What’s in a Nation?

Paul Miller, Georgetown professor and regular contributor to The Dispatch, returns to The Remnant to ...

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Paul Miller, Georgetown professor and regular contributor to The Dispatch, returns to The Remnant to discuss his new book, The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism. In formidably highfalutin fashion, he and Jonah explore what drives mankind’s nationalistic impulse, why Christianity and nationalism have historically been intertwined in America, and what should hold our country together beyond the creed outlined in the Declaration of Independence. Stick around to hear Paul turn the tables on Jonah and ask him a few questions about the legacy of Suicide of the West.

Show Notes:

– Paul’s page at The Dispatch

– Paul’s new book, The Religion of American Greatness

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    I kid you not: when Paul name-checked Yuval Levin and mentioned his “book on institutions,” my phone (the device that was playing this podcast) was literally sitting on that very book, which I started the other day (I’m about 1/4 of the way through)!

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  2. GF

    Where can I find a transcript of this podcast? Thank you.

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    Miriam Tucker

    Jonah, thank you for hosting these kinds of interviews, for asking these questions which I find disturbingly rare and much needed in my corner of conservative evangelicalism.

    I'd just finished reading Ross Douthat's fine conversation with the Catholic integralist Edmund Waldstein in First Things, and while thankful for Douthat's responses, was wishing for a more Protestant response to Christian post-liberalism or Christain nationalism. I found that in Jake Meador's extremely helpful essay "Orbanism and the Revolution" over at Mere Orthodoxy and heard overlapping ideas in your conversation with Paul Miller about the space where a virtuous politics operates outside of the nationalist/progressive project that seeks to take everyone to specific places that they alone can identify as good for us all.

    Here's a quote from Meador's essay in which he not only explains the crucial difference between authority and power, but also contrasts the constrained O'Donovanian view of Christendom with the "reasons of state" political theory of Gladden Pappin:

    "The O'Donovan school recognizes the importance of political authority and, indeed, the necessity of compromise while also recognizing that political power is not ultimate, but exists subserviently to other concerns which must never be abandoned in the pursuit of power, not only because such abandonment is in itself wrong, but also because such abandonment does, over time, have the effect of sterilizing political forms and structures, such that they become impotent and discredited." (https://mereorthodoxy.com/orbanism-and-the-revolution/)

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    Calvin S.

    I see a number of comments asking why there was exclusive attention payed to white evengelicalism in this episode.

    Advisory Opinions has had a number of guests come on to discuss a progressive viewpoint on constitutional law. Maybe a Catholic political theorist could come on to discuss integralism/social doctrine since it's a topic that comes up so often on the Remnant.

    Paul and Jonah discussed this a little bit, but I would also welcome a discussion from an African American evengelical perspective.

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    Calvin S.

    I thought this was a great episode, and I wish there was a part two.

    A historian that I've read recently that has done work on this topic is Crawford Gribben. His book Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America: Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest makes a valuable contribution. Maybe he would be a good interview guest.

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    Larry O

    Those of us who believe that Christ died for our sins and that we have been gifted the free will to follow Him or not would add that if God gave us free-will (note the sexy hyphen Sarah I) who are we to try to coerce citizens to Christ via the tools of government.

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    BWG

    Jonah, no need to apologize for your contribution to the podcast. The guest asked you questions and it would have been rude not to answer. And what's more l liked that back and forth - it's a refresher of your positions relative to your guests.

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    R0b3rt R

    Who's here from Spotify?

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    Jim McC

    I'm entirely in agreement that Christian nationalism is a poor basis for national cohesion, but I don't think I heard an answer to the question posed above ("what should hold our country together beyond the creed outlined in the Declaration of Independence"). I tilt toward subsidiarity and federalism wherever possible, but I do wonder if the decentralizing instinct leads inevitably to dissolution without some sort of pre-rational commitment to American-ness, and although everyone seems to reject creedalism as weak tea, it may have no "benign' rival for maintain a sense of ourselves as one nation. My sense is that the new nationalists are trying, and failing, to erect such a standard, while progressives set about undermining it daily.

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    Israel Bigelow

    Great conversation! Both Jonah and Miller offer respectful critiques of Christian Nationalism that I think are a lot more on point then the Left's constant reframing of it as "white backlash" and racism. The points Miller makes on social cohesion and God in Jonah's book were particularly interesting and I agree with the notion that the solution to most of the problems we have is to decentralize which is the opposite of what progressives and nationalists want. However, the problem I see the Nationalists pointing out with this approach are two fold: First, if the aim of Reagan conservatives was to limit the growth of government, it's failed. Government is bigger, more indebted, and more involved in people's lives than ever before. Second, this is in part because older conservatives (following the decentralizing approach advocated in the podcast) played defense and ceded social issues and institutions to the Radical Left. Progressives promote centralization and their own form of post-liberalism by pressing conflicts on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation through institutions they control like academia, media, non-partisan foundations, and the public bureacracy. Jonah's lament that people need to "stay in their lanes" is spot on but whistling passed the graveyard. What is the answer to when Leftists don't stay in their lanes? Reagan conservatives have simply not been able to respond from being outmaneuvered in the culture war which creates rich soil for populist demogogues who can speak to that angst. Rather than adapting it is they pining for nostalgically for the 1980s in policies but the country we live in is different today. How do conservatives reapply old principles to new issues today? Yuval Levin has some good points on this as well as thinkers like Glenn Loury and Wilfred McClay that might just be able to descend the populist/establishment divide in the GOP around a new consensus. Conservatives will have to fight for that new consensus in the public square but also not waste their time on 2000 Mules nonsense or sending Donald Trump back to the White House. We need to present better solutions to current problems. We live in a Republic if we can keep it.

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