Episode 369 - Paul D. Miller (re-release!)

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners and challenge one another to practice, practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Hey everybody. I am so thrilled because I just finished taking a ridiculous amount of notes on a brand new book that is out by Paul D. Miller called the Religion of American Greatness. What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism? And Paul is here with me today. Hey, Paul. [00:01:05] Speaker B: Hi, Alexis. Thanks so much for having me on the show. [00:01:07] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. I have to say, when I am reading something that a professor has written, then there is always something in me. I am a current student right now, so there is always something in me that makes sure I want to get things right. And so if you will help me, I am going to try and let that go in this conversation and just really ask some questions that were spurred in my mind and really even some in my heart about this book that you've written. Because I think that the main thing that you have done for me in my reading of this book is you've given me language to describe some of the things that I was feeling and seeing over the last several years when it comes to this really difficult topic of Christian nationalism. So I just want to thank you for how thoughtfully you have put this book together. And really given, I think not just me, but I think given so many of us language for what we were seeing and experiencing and feeling. [00:02:10] Speaker B: I appreciate, I appreciate the kind words there. That was my hope and intent in writing the book was I didn't know if I would be persuading many people, but I thought that, as I say in the book, even the choir needs a good preaching too. And I think those who feel the stuff in the air could benefit from the clarity I try to bring to a pretty difficult subject. Yeah, [00:02:36] Speaker A: I want to let you take off here in just a second, but I do want to say a couple of things about just your work so that we have a little bit of context for where you're coming from. And then I want to let you expound on that a bit. You are currently a professor at Georgetown and you have also served in the military. You've served in the White House under Republican presidents. And then I will say you Also were one of the signatures on the open letter on Donald Trump from GOP national security leaders back in 2016 when he was in the primaries, running for that first election. You're also a Christian, and so maybe kind of take those bullet points, if you would, and help us understand your context, your social location a bit more. Because I just have to say, Paul, it was so, so helpful for me to think about where you were writing from when I was reading the book. [00:03:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So you're asking me to tell my life story in multiple ways in just a few minutes. [00:03:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:43] Speaker B: So in the book, I take some time in chapter one to kind of share a bit of that story, and I have to say it wasn't entirely comfortable for me to do that. It's not the kind of thing you usually do in an academic book or a book that is really an argumentative essay. But I did feel it was important to share with the readers where I'm writing from. As you say, I'm a Christian. My parents raised me in the church. Been going there my whole life as I share in the book. I went to a Billy Graham crusade when I was a teenager. I was baptized in the Willamette river when I was 16 years old. Attended Baptist churches my whole life. Actually dipped a toe into a charismatic church once as well. Met my wife at Southern Baptist church in Washington, D.C. where we were members for a decade, and we're still members of a. Of a SBC church in the suburbs of D.C. politically. Was kind of raised, born and bred into social conservatism, the Republican Party, very happy to vote. Kind of straight line, that ticket for forever until 2016, when I felt that the political right was moving in a direction that I couldn't go. And it was. It did not feel, to me conservative anymore. It felt like it was something else, something different. And I didn't understand that. And so I had to take a step back and do a lot of reading about American history, about political theory, to kind of wrap my head around where the political right was going. That's when I found this word, nationalism, and it really clicked. It's like, aha, I'm a conservative. But the political right, the Republican Party, isn't anymore. It's nationalist. That helped me maybe put a little bit of distance between myself and the right. And I could look at it and kind of examine it from somebody who had been on the right my whole life and now felt myself a bit at odds with it. That's where this book came from. [00:05:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much. That's that's really helpful. And I think it's going to be helpful as we continue this conversation and as people are listening to this, to kind of have a grounding from where, where you have been. And I think it's also a connection point. Right. I shared with you before we started recording that that really, in a lot of ways describes my upbringing as well. And so when I was feeling some of the same things that you were feeling, it's difficult to try and distinguish as you're saying, like, why, why do we feel the dissonance now? Maybe we hadn't felt it so much before, but why do we feel it now? And I'll say we. But I'm speaking, speaking for myself in that way. If we could start off because you named it and you said, ah, it's nationalism. That's what it is. And I'm staring. I have, on my other screen over here, I've pulled up this, the letter that, that you signed in 2016. It's got a big giant on the, on the website. It's