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"An immensely important book for our present moment.”
—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
David P. Gushee calls us to preserve democratic norms, including constitutional government, the rule of law, and equal rights for all, even as many Christians take a reactionary and antidemocratic stance. He analyzes where Christians have discarded their commitment to democracy and bought into authoritarianism in the US and other countries, both historically and today. He urgently argues that to defend against reactionary and authoritarian Christians we must revive and draw on our hard-won traditions of congregational democracy, dissident Black Christian politics, and covenantal theology.
Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies makes a robust case for the defense of democracy from its enemies—including Christians—arguing for a renewed commitment to democracy.
Latest Book
Conversations about Religion and Politics on the Eve of the 2024 Election Season
Bradley Onishi
Bradley Onishi is a social commentator, scholar, writer, teacher, coach, and co-host of the Straight White American Jesus (SWAJ) podcast. He often speaks about topics related to the radical conservatism and extremist religions that shape our world, some of it right in our own neighborhoods. Join in the conversation about where and when some of the far right religious conservatism began, and how it's reacted poorly to the kind of change that actually makes democracy stronger.
Andrew Whitehead
Andrew Whitehead is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and a Project Director at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI, and a co-Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (theARDA.com), the world's largest online religion data archive. Join in the conversation about how there are unexamined aspects related to privilege in our religion that how we can learn to be more inclusive in democratic society.
Robert P. Jones
Robert P. Jones, President of the Public Religion Research Institute, joins David Gushee to discuss both their books including Jones's new book, The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: and the Path to a Shared American Future. Join in this rich conversation about how religion becomes entangled with politics and how Christians can sometimes abandon their democratic ideals.
Other Recent Books by David Gushee
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At the Cross: What I See
The Lenten season has been especially intense for me this year on a spiritual level. I have sought to follow its rhythms, demands and opportunities from Ash Wednesday until now, Holy Week. Each day I have read the Mass readings and experienced their impact. My sense that the Christian life is best undertaken within the rhythm […]
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Broken-Hearted Patriotism
I have a weekly prayer cycle I try to practice in my morning devotional time. On Mondays, I pray for myself, my discipleship, health, calling and responsibilities. On Tuesdays, I pray for each family member. On Wednesdays, I pray for my friends. And on Thursdays, I pray for the church and the various institutions and churches […]
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Thinking Biblically about Government in an Election Year
I begin by saying the obvious: We enter an election year in a time of great political and cultural division in our country. That could have been said every four years since 1968. But today we also can add that we enter an election year with very high levels of social mistrust, loss of confidence in […]
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Racism’s Absurdity in Light of the Gospel
We’ve just celebrated Martin Luther King weekend. The great Baptist preacher, scholar and activist would have been 95 years old. We rightly honor him. The Civil Rights Movement led by King was not that long ago. We still live with the reverberations of that era. Indeed, I would suggest our own miserably divided politics still reflect […]
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We Face a Cultural Crisis, Not Just a Political One
As Jeanie and I danced the night away in Atlanta on New Year’s Eve — yes, we actually did that, although I admit I ended up with a twisted knee, a sadly predictable outcome for a man of my rapidly advancing years — I was aware that the spirit of revelry in the room was not […]
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Devouring Beasts: Advent and the 2024 election
In the Christian calendar, the new year begins with the first Sunday of Advent. That is the Sunday just past. Happy Christian New Year, everyone! If one is thinking in terms of the Christian calendar, then, the new year began on Dec. 3, 2023, and will end on Nov. 30, 2024. That means before the next […]
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City of the Living, City of the Dead: From Vilnius to Israel/Palestine
I spent the last weekend of October exploring the Old Town of Vilnius, Lithuania. I was in that grand 700-year-old city for speaking appearances and to visit friends. My dear wife, Jeanie, came with me. Tuesday, Oct. 31, was free, and Jeanie and I decided on different itineraries. She went exploring in Lithuania’s many historic Catholic […]
