Popular Post smac97 Posted January 27 Popular Post Posted January 27 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. Yet here we are. In 2023, I started a thread about comments he made at the University of Virginia about what the Church is doing to advance "Civic Theology": Perspective: Jonathan Rauch underscores ‘civic theology’ of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the University of Virginia An excerpt: Quote In a tour de force of intellectual courage and candor, senior Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch delivered three stunning lectures late last month at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Rauch warned that the deterioration of American Christianity threatens America’s pluralistic democracy. He also warned that our democracy is threatened by the reactive response of some American Christian thought leaders who blame our liberal democracy for the demise of their own church communities. Rauch argued that, unfortunately, contemporary Christianity in America (largely speaking here about evangelicalism) has become too “thin” and too “sharp”, i.e., too secularized, and not because of what pluralistic democracy has done to religion, but because of religion’s self-inflicted wounds of commercialization and politicization that deviate from its missions of helping to form community and providing for moral formation. As a counter to these trends, Rauch proposes alignment — in contrast to alliance — between democracy and religion in our constitutional order. Religionists should acknowledge, said Rauch, that pluralistic democracy brings vitally important social and material goods to society that religion can’t provide by itself. That said, Rauch also suggested that secularists should recognize how the moral formation and the meaning, upon which our democratic institutions rely, come in large part from religion, and that the state can’t provide meaningful substitutes in this realm. Although democratic and religious institutions may find themselves from time to time in tension, they should seek the well-being of one another. Rauch therefore encouraged Christians in their public engagement to draw more self-consciously from the teachings and example of Jesus Christ to fear not, to imitate Jesus Christ more closely, and to forgive others. And he encouraged liberals and progressives to be more welcoming of religion. “We should even, perhaps, cherish religion,” said Rauch. “And when we disagree with a faith tradition,” he continued, “we should do so respectfully and give it a second or even third hearing; and when we criticize faith, we should do so in a spirit of humility, recognizing that the great faith traditions have been around a lot longer than liberalism.” Rauch used the bulk of his final lecture to shine a generous light upon what he calls the “civic theology” of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because he sees within the Latter-day Saint tradition a contemporary replicable model of a healthier and mutually supportive relationship between constitutional democracy and a self-sustaining Christian faith. Fast forward to January 23, 2025: The remarkable message a Brookings senior fellow gave to BYU students about the civic theology America needs Quote In a remarkable address at Brigham Young University, a nationally respected public policy expert and journalist said that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has developed a modern civic theology desperately needed in American Christianity in an age of secularization, polarization and dechurching. Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, believes strongly enough in what Latter-day Saint leaders are teaching that he, an atheist in a same-sex marriage, spent the past week in Utah asking church leaders and BYU students to amplify the message that he gleaned from the church itself. “One of the reasons that I’m here,” Rauch said, “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 (Tuesday) from Elder (Gary E.) Stevenson” during a BYU devotional. Elder Stevenson called on BYU students to take up the flags of peacemaking and understanding others. It was built on landmark talks by church President Russell M. Nelson (”Peacemakers Needed”) and his first counselor, President Dallin H. Oaks (”Going Forward with Religious Freedom and Nondiscrimination”). “I believe that the discipleship that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has embarked on has national civic implications,” said Rauch, from Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and author of eight books. “I believe that it deserves an audience outside of the church, not just inside the church. I believe the work that it is doing is 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.” White evangelical Christianity has suffered some of the biggest losses in church membership over the past 25 years,” said Rauch, who is recognized as one of the nation’s leading thinkers on public policy, culture, and government. He said the problem is that many white evangelicals tried to combat secularization with politicization. That alienated pastors and drove away more believers, creating what he called a Church of Fear driving polarization instead of discipleship. Elevating Latter-day Saint civic theology Rauch, again a non-Christian, said the answers to America’s political problems lie in the teachings of Jesus Christ and James Madison, who like other Founders said the Constitution would rely on values undergirded by religious teachings. “I’m here to advocate that the church preach President Oaks to the world and not just the church,” Rauch told the Deseret News on Friday. President Oaks gave his talk in 2021 at the University of Virginia, where he said he was speaking for the church’s First Presidency. “I will say, as a secular person, if I can help spread the word, the gospel as it were, I will do my best,” Rauch said at BYU in an event sponsored by the Wheatley Institute on campus. “I have written a book for that purpose, and I hope I can elevate and magnify the work you’re doing.” Rauch spoke to two BYU classes Thursday and gave a lecture at BYU’s Hinckley Center that night that was attended by Elders Quentin L. Cook and D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, among other church general authorities, university president Shane Reese and faculty and students. Rauch’s new book, “Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy,” is due out Feb. 4. The Amazon.com book blurb notes that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “has placed the Constitution at the heart of its spiritual teachings.” Rauch spends two-thirds of a chapter holding up the Latter-day Saints as example of an alternative path for Christianity for two reasons: First, he said at BYU, the church’s message of constitutional pluralism is a way to avoid driving off believers who want to be like Jesus Christ and who are put off by religious politicization. Second, America’s founders knew that believers were needed to provide the foundation of moral values necessary to undergird the Constitution they created. “For a hopeful answer,” Rauch writes in his book, “we will look, perhaps unexpectedly, to (T)he Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and then consider the prospects for a new entente which honors both Jesus and James Madison.” Why America is failing Rauch said Thursday night that America is becoming ungovernable, and he blamed an erosion of the values the Founders anticipated would be lasting. He said those values come from the moral teaching of America’s religions, which the Founders said were necessary. Instead, the United States has gone through a major era of dechurching. White evangelicals responded, Rauch said, not by following Christ’s teachings but by seeking more earthly power. “In 2011 white evangelicals were the Christians in America who 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,” he said, citing polling by the Public Religion Research Institute. Rauch quoted Baptist theologian and Christianity Today editor Russell Moore, who said, “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.” Moore said that fear can fuel the loss of the next generation of believers. He said Christians “cannot go into the political world and say, ‘You know, I know I’m a bit of (a jerk) on Twitter, but you should see me in the soup kitchen.’ That’s just not the way it works. You can’t cabin off parts of your life.” Rauch agreed, saying Christianity is not meant to be practiced close to the vest. “It’s meant to be a seamless garment. It’s meant to cover all your life,” he said. He said he found the answer to America’s woes in the Christian idea that discipleship is spiritual formation. A Latter-day Saint “chain of reasoning” that can heal American division “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,” Rauch said. “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.” The problem isn’t the positions some Christians take, Rauch said, but the way they address their 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,” he said. Latter-day Saint leaders, on the other hand, have provided “a fully articulated chain of reasoning,” Rauch said. He saw it in the Utah Compromise in 2015, when church and LGBTQ+ leaders struck a stunning deal to protect each other. They created an agreement that was codified in Utah law that provides anti-discrimination provisions for LGBT people in exchange for carefully targeted exemptions for religious entities. Rauch told the Deseret News then that the Latter-day Saints were “the first major, right-of-center religious organization in the United States to break with the culture-war strategy and to do so publicly.” He said the next major pillar in the Latter-day Saint civic theology that other Christian faiths should consider appeared in President Oaks talk in 2021. What President Oaks said that Rauch wants all Christians to consider “It is a remarkable speech,” Rauch said. “It is deeply conversant in the doctrines of Madisonian pluralism, as you might expect from a former state supreme court justice and legal authority. But he doesn’t just come to the conclusion; he works through the logic.” President Oaks said the current climate is full of people who believe their position must prevail outright. “We need to work for a better way,” he said, adding that “reconciling adverse positions through respectful negotiations is a virtue.” “I advocate the moral and political imperative of reconciling existing conflicts and avoiding new ones,” President Oaks added. “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.” Of course, this Latter-day Saint civic theology had historical roots. Founding church leader Joseph Smith said he was willing to die for the religious freedom of all faiths and codified his position in law. Church leaders had signaled a willingness to compromise. The faith’s general counsel in 2016 gave a speech at BYU in which he said not all religious freedoms should be defended the same way. Elder Lance Wickman, who also was a General Authority Seventy, said the church was willing to compromise on freedoms outside its core principles. President Oaks tacitly referred to that position. “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,” he said in Virginia. President Oaks said it is rare that conflicts between civil and religious laws can’t be resolved by negotiation. “The experience of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints suggests that a way can be found to reconcile divine and human law through patience, negotiation and mutual accommodation,” he said. Rauch praises the Latter-day Saint position for being “countercultural” Rauch said patience, negotiation and mutual accommodation is a virtue the Founders counted on because Christ taught it and Americans learned it. But he said some Christians are now more focused on politics than being Christlike. “What I’ve been telling (BYU) 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,” Rauch said. “The Church (of Jesus Christ) has not only talked the talk, it has walked the walk.” He said the church’s work in another negotiation was more remarkable 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,” Rauch said. “It did this despite the fact that homosexuality is a 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 the Conference of Bishops did not behave this way. They opposed that bill.” Both chambers of Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which also created significant religious liberty protections in exchange for LGBT protections, by overwhelming margins. Those religious liberty protections were crucial to the process. Rauch said Latter-day Saint efforts to support the law were a statement that, “if we have the freedom internally to pursue our vision of what Jesus Christ wanted 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 Madisonian pluralism. “If there’s ever been a better and clearer statement of Madisonian pluralism, I have never heard it,” Rauch added. He said one of his breakthroughs was recognizing the similarities between the teachings of Jesus Christ and the ideas of James Madison. Where Christ taught his followers not to be afraid, Madison wrote that American should share power, Rauch said. Where Christ taught people to follow his example of radical egalitarianism, Madison called for equality and civility. Where Christ taught people to forgive each other, Madison pled for pluralism and toleration. What other Christians should do and are doing Rauch said Latter-day Saint leaders set an example for 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,” he said. “But I do believe that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the teaching of Dallin Oaks and President Nelson and others, deserves the hearing of the country, not just the church, and I believe the 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?” He said other Christians are beginning the work to “disciple” white evangelical Christians to talk about politics in different ways. Rauch, who has made several trips to Utah, also spoke this week at the University of Utah and at a Braver Angels event. Rauch is a co-founder of Braver Angels, an organization uniting red and blue Americans in a working alliance to depolarize America. Great stuff. Thanks, -Smac 11
The Nehor Posted January 28 Posted January 28 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?
Dario_M Posted January 29 Posted January 29 (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 January 29 by Dario_M
smac97 Posted January 29 Author Posted January 29 20 hours ago, The Nehor said: 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? https://wheatley.byu.edu/religion/christian-renewal-and-the-future-of-american-democracy 1
Calm Posted January 29 Posted January 29 (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 January 29 by Calm 1
manol Posted Sunday at 11:00 PM Posted Sunday at 11:00 PM (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 Sunday at 11:40 PM by manol 2
Okrahomer Posted Sunday at 11:36 PM Posted Sunday at 11:36 PM (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 Sunday at 11:40 PM by Okrahomer 2
manol Posted Sunday at 11:59 PM Posted Sunday at 11:59 PM (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 Monday at 12:02 AM by manol 4
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now