got a big giant picture of Trump. And so I'm going to, I'm going to close that here in a. This is what I'm seeing. And I'm imagining in my mind him saying, I'm a patriot. Right. Like I'm imagining him in my mind saying I'm a patriot and calling his, his Maga fallers patriots. And so this is something that's going to come to our minds of saying, well, yeah, is it nationalism or is it really just patriotism? Because we just, you know, we're recording at the beginning of June. We just had Memorial Day, and all through my neighborhood, the Boy Scouts have come and they have put up American flags. Right. Flying all over our little you suburban neighborhood here in Houston. And people may already be wrestling with that term in their minds. So how do you define what is kind of the definition that distinguishes those two terms that may get kind of overlapping in some people's minds? [00:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great place to start the conversation. I am a patriot. I love the United States. I've lived in nine states and three countries, and I love being an American. I, on Memorial Day, took my eldest daughter to Arlington National Cemetery. We walked around the gravestones there and reflected on the sacrifice of those who have protected our freedoms. I've got the American flag flying outside my door right now. I served in the military myself and all around. CS Lewis has this great discussion about patriotism where he says it's actually good and healthy and necessary for Us to cultivate an affection for home, for the places that are familiar to us, for the ways of life that we've been inducted into. Nigel Bigger, an Anglican at Oxford, has a similar argument about how important it is to have gratitude for the institutions that have brought us up. And that includes the institution of the nation, of the country having that gratitude, that patriotism, that affection, I think, is actually a good thing. That's something I would gently remind maybe those on the political left, that we shouldn't be embarrassed about our patriotism. Patriotism, I think, is good. Really important thing, though, is how you define your country. What is it that you love about your country? And that's where we get into the distinction between patriotism and nationalism. One hasn't to add that I did not invent this distinction. This is a pretty conventional distinction by lots of scholars. George Orla wrote a famous essay, Notes on nationalism in the 1940s, I think, where he makes this classic distinction between patriotism and nationalism. A good way to think about the distinction is this. If you ask somebody, what does it mean to be an American patriot? Will probably say, well, I love my country. I love what it is, and I love what it stands for. I love the creed, the American creed of equality and liberty for everyone. Maybe the story of the creed as it's lived out in this land. A nationalist is far more likely to answer something about American culture, that they love America because America has a specific cultural heritage, that we are the people of this kind of this tribe, whatever that tribe may be. And that's a typical nationalist definition of any particular country. They love it because it reflects their own particular cultural heritage. In the American case, the predominant cultural influence has been what Samuel Huntington called Anglo Protestantism. Anglo Protestantism. And I think Huntington is right, that that has been the predominant cultural influence in American history. But the nationalists say, because it was our inheritance, we must keep that in the future. And we have to use the government to enforce Anglo Protestantism to ensure that with the government's coercive powers, we're going to make sure that we maintain our Anglo Protestant cultural heritage. That, I think, is a good definition of American nationalism and Christian nationalism. It's always mixed up with Christian imagery and symbols and rhetoric. [00:10:52] Speaker A: Okay, so, Paul, I love that distinction. Thank you for. Thank you for saying that. Because the truth is that I don't usually make it. It's not my M.O. just to read a lot of political theory books. And so I really needed you to make that distinction for me in the book. And. And I'm Thankful that you, that you have taken the time to do that. I have in my notes, actually. This was so, this was brought out so clearly to me that I just have a little blurb says nationalism is an argument about how we define our country and that how we define is underlined twice. Right. Because when you go into this in the book, that's one of the places where the light bulbs started going off. Right where I'm going. That's the smell. That's the smell. Right. Like, that's the one that I couldn't put my finger on. I couldn't grasp. I knew something didn't feel right. Something doesn't smell right. And that's it. Because in Christian nationalism, in American nationalism, and then specifically in Christian nationalism, people who are adhering to that are defining our country in a different way. And then we'll get into this later, but then the next part is. And, and really trying to enforce it. Right, right. So you already talked about it a little bit. I don't know exactly if this is the next place to go, but this, how they're trying to enforce it, they're trying to define it and then enforce it is, is dangerous. [00:12:31] Speaker B: And that is where I think the danger of nationalism, one of the dangers of nationalism comes in. And the historical record of nationalist governments around the world over the last two centuries is pretty, pretty unanimous that they tend to become authoritarian and oppressive towards minorities, whether that's cultural, racial, religious minorities or linguistic minorities. If you're going to define the nation as one predominant cultural influence, then what do you do with the people