copy of John's book for all of you here we hope all of you I'm just

looking over the size of the crowd and I'm thinking that someone back in that that corner might miss out but let us

know if you end up not getting one as you leave but they'll be available right out here and um as I mentioned before

we're going to have a little dessert reception uh as an opportunity to mingle and talk some more um after this we're

going to finish up here John you've had now a coup about three trips to Utah in

the last two years I think I'm curious um that you've been here all week it's a

cold week you've been indoors with a lot of good people um what have you learned this week that um maybe you didn't know

coming into um uh I've learned that there is a certain amount of concern in this

community and the the Latter-Day Saint Community about the difficulty of having

disagreement and that people tend to back away from disagreement and Rush toward consensus and that people I talk

to these are both students and faculty think that's something that they need to work on and I found that interesting it

is a consensus culture in um latterday Saint culture and the fact that they're

saying that and focusing on that I think um is an interesting maybe in some ways hopeful sign something else I learned

this is more reinforced than learned because I saw it already two years ago but something that I heard from both within the church I also was fortunate

want to meet some very prominent politicians underscore very in the state

and they're all saying that defending the Utah way is getting harder every day

they're managing they're coping but they're saying running for office is much harder

than it was even five years ago that the vituperation that they're facing from the public is worse that it's getting

harder within the church to disciple people in the message that we're talking

about today because of other cultural influences and demands from the Grassroots to join the culture wars that

they're having to work harder at this all the time and I do hear from some of them some notes of tiredness of

weariness of I don't really need to do this I am worried that we are exhausting

our capacity for democracy by anger and ridicule of our

public servants in public life and

um and I hope that you in Utah can hold the line I really do if you can't I

don't know who can let's thank Jonathan Rous

[Applause]

 

Edited by Calm
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

Thank you @smac97 and @Calm.  I was able to listen to Jonathan Rauch's BYU address at double-speed by following along with the transcript.  Well worthwhile, as he lays out the ongoing very rapid upheaval in Christian society in the USA, and offers what sounds to me like a plausible explanation, with the approach used by the LDS Church being the solution.

Over the past several days in a now-deleted thread we got to witness some of the hostility and ridicule which has become normalized by a large segment of Christianity which has aligned and allied itself with a particular political template, abandoning the practice of core teachings of the Savior along the way.  Atheist Rauch has obviously done his homework, as his articulation of three highly relevant teachings of Christ was educational for me.  They are:

1.  Do not fear.  I hadn't really appreciated how often Jesus teaches this, but upon reflection it is something he taught a lot.  When we see through the lens of fear, others become enemies instead of simply people like ourselves whose life experiences have led them to different viewpoints.

2.  Emulate Christ. 

3.  Forgive one another.

Rauch identifies the LDS Church as being unique among Christian churches in modelling the solution via its ability to engage with those it disagrees with and arrive at an enlightened compromise which embodies rather than abandons the above-listed teachings of Christ. 

For anyone a bit dismayed by how that now-deleted conversation with a self-described Christian went (I certainly was!), I HIGHLY recommend listening to the talk entitled "Christian Renewal and the Future of American Democracy" given by Rauch at BYU, linked to by smac97 above.  I think he explains the current situation well.  Wish I had listened to his address before that thread! 

Edit:  And for anyone who missed it, here is the link to @Kenngo1969's inspiring article which is imo highly relevant, especially if (as Jonathan Rauch suggests) the LDS Church is leading the way towards an effectively healing paradigm:

https://greatgourdini.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/toward-interreligious-oneness/

Edited by manol
Posted (edited)
39 minutes ago, manol said:

I think he explains the current situation well.  Wish I had listened to his address before that thread!

Excellent summary.  Rauch is very articulate and easy to listen to.  It was a bit surreal to hear (see) a speaker describe himself as gay and atheist with “BYU / Wheatley” prominently displayed in the neighboring side panel.  It was refreshing to hear him speak so positively about the Church.

Edited by Okrahomer
Posted (edited)
25 minutes ago, Okrahomer said:

It was a bit surreal to hear (see) a speaker describe himself as gay and atheist with “BYU / Wheatley” prominently displayed in the neighboring side panel.  It was refreshing to hear him speak so positively about the Church.

Yes!! 

Did you notice how he was ALWAYS respectful, no little "gotchas" sneaking in anywhere?  He really sets a beautiful example. 

If the gay atheists and the Mormons can commune in harmony, the lamb and the lion together doesn't seem so far-fetched.

Edited by manol

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