‘The teachings of Jesus Christ are a whole lot closer to the teachings of Madison,’ scholar says, ‘than to the teachings of MAGA.”

Since America’s founding, Christianity has been a “load-bearing wall” of democracy, but in recent decades, it has given up that role, and that, argues writer and scholar Jonathan Rauch, has led to the country’s current crisis.

In his newly released book, “Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy,” the self-described gay, Jewish atheist critiques secular Americans who think Christianity should be abandoned and Christian Americans who blame secular culture for their grievances. He shows why the two must work together — and points to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an example of how to do it.

Here are lightly edited excerpts from The Salt Lake Tribune’s latest “Mormon Land podcast,” in which Rauch, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, discusses why he believes top Latter-day Saint leaders, including senior apostle Dallin H. Oaks, have landed on a prescription for healing a polarized nation’s ills:

In 2003, you celebrated the rise of secularism, arguing that as people left religion, society would grow “more enlightened,” “reasonable” and “harmonious.” What do you think now?

Boy, was I ever wrong. It turns out that the founders warned us that the Constitution is not self-supporting. It relies on a bedrock of values that they called “republican virtues,” and they assigned the task of teaching those virtues to civic institutions like family and civil society, but especially faith, religion. But we’ve seen a catastrophic decline in church membership and Christian affiliation over the past 20 years, like nothing in America before. Along with that, we have seen the rise of substitute pseudo-religions, which really are divisive and polarizing, things like MAGA and woke and QAnon. We’ve also seen a rise in mental health problems and alienation, loneliness, anger, bitter, partisan polarization. And from all of that, I conclude the founders were right. Things just won’t work as well if Christianity is broken.

Why don’t you think secularism is the solution?

One thing is, it just hasn’t worked out. …But there’s a second, deeper reason, which is that I think a purely secular worldview cannot really answer to the satisfaction of most people a couple of fundamental questions: Is there a transcendent purpose of human life beyond just being a clump of cells that comes and goes in the flash of the eye? Religion — faith — gives us an account of a higher meaning, of a reason why we’re here, a larger purpose and a larger connection to the universe. I don’t have that. I’m Jewish, but I’ve never really been a believer in God. (Jews can kind of get away with that if we’re quiet.) But I do miss that sense of transcendence and spirituality, which religion can give. The second thing that faith can give is a moral foundation that’s absolute for right and wrong. Secular thinkers, the greatest of them all, [Immanuel] Kant and [John] Locke and John Rawls, have tried to do that, and they come up short. Faith can tell you there’s a reason some things are really right and some things are really wrong that just transcends human preferences. Again, secularism can’t really do that. There are things only secularism can do — like [scientifically] explain the universe. You can’t do that with miracles. Or like, understand the problem of evil, which religion comes up short on. The bottom line is: The founders were right. These two systems of thought — as incompatible as they can sometimes feel — are interdependent. Society and people tend to be healthier when these two things are aligned than when they’re pulling apart.

Why do you think religious accommodation is a good thing?

Because we have got to share the country. A lot of this book is an indictment of some very flawed choices that white evangelicals have made over the past several decades. But I also turned that camera, that mirror on myself. … A lot of secular people, well-intentioned people, want to say anti-discrimination law should require every single bakery in the United States, no matter how small, to serve every single same-sex marriage. And Utah, among other states, has shown it’s not necessary. Secular folks can reach a reasonable accommodation that says not every bakery has to do that, especially if there are other alternatives. So we need to do better at making space for the faithful.

How did you come upon Latter-day Saints, and what made you so interested in them?

I am someone whose life was dedicated for 20 years to the cause of same-sex marriage. I looked on with pain and some anger when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints weighed in heavily against same-sex marriage in California and helped drive it out of existence. So I was very surprised a couple of years later when the church came out in favor of an LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance in Salt Lake City. I was even more surprised in 2015, when the church joined with conservatives in the Legislature and Equality Utah, which is the LGBT rights group there, on what’s become known as the Utah Compromise. The church embraced LGBT anti-discrimination, and also included some specific, carefully crafted carve-outs for religious groups. For example, BYU would not have to include same-sex married couples in its married student housing. This was a breakthrough. This had national implications…So that got my attention. [Next] President Dallin Oaks gave a speech in 2021 at the University of Virginia, where he makes a detailed case that what Jesus Christ wants is for the church to pursue the path of patience, negotiation and mutual accommodation in civic life. That it wants to deconflict public spaces by looking for ways to negotiate with people who have different preferences and priorities, and find creative solutions. That just gobsmacked me, because that’s so countercultural. It’s so different from what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been doing, or what the Southern Baptists and other evangelical churches have been doing. You know, they’re doubling down on the culture wars, and here’s a conservative, predominantly white church doing the opposite. And then, even more gobsmacked, in 2022, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints helps push through a federal law enshrining my marriage to a man in federal statute, even though homosexuality is a sin in Latter-day Saint theology and same-sex marriage can get you excommunicated. This is walking the walk, a win for everyone. I don’t know any other major church that’s going down this road of civic peacemaking.

What makes this so revolutionary?

The church did not walk away from both of these compromises, these peacemaking ventures, empty-handed — from the church’s point of view. The two things that Christians have most feared from the federal government are, number one, that opposing same-sex marriage would be treated the same way as racism in federal policy, so you just wouldn’t be able to do it, and churches would be forced through anti-discrimination law to recognize same-sex marriage. The second thing that they most feared was that the federal government would use its power of the purse — the tax break for nonprofits and federal contracts for things like soup kitchens and charity and federal grants — as a weapon to force churches to recognize same-sex marriages. The Respect for Marriage Act commits Congress to not doing either of those things, and it does that with a unanimous vote of all the Democratic senators and representatives in Congress. That means it puts off the table all of these things that the church and churches most fear. To me, that is a landmark. That’s making space in the culture for people of faith to maintain their faith traditions without fear. And that’s what a great compromise does. It reduces fear of the worst happening on both sides.

How does this reflect the thinking of founder James Madison?

What James Madison and the Founding Fathers tell us is that sometimes the other side will win an election. Don’t panic. It’s not the end of the world. You’ll get a second shot, and you’ll learn something. Imitating Jesus is about treating every person as a dignified individual, never as a means to an end, but an end in themselves and care about the least of these. That’s core to classical liberalism. You protect your minorities and your vulnerable. It’s about sharing the country and treating the other side as full citizens and the way you’d want to be treated next time around, if they win the election. … When I talk to Christians about core Christian beliefs, they say, if you had to summarize Christianity … in a few words, you’d say it’s three things. The first is, don’t be afraid, the most frequently repeated injunction in the New Testament. The second is, imitate Jesus, conduct your life like his. And the third is, forgive each other. Retribution belongs to God, not to humans. … The point here is that the teachings of Jesus Christ are a whole lot closer to the teachings of Madison than to the teachings of MAGA, and all I’m asking is not that Christians become more liberal or conservative or Republican or Democratic or secular or anything else. I’m just saying, how about being more Christian? That would be good for the church, and it would be great for the country.

To hear the full podcast, go to sltrib.com/podcasts/mormonland. To receive full “Mormon Land” transcripts, along with our complete newsletter and access to all Tribune religion content, support us at Patreon.com/mormonland.

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