who don't conform to that? And there's a more, there's a benign answer where you just kind of treat them like second class citizens. And then of course there's a far more oppressive and violent answer to that as well. And so that's a kind of an obvious danger to nationalism. I do want to share another danger about Christian nationalism. I think that Christian nationalism can be very confusing for American Christians. It can confuse us as to what the gospel really is. The gospel is the message about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the good news that we are citizens in his kingdom and so forth. But Christian nationalism, it's like it sets a different agenda. As if the real purpose of our Christianity was to safeguard America's culture. And that's not really the point of the gospel at all. And if we are to work for justice in the world, I think that's true. We got to love our neighbors and we got to love them politically. That's all true, but that's slightly different than saying we have to safeguard the symbolic recognition of Christian power, Christian influence in American culture. So it can be really kind of a danger or a distraction to Christians, confuse us as to what our obligations as Christians really are and that kind of thing. [00:14:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, this is one of the places where I haven't read their book, but I follow Samuel Perry on Twitter, so. So here's that. He teaches at my alma mater, but I. This is one of the places where you bring in Perry and Whitehead's statistics. That was really interesting to me. And then. And then you kind of move on from there. Just talking about the distinction between Christianity and Christian nationalism. And if I. If I got what I was supposed to out of that section, kind of the refreshing thing to me was that the. This isn't how you say it. This is me kind of framing it in a different way, I guess. But kind of the more people are pursuing that gospel message through various, you know, formation kind of mechanisms, the less likely they are to actually adhere to Christian nationalism and. And kind of vice versa, that the Christian nationalism is kind of more of a Christian cultural identity and less of necessarily faith identity. If that does that. Is that even close to kind of what you were. What you were getting at in that section? [00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And you'll sometimes hear a debate about what the word evangelical means anymore. And what you're saying tracks pretty closely with this debate. The word evangelical five centuries ago was a theological label that simply meant a Protestant who wants to share the good news of Jesus Christ. The good news, the evangel. Today, if you ask somebody what is an evangelical, you're more likely to get a cultural answer, not a theological answer, that an evangelical is a politically conservative white American who believes in gun rights and so forth. Right. And that's not terribly connected to what the Bible says. And so the word evangelical, even the word Christian, sometimes has these multiple meanings, which again shows you the danger of how it can confuse Christians about what our identity really is rooted in and what it means to be a Christian in America. I just kind of want to pause and say it is good and right and important for Christians to be involved in the public square. It's good to advocate for justice. It's good to advocate for right and wrong. And the things that we believe in, the pro life movement, religious liberty, an end to racism and helping the poor and so forth, those are good things to advocate for. And that's not Christian nationalism. I think sometimes right now, some of the, maybe harsher critics are using the term in an over broad way where they are saying essentially any Christian political activism is Christian nationalism. And that's, and that's wrong and bad. So just to make that distinction, there is a difference between kind of good political activism and the nationalism we're talking about. [00:17:02] Speaker A: Well, and that takes me back to when you're, when you were asking, if you ask how do you define America? You know how. And when you go back to this, this creedal answer from someone who is patriotic with the, you know, the answers from liberty and justice for all, you know, equality, all of these things, this is something that, yes, there, there is an overlap. I might say that like an American would be, an American who is committed to those ideals would, would be advocating for justice for all, which means an end to racism, which means systemic equality. Right. Which means all of those things. And as a Christian, we would also advocate for those things because Jesus has instructed us to love our neighbors as ourselves and all of this. But as you mentioned, this is an overall, this is a universal, this is something that we want for everyone, not a protective way. And you know, one, one of the ways that I think we've seen that kind of play out and I don't know if we want to get into the real nitty gritty specifics and we don't have to, but just a couple of things that come to my mind are, you know, we have this maybe freedom of religion banner. Right. And someone who is patriotic would say, yes, absolutely, we, this is one of the American values. We value freedom of religion for everyone. Which means for my Muslim neighbor, which means for my son's Buddhist school teacher, which means, you know, for all of this. But a nationalist, a Christian nationalist would say we value, maybe we value freedom for Christians to be able to practice in the way that they want to practice. And there's not necessarily maybe a universal freedom that's being advocated for. And those are two different things. [00:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah, and you picked a good example here with religious freedom. It