What In God's Name

You need to understand the underlying belief system that underwrites the moral world of the movement that goes by the name "Make America Great Again." Why? Because eventually this underlying belief system will bring down everything you cherish.

Progressivism is in retreat, not just in the United States but around the world. Catholic Social Teaching provides a wellspring to morally thirsty people. Can secular progressives come and drink?

The moral lens on our common life is a way to address our broken politics. Our politics is broken because we are an aimless people, unable to think and talk about meaning and purpose.

How a standard practice in reporting on federal judges increases cynicism and polarization.

On the necessity of hierarchies of virtue in a time of nihilism

Separating words from their meanings is a tactic in the battle to erode the authority of goodness to constrain powerful people from acting badly.

Using our government's recent security breach on Signal and Jeffrey Goldberg's reporting on it as a point of departure, we help you understand the friend/enemy binary in our society.

WIGN Short Form helps you understand the moral dimensions of our common life, and why they are important.

What In God's Name looks at the Zelenskyy-Trump meeting through the moral lens

Today: Religious literacy to the rescue? How are we to have more open and honest conversations about public questions? Brandon and his University of Virginia students have some answers.

We consider hope from a political and a theological perspective

Chris and Shayna bring the moral and theological lens to see more deeply into our moment.

The S1 Project presents at the "Frontiers of Democracy" conference at the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. Here's a taste of the conversation we led.

We revisit the essential question from the 2024 HYPE Conference at the University of New Hampshire with Fin, NJ, Stella, and Taloosh

We talk about Christine Emba's article in The Atlantic

Higher Calling: A conversation about faith and politics between Senator Chris Coons https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlpK4B1Zifo

Here is the link to Ben's writing and commentary: https://benapeterson.com/

Chris and Shayna consider Ralph Ellison's quote, from his speech upon receiving the National Book Award in 1953: "The way home we seek, is that condition of man's being at home in the world, which is called love, and which we term democracy."

The Ethics Forum Website: https://www.souheganethicsforum.org/

Here is Jean Bethke Elshtain: https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/democracy/articles/democratic-authority-at-centurys-end

Jean Bethke Elshtain on Democratic Authority: https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/democracy/articles/democratic-authority-at-centurys-end

Rabbi Sharon Brous: https://ikar.org/team/rabbi-sharon-brous/ "This Is The Moral Earthquake" sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PuLI2atWPs

Here is the Religion in Revolt website: https://www.religionrevolt.org/

Here is Liz's article: https://liztheoharis.org/mike-johnsons-reading-of-scripture-misses-what-it-really-means-to-be-a-christian-nation/ Here is the Kairos Center: https://kairoscenter.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Defending-Democracy-Its-Christian-Enemies/dp/0802882935

Your view of human nature will shape your understanding of how democracy should be ordered for longevity. Your view of human nature may mean that you don't think democracy is sustainable.

Shayna's Reflection: I am an American, gender-queer, Jew and I am…  …terrified right now for innocent civilians in both Israel and Palestine, and for Jews everywhere as anti-semites around the world view the Hamas slaughter as permission to hit the gas pedal on their own hatred.  I am…  …pissed as hell at Hamas for unleashing what promises to be a disproportionate response by Israel, and pissed even further into hell by the Israeli governments inability to resist being goaded into that response.  I am…  …breathless with fear as I await the outcome for hostages taken by Hamas - women, children, persons with disabilities, the elderly, and breathless with fear for the lives of Palestinian women, children, persons with disabilities and the elderly.  I am…  …watching in despair as Western media attempts to report on this disaster, all the while seemingly blind to the prism through which they view “facts on the ground.'  I am…  …sensitive to those who feel called to stand in solidarity with Israel in light of the Hamas massacre AND sensitive to those who stand with the Palestinian people, recognizing the consequences decades of occupation have inflicted.   I am…  …incredibly grateful for the one friend who reached out to me to see how I'm holding up in the midst of this human disaster, recognizing, without having to be told, how deeply distressing these events are for those of us who carry the identity “Jewish”or “Palestinian, or maybe simply “human.”  I am…  …praying for the peacemakers, for I was lead to believe they would be recognized as “the children of G-d,” even as I find myself wondering how much clout G-d has in a conflict too many have blamed on Them.  I am…  …awaiting the reign of the meek, who Jesus said would inherit the earth.  Where the hell are you guys?  I am…  …terrified, pissed, breathless with fear, watching in despair, sensitive, incredibly grateful, praying, awaiting.  How are you all holding up?