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My argument in Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies
This week, my new book, Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies, officially releases. I am told that even before its release, it exceeded the publisher’s sales expectations for one full year. I am grateful for the high interest in the book. In this post, I want to review its main arguments. My thesis is that many […]
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Post-Evangelical Snapshots
Everywhere I go, I meet a surging community of post-evangelicals. I would like to offer readers a few snapshots from half a year of travel. Little Rock, March 30: I speak to the annual NASW social workers conference in downtown. My topic: The struggle against religious-based harm to LGBTQ people.” In a very conservative region, with Sarah Huckabee next […]
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Erasmus Indicts Trump—and the USA
One thing that has gone tragically wrong with American politics over the past eight years is that the electorate has admitted into the highest reaches of national life a man obviously lacking in the moral temperament, training and character required of a national leader. Just barely, this man became president. Somewhat less barely, after four chaotic […]
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Thoughts about the Art and Craft of Teaching
This week I begin my 31st year of full-time teaching in the field of Christian ethics. In this post I want to think aloud about the art and craft of teaching. I believe the magic in teaching — at least in the humanities — takes place when a decently gifted teacher works with motivated students to […]
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Preserving a Sense of the Ultimate
I want to make the modest proposal that there is a dimension of religion, including Christianity, that properly transcends world affairs to focus on the state of individual character and the health of the soul. I speak of the inner core of a human being, who we are in our deepest selfhood and the quiet place […]
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Now Is the Time to Talk about Post-Evangelicalism—Out Loud and Together
In my 2020 book, After Evangelicalism, I argued that there were likely twenty-five million people who had been raised evangelical but who had either switched to another religious tradition or no longer identified with any religious tradition. This estimate was based on the massive (35,000 surveyed in all fifty states) and much quoted Pew Research […]
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An Interview with Kelsey Morrison, Evangelical Academia’s Latest Homophobia Victim
On June 2, soccer coach Kelsey Morrison was fired and immediately escorted from the campus of Geneva College, an evangelical school near Pittsburgh. Her offense was two posts on Instagram. In this exclusive interview with me for Baptist News Global, Coach Morrison tells her story. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Q: So, Kelsey, […]
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Lessons from Cicero on America’s 247th Birthday
I am reading the Roman statesman-philosopher Cicero these days. You might ask why in the world that dusty old personage should be occupying my thoughts. The answer is that, as part of the preparation of my new book on democracy, I am attempting to retrace the most significant lines of Western political thought. This month that […]
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An Ethicist Tackles the Issues
Dr. Gushee speaks to a wide range of audiences and organizations, including churches, universities, special forums, podcasts and the media. He often speaks on evangelicalism, LGBTQ+ inclusion, politics, and other issues of the day by offering a principled and everyday level perspective that informs and inspires.
David Gushee’s work in [Changing Our Mind] stands to be of pivotal importance in reframing the LGBTQ dialogue in the church, and in reclaiming the church’s moral authority for a new generation.
—Matthew Vines, author of God and the Gay Christian
“Kingdom Ethics is arguably the most significant and comprehensive Christian ethics textbook of our time.”
— Michelle A. Clifton-Soderstrom, North Park Theological Seminary
“Anyone who wants to know what a Christian ethicist is and does can begin [with Still Christian], with the compelling account of how one man makes life-bending decisions about things that matter, without ever losing faith in the tender Jesus who has hold of his soul.”
–Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Leaving Church and Learning to Walk in the Dark
"David Gushee is one of the best Christian ethicists alive today. "
—Shane Claiborne, speaker, activist, and author of Executing Grace
"Thinking about Christianity after evangelicalism is neither trendy, alarmist, nor faithless, but rather it carves out a needed path forward for those millions of exvangelicals who have found the movement that birthed them to be irrelevant, traumatic, and even abhorrent and are seeking a place to land. Few have earned the right to speak to this topic with such prophetic clarity and practical insight, not to mention approachable writing style, as David Gushee."
–Peter Enns, author of How the Bible Actually Works