was really eye opening to me when I realized that religious freedom is probably more well safeguarded in constitutional law today than probably any other time in American history. We have this view, this maybe narrative in our heads, many of us, that America used to be nearly perfect in the 19th century and then there's a sort of decline and fall narrative that things gradually got worse after the 1960s or whatever. But that's not true, to take this religious freedom, white Christians enjoyed more power in the 19th century, but there was not true religious freedom for all people. Catholics really enjoyed basically no religious freedom in the 19th century. And black Protestants, of course, did not. And the sort of low class denominations, Baptists and Methodists, were despised by the culture. Baptists used to be imprisoned for preaching without a license back in the 18th century. So our religious freedom, all of us, not just kind of establishment white Protestants, but everybody, have better safeguards for our religious freedom today. And that's an important story for us to remember. It's not just a simple decline and fall narrative. And of course, the narrative is far more dramatic when you talk about race. Our country is far more Christian today in how we treat people of all races and ethnicities, far more tolerant and loving towards all people than we were 100% than we were 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And so we need to remember that though there are parts of our culture that are more challenging to religious faith today, I think that's true. There are also parts of our culture and our legal system that are much, much better and we should celebrate that. [00:20:46] Speaker A: Yeah, man, I grasped onto something that you mentioned there, which is going back to the narrative and saying what, what actually is true is that white Protestants had more power then. And I have to tell you, this was the thread that continually, I'm going to be real technical here, that continually made me feel the yuckiest when I was, when I was reading your book was just the recognition of the power hungry ness Right of this. I'm making up all sorts of words, but you know, this, this power thread through nationalism, it's even yuckier when we talk about the power thread of Christian nationalism. That was one of my takeaways is big picture. That's what this is about. This is about power. Who has power? Who's going to retain the power? How are you going to retain the power? Who's the power for? Who does the power benefit? Lots and lots of power talk that is really disheartening in this discussion. [00:22:01] Speaker B: I think Trump was actually very clear about that in the 2016 campaign. If you go back to some of his campaign speeches and his stump speeches, he's very clear at explicitly appealing to Christians and power. We will restore Christian power in this country. And that's almost a direct quote from Trump. We will restore Christian power. And look, white Protestants used to run essentially every single institution in America clear up to the 1960s. So white Protestants have less power today than they used to. That's a true statement. Making the restoration of white Protestant power or just Christian power, that's not a, I think, a valid political platform. Right. We ought to advocate for justice for all, not for our tribal power and privilege. It was again, eye opening for me when I looked at American politics through the eyes of my. I read all this political science stuff about comparative politics and societies all around the world. And it's pretty conventional to analyze ethno religious groups, sort of groups that are defined by a combination of ethnicity and religion. And you isolate these groups, you say, oh, well, this is a coherent interest group and so they're going to act this way and pursue their interests and so forth. Well, when I kind of applied that to Anglo Protestants in America, it clicked. It's like, oh, well, yeah, maybe this community has long been pursuing its power and privilege, despite what the rhetoric is. And the rhetoric has always been, I think, quite admirable. Right. Talking about small R Republicanism and democracy and equality and liberty. I agree with all that stuff. But if you look at the behavior, there's a consistent behavior of white Protestants acting like an ethno religious group pursuing its own power. And Trump really tapped into that very powerfully. [00:23:53] Speaker A: Right. I mean, some of the things that I've just barely kept up with lately is, you know, some. When you talk about smaller republicanism and democracy and all that and you, and you look at the power dynamic and thread that we're talking about, it hit me. I think it was really only a couple of years ago I was having a conversation with my dad who, who happens to have studied political science. And it was just, it was one of these aha moments where I was like, oh my goodness, I don't think these people don't actually want a democracy. Right. Like, whoa. Like you know, mind blowing kind of thing. And then now, you know, a couple of years later it's coming out and people are talking about, you know, being replaced and you know, all this kind of stu. That seems really far fetched to me and you didn't mention it specifically in your book, so I'm not going to necessarily ask you to go there unless you want to. But it's just like. But that's kind of where the rubber hit the road for me is that it's what we should be advocating for is exactly as you say, as justice for all instead of justice for people who used to be in the majority and are afraid of being in the minority now, which is kind of what you're seeing happening, I think. [00:25:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And okay, so you're mentioning the anti democratic tendencies within nationalism that, you know, I just a bit ago I talked