Today's show refers to this writing:    Religion News Service ran a story last week on the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, and their efforts to pass laws that (they claim) are based on Christianity.   Specifically (from their website), they are about “abolishing abortion,” “restoring marriage between one man and one woman,” and (an often forgotten part of the Sermon on the Mount), “promoting universal school choice.”   The story attributes the following criticism of the NACL to Holly Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty: that making laws “shaped by a legislator's view of Christian values can be harmful for both the government and people of faith because it erodes the separation of church and state.”   There's a lot to unpack here, with implications for everyone—Christian or not, religious or not—who cares about the future of American democracy.   The key phrase in Hollman's criticism is “the separation of church and state.” What does this phrase mean today? In what ways has it become a reflexive and feckless fallback position for well-intentioned religious people who are politically liberal? And in what circumstances is it indispensable?   So permit me, then, as a thought experiment, to defend the National Association of Christian Lawmakers—not for their specific causes, nor for their method. No. Let me defend the NACL for what they are trying to do, understood in the most generous way possible: they are trying to bring a moral vision into our shared common life, and reconnect that vision to the practice of making laws.   That's a good thing. A healthy society needs to ask questions about, and have respectful debates about, the good towards which policies and practices are aimed. And a healthy politics is connected to a vision of the common good, or else you get what you have now—a politics of getting and keeping power for personal gain, bought by powerful moneyed interests.   Here's where the imprecision of the phrase “separation of church and state” becomes problematic.    If Hollman is playing the “separation of church and state” card in order to trump any religious voice's articulation of values in public conversations, including conversations about public policy and the making of laws, then she (along with many secularists who believe religion should be just a private activity) are making 2 mistakes: the first is constitutional; the second is strategic.   Let me take the constitutional mistake first. The separation of church and state is a Jeffersonian phrase that refers to the First Amendment. The First Amendment prohibits the  establishment of a state religion, and prohibits the government from restricting individuals' free exercise of religion.   Neither of these prohibitions can be construed to mean that religious voices are disqualified from articulating values or visions of human flourishing that rise from religious commitments, or advocating for those values as matters of policy. There's nothing about articulation or advocacy per se, that establishes a state religion or prohibits an individual's free exercise of religion. A particular bill that NACL supports that gets signed into law may violate the First Amendment, but that's a separate question.    The second, strategic mistake Hollman makes in playing the “separation of church and state” card is not unique to her. In fact, it is common to most religious people who are politically left of center. It's a failure to engage with substantive moral and theological critiques of liberal democracy, including laws that rise from liberal democracy's commitment to equality and individual rights.    Failing to engage these moral and theological critiques is a strategic mistake because it (to use the language of battle) cedes the moral field to the critics. In short, where there needs to be an articulation of moral good in the public square by religious people who are politically left of center, those people retreat behind the wall of “separation  of church and state.” The needed moral and theological articulation is never made. Silence ensues, and the loud voices win.   Let me be more concrete. NACL wants to undo Obergefell. Instead of criticizing NACL's advocacy for reversing Obergefell as violating the separation of church and state, what religious people (and non-religious people, for that matter) ought to do, is articulate the moral and theological good that the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause (on which Obergefell was decided) guards.   Or again, abortion. Instead of criticizing NACL as violating the separation of church and state by seeking to abolish abortion, what religious people ought to do, is articulate how “choice” is a moral and theological good in this humanly complex issue.   The “separation of church and state” was never meant to disconnect moral philosophy and moral theology from public questions.   There are reasonable people, of good will, who have substantive critiques of liberal (understood as a political philosophy, not a political party) democracy, and (some of) its laws. The National Association of Christian Lawmakers may or may not be reasonable, or of good will. Either way, to refrain from engaging the moral and humanistic theological dimensions of our shared common life, in the name of the “separation of church and state,” leaves a void that such voices then fill.    And leaves the positive goods of liberal democracy unspoken.    Chris Owen   Chris is the Founder and Co-Associate Director of the S-1 Project, dedicated to the promotion of moral and humanistic theological reflection on our shared common life 

Joseph's most recent book, Bulwarks of Unbelief: https://www.amazon.com/Bulwarks-Unbelief-Atheism-Absence-Secular-ebook/dp/B0BZ91GQDV?ref_=ast_author_mpb