about how nationalist governments tend to turn authoritarian over time. I want to be careful here and not impute this to all people on the right or all Republicans or all Trump voters. But I think that we saw the beginnings of that on January 6th of last year at the, at the Capitol attack. I'm not going to call it the Capitol riot anymore, because I think it's actually a terrorist attack that was anti Democratic. It was also rooted in conspiracy theories. And you did see elements of Christian nationalism on display. They carried the Christian flag in. They were playing Christian worship music. They carry the Confederate flag in. And if you haven't done this, go to YouTube and find the prayer they prayed when they reached the floor of the. I can't remember if it was the Senate or the House. And it's remarkable. I recognized it. I felt that I recognized because they explicitly pray in Jesus name. They invoke Jesus Christ's name and they pray. Thank you for letting us take this country back. This country is ours. It was just remarkable to see that display again. I don't want to cast all Trump voters as guilty of January 6th, but it's there. And I think that the potential for more of that is alive and well on the political right. And it's scary, I think. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's go backwards for a minute, because one of the things that I really appreciate about your book is that, you know, we've mentioned Trump a few times. But. But truthfully, besides the place where you, you mentioned that you were a signature on the letter, Trump doesn't even get a chapter until almost the very end. Because part of what I love that you've done in this, and I'm hoping that you'll go there with us a little bit today, is that you've kind of said, in my words, like, Trump slid into a place that was ready for him. Right. This isn't that Trump came on the scene, you know, late 2015, decided he's going to, you know, he's going to run. And all of a sudden now we have this Christian nationalist segment that, you know, has. Has come to life in our otherwise, you know, beautifully, perfectly Democratic country. Like, there was a Christian nationalist segment that has been. Has been alive and well for a while and that, you know, Trump came along and did. I think that he was a catalyst for a lot of things. I think people would probably argue that, but it wasn't that. Something started with Trump. And as you just mentioned, it's not that we can anticipate things would end because his presidency ended either. So I don't know if this is A place where you want to go. One of the. One of the places that made me kind of aha about that was when you talk about Jacksonian America and that kind of. That, like when you were talking about recognizing the prayer, I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, I know. I know this. I know these folks right here. But that's just one example you do talk about. This was. This was definitely way pre Trump, this nationalist thread. [00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I didn't really want to write a book about Trump. There's plenty of books written about Trump because he's a colorful personality, he sells books, he gets clicks. And I really felt that there was something more to say that both predates him and will outlast him. And I think that that may be the more important message other than just harping on the one guy. I'll share this. There's actually 30,000 or 40,000 words that didn't make it into the book. And it was mostly history where I tried to trace elements of this way of thinking about American identity as far back as I could. And I'm not making this up. I found a promotional pamphlet trying to recruit British settlers to come to Virginia in 1617 that said, come help build God's kingdom in the new World. It's literally as old as European settlement in North America to define our political project in this hemisphere in religious terms. So that way of defining America, it's always been here. It has. Has always been here. We could spend an hour just on this point. I think maybe one of my other favorite illustrations of this would be the schooling system in the United States. Right. So for 100 plus years, we had public schools funded by the government that were pretty much Protestant kind of seminaries or Protestant sectarian schools. That's why Catholics left the school system and created their own parallel parochial school system, because they didn't feel welcome there. And when in the 1960s, the culture had changed enough to no longer want that, we had a couple of big lawsuits about school prayer and Bible reading of schools. Now, I get it that today the schooling system is a disaster. And the Supreme Court has made some decisions on religious liberty in the 70s and 80s that weren't. That weren't great. They've undone them now. But that supreme court decision in 1963, I think it's Engel versus Vitale on school prayer was a really important case that helped disentangle that religious understanding of America from government sponsorship. Up to that point, the government had literally been funding schoolteachers to pray and read the Bible and teach that view of America to their students. So this stuff, it goes all the way back, and it's been a deeply ingrained part of American culture. Again, that part of American culture has been losing influence, and as it does, the people who are in it. The Jacksonians, as you highlighted, have felt that loss of power. And that's where Trump was able to step in and say, I'm going to bring your power back. I'm going to bring your power back. And he cast it in religious terms. I'm going to bring Christian power back. And that spoke to, I think, deeply rooted, say, longings and fears that have been going back for decades and decades as a segment of the American population felt this anxiety over the loss of their historical privilege. [00:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I keep, you know, I keep kind of going back to this thing that is. Is one. One of the aspects of this that makes it so hard is. And you use that word disentangle specifically in that example with. With schools and religion in schools. But this is very, very difficult for American Christians to have this conversation on Christian nationalism, because so much of what. What happens is exactly as you're talking about is this conflation. Like, we just. These things get kind of collapsed onto one another, and it's very difficult to pull out one from the other. I think about. I know I just said we're gonna take this away from Trump. But things with Trump that, for example, there were major Christian leaders who. Very influential evangelical Christian leaders who made excuses for Trump's moral immoral behaviors, who were saying things about former presidents like Clinton or other political people, and just saying, this is absolutely not acceptable. We can't have someone like this in office. But then you just kind of go, oh, I don't want to go there. But you kind of have to go there. And you go, yeah, but Clinton wasn't also. He wasn't promising you power. And that's really hard, right? Because again, like, we think things get conflated and we say, well, I don't want to think that about my, My. About leaders in this culture. I don't want to think that about leaders in the faith space. I don't want to think that about my friends or my neighbors or myself. But it's difficult because these things are so entangled, this nationalism and unfortunately, this quest for power is entangled with faith or at least with this kind of profession of faith. [00:34:00] Speaker B: And I think it is hardest when America is at its best. Right. One of the reasons it's hard for American Christians is because America is actually pretty awesome. Right. And that gets back to my patriotism. I love this country and there's of a lot to be proud of. You know, this is the country that fought a war to end slavery. This is a country that, that overcame. This is a country that defeated the Nazis and put a man on the moon and won the Cold War and brought down the Soviet Union. These are all true things and we should take pride in them. But it's precisely because we are comparatively better than most other countries that have ever existed that we can turn a deaf ear to a needed rebuke. When it is justified, it is our self righteousness that is our besetting sin, because there is a measure of righteousness there and that can be very deceptive for us to grow up with that sense of comparative righteousness compared to other countries. [00:34:59] Speaker A: Can you talk about this? We're going back to this quest for power. I'm wondering if you can take a cue off my notes. I was just saying, I just have written down that that nationalism makes quest for power into a moral crusade. So what if I, if I read that correctly, then can you unpack that for us a bit? Like what is the meaning of that? That there would be this, this group that would be decidedly on a quest for power and consider that like their moral obligation to get it and use it. [00:35:39] Speaker B: So the agenda of the Christian right, which a big part of my book is arguing the Christian right, was actually always nationalist. The agenda of the Christian right, if you go back to the early version of it, the 1920s and 40s and 50s, was about public morals. It was about censoring the airwaves and, and regulating drinking and dancing. And then it was anti communism was a huge part of it. And of course, fighting against the civil rights movement was a big part of it. You move to the 1970s and it's about fighting the sexual revolution, gender equality, gay rights, fighting against public schooling, preserving the right for private schooling, so on and so forth. Okay, so this is the agenda. We can agree with parts of it here and there. It's not all bad. But as the movement has grown smaller, as its power has shrunk, the story it tells itself is that we must preserve our power in order to pursue any other of our agenda, pursue any other item on our agenda. And so the preservation of our power is just for America's sake, right? America would be lost without us. Without us, no voice would be there to advocate for the unborn, to advocate for religious freedom, to advocate for this and that and the other thing. And so the most important agenda Item is to preserve our power so that we can then advocate for all these other causes. That's how this movement persuades itself that its own power is a moral cause. And I think that can be, again, quite dangerous when you look at power as intrinsically good merely by virtue of the fact of who's wielding that power. It's a very dangerous place to be in, spiritually and politically. [00:37:31] Speaker A: Yeah. So the Christian right, just to take it a step further, I mean, what I hear you saying is the Christian right doesn't trust anyone else with that power. Right. Will they do the quote. Will they do the right thing if they have the power? And the narrative is probably not. The narrative might be certainly not if someone else were to have this power. [00:37:54] Speaker B: I think that's why you hear the rhetoric today that the next election, the one after that, the stakes are existential, that if the other side wins the election, America's done. Back in 2016, we had that famous essay about the Flight 93 election where the author, by analogy, was saying that Democrats are akin to Al Qaeda. They were like terrorists who were hijacking the airliner of America, and that if they won the election, that America was literally done. It was over. And that's what that essayist said. He said, America will be finished if the Democrats win. And there's a certain strain of rhetoric on the right that looks at political opponents as enemies. Treasonous, seditious enemies of all of America and all that is good and right. I will say, I think there are actually some on the left who have the same view of the right. So. So we're in a dangerous place where the extremes on both sides are kind of anathematizing each other. And. Yeah. So that's a very dangerous place to be in. And I just remember Lincoln talking about, we must be friends, not enemies, or Jefferson. We are all Republicans. We are all Federalists. We must be Americans. [00:39:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. Gosh, Paul, I feel like you. You did such a. You've done such a great job of outlining this. I mean, one of the kind of lingering question, though, just because we're humans, right? Is then, like, well, then what? Right, like, then what do we do? Like, we see this as dangerous. This is a heritage. Right. Like, I mean, that's kind of the freaky part for me is like. Like, we've this. Right. Talk about this going back for centuries. We've inherited this. It's. It's. It's entangling, you know, how do we move forward? Like, what should be looking at, you know, I'm kind of thinking about everything from realizing maybe convictions that we have that line up with Christian nationalism that we didn't know. I'm thinking about our, our friends and our cousins and our, you know, church, you know, or people who sit with us in the pews, but then also just like, you know, big picture things because it, it matters how we think about these topics because that will guide what we, how we feel and what we do about them. And so, you know, I'm not asking you to answer everything, but I do. But I do know you've thought about it. So, so where, where would you kind of guide us when we have all of this information, we have all this language now where we can name it and then it's kind of like we're left with like, well, now, now what, what do we do? [00:40:43] Speaker B: You know, maybe one flaw in my book is that I don't end with a program, a 10 point program of things to do. [00:40:50] Speaker A: You'd have to up the price quite a bit. I think if you could end with [00:40:54] Speaker B: that, it would take me six more years to write that. So yeah, I don't have, give me a couple years to come up with those ideas. I do end with a note to pastors in the book because I think that churches have a role to play here and a role that many might feel uncomfortable with because this problem has been incubated by churches for much of American history. Because this problem involves a misapprehension of what the gospel really is. I think the church can't but step in and address this problem. Because if you hear somebody taking the name of Jesus and saying something wrong with it, the church absolutely has a responsibility to clarify what the name of Jesus really stands for. And so I think pastors need to be aware of that and they need to be a bit freer to teach, not in a partisan way and not necessarily on an issue by issue way, but to teach a holistic biblical political theology that teaches us how to be political animals. Americans are malformed in this area. We are not good at the art of politics anymore. We used to be 150 years ago. Here's a decline and fall narrative I buy into. We're bad. We're worse today than we used to be at the civic arts, at the arts of association. I think maybe pastors actually have a role to play here in applying the gospel of Jesus Christ to our lives, in community with others. What does it look like to be a Christian loving others politically in the public square? Right. Maybe it means once in A while. Shutting up and listening and admitting when we're wrong. Listening to the rebuke of history, reading books and articles from the other vantage point. These are all good and healthy things to do. And so there's a lot of things we could do. I don't think there's any silver bullet and there's no, again, I don't have a 10 point program for you, but it's going to take a lot of sort of concerted effort by citizens of goodwill to undo some of this damage because it's very deeply rooted. [00:42:58] Speaker A: Thank you, Paul. One more place I'd like to go and then I'll let you have it and I'll let you kind of wrap it up however you want. But one more place I do want to go that was, that was really, really important for me. You kind of open with it and you kind of end with it in your book as well. And that is that this term that you use of ordered liberty and you use this term ordered liberty and human dignity and the, and the. In my imagination, I'm putting these terms together, maybe not quite like a sum, right? But like ordered dignity or ordered liberty and human dignity should be the guide for our political guide. And this was something that, it's kind of like, okay, I'm just, I'm just Gonna, I'll bet you $10 if you can disagree with that, right? Like, I'm like, this should be kind of a statement that we can all get on board with, you know, Christian, non Christian, patriot, nationalist, left, right? You know, kind of wherever you stand. But there is a lot there. So when you're talking about. Because I think what I heard was the Christian nationalists want to run politics this way. How should we be running politics, right? It's kind of like you've, you've. I say sometimes my husband and I are trying to figure out a place to eat, right? And he's like, you can't just veto everything, right? You have to give me an idea, right? So I don't think by any stretch of the imagination that you vetoed everything. But I've kind of set my mind to go, okay, this is what it shouldn't look like. But now I really desperately need someone to tell me maybe what it should look like, even in a few sentences. So if we're saying, okay, that's great, I can discard this. I don't want to live life politically like a Christian nationalist. I want to live in this way where this is what guides me. What would that be? [00:45:00] Speaker B: Well, I open the book with a preface talking about a trilogy that I want to write. This book is volume one. It's a critique of the political right. Volume two, critique of the political left, progressivism. And volume three would answer your question. It would be a vindication of sort of, I don't know, Christian democracy or something like that. And I'm happy to share that I actually will be writing these books. InterVarsity was kind enough to actually offer me the contract, so I'll be so. So the answer to your question is coming in 2029 when I get to volume three. I say in this book that there's no alternative to our politics than to some kind of system of ordered liberty and human dignity. I think of Genesis 2:15, where God puts Adam and Eve puts them in the garden, and he says, tend and keep the garden. If you've done any gardening, you know that gardening involves some order. You're going to put up the trellis, you're going to till the lines of soil. You're going to plant things in neat rows, and then you're going to provide some water. And then you just step back and let nature take its course. You give it freedom. You give it liberty. Any creative endeavor in all of creation requires that mix, providing some order to the raw material of nature and then stepping back and letting things take their course. I think that's good advice for parenting. I think it's good advice if you're a boss at work. I think it's actually a good model for government. Government is a process of providing some order and structure for society and then stepping back and letting things be. And I look forward to fleshing out that vision more in coming years. I don't have necessarily new ideas. I don't think I'm rediscovering something. I think these ideas have been alarmed for a long time, but I think every generation needs to reappropriate and reappreciate these ideas of ordered liberty and kind of rediscover what it means. It will look different perhaps in our generation as we adapt to the challenges before us, the challenge of nationalism and progressivism and the challenges overseas, by the way. So ordered liberty will look a little different as we tweak it as we need to, but we each need to kind of prayerfully consider and seek the wisdom for how to cultivate ordered liberty today and for the next generation. [00:47:19] Speaker A: Thank you so much. I just really appreciate that picture. I hope that's something. As I was imagining, you talk about the garden that I keep with me, because I think that's beautiful. And I think you're right. I think it applies to so many different things. And I'll just extend it and say, as long as I'm here with this microphone, you have an invitation to come and talk about any of those books that you want to. Because I would love to. I would love to read them as you. As you put them out. No doubt I'll be revisiting this one. My husband has already said, do you have that in hard copy yet? Can I grab that so you can get it? As soon as I get it in the place I'd like to kind of wrap up is really with you. Sometimes I mentioned that I'm a student, and sometimes when I interview professors, I am aware that there may be something itching in you where you're going, you're looking at the class and going, oh, if they would only ask this question, then I could say this thing. So I just want to open that up to you. And I might even say, open that up to you, Dr. Miller. And if there's anything that you're going, oh, man, I wish she had asked that. I would have made this point. Please feel free to do that now. [00:48:33] Speaker B: Thank you for that open invitation. First of all, you're a great interviewer, and I appreciate that you read the book thoughtfully and had some good questions for it. So I don't think there's any one big thing that's really been missing to our conversation. There's a place to end. Maybe it'll be sent you with some of the ideas. In the last chapter, where I reflect on American identity, and I talked at the beginning of our conversation about the American creed. It's important to say that that's not the only element to American identity. I think our history is part of that. And I think that knowing American history is an important part of being an American. If you don't know the story, you're missing out on something of what it means to be an American. And you're not really practicing that gratitude. Well, the appreciation for where you came from, if you don't know the story of where you came from. And so I just encourage people to go out and read a book. American history. We don't all have to agree on that history. We're all going to come from different places in that history, and that's fine. But I think it's important to know that story because we Americans speaking about Americans now, not Christians, we Americans were the people of the creed, but more so we are the people of the story of the creed. We have never lived up to the creed perfectly, never will this side of heaven, but we are the people who have continually striven to live up more perfectly to that creed, generation after generation. That story is the story worth cultivating, worth knowing, appreciating, and worth making your story so that you step into that story and decide, I am going to carry this story forward. And that, I think, is the best understanding of what it means to be an American. [00:50:16] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you so much. The book, again, is the Religion of American Greatness, what's Wrong with Christian Nationalism? By Paul D. Miller, and I will put the link for you to get your hands on a copy of that book in the Show Notes. Thank you so much for joining me. Paul. [00:50:32] Speaker B: Thank you, Alexis. [00:50:34] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the Show Notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit [email protected].