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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.
October 3, 2023
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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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 …
Erasmus Indicts Trump—and the USA
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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 …
Thoughts about the Art and Craft of Teaching
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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 …
Preserving a Sense of the Ultimate
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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 …
Now Is the Time to Talk about Post-Evangelicalism—Out Loud and Together
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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, …
An Interview with Kelsey Morrison, Evangelical Academia’s Latest Homophobia Victim
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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 …
Lessons from Cicero on America’s 247th Birthday
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‘May They All Be One’
“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” — John 17:20-21 John 17 often is labeled as Jesus’ “high-priestly prayer.” This is because he stands in the sight of God praying for his people. In this extraordinarily profound …
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Our Weekly Gun Massacres Mark a Devastating Cultural Failure
Our weekly gun massacres in the United States are shocking in the extreme. They set us apart from other nations in the worst possible sense. I have not yet been in or near one of these massacres. The closest I have gotten is that the recent shooting in an Atlanta medical office building took place in …
Our Weekly Gun Massacres Mark a Devastating Cultural Failure
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Christianity without Love
One of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a …
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The Christian Right Continues Its Futile but Dangerous War of Reaction
For a long time, it was clear the white Christian Right in the United States was waging a war of reaction (sometimes open, sometimes clandestine) against just about every social, cultural and legal change that has taken place in our country since about, say, 1962. If we take the time horizon that far back, these changes would …
The Christian Right Continues Its Futile but Dangerous War of Reaction
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The ‘Man of Lawlessness’ Gets Indicted in New York
Since summer 2015, the most important figure in American life has been Donald J. Trump. Every time some of us hoped we would be through with him, he has shown he is not through with us. His exhausting presence and terrible impact on our country have not ended and apparently will not end even after he …
The ‘Man of Lawlessness’ Gets Indicted in New York
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The Dubious Ethics of Christian Twitter
Twitter is an enticement to sin. How’s that for a lead? Shall I say more? I discovered Twitter early and have maintained a steady presence there, despite various pauses, doubts and regrets. I almost abandoned the site last year when Elon Musk took over. I might do so still for various Musk-related reasons, such as …
The Dubious Ethics of Christian Twitter
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An Interview with Ukrainian Baptist Theologian Fyodor Raychynets
Last week, I was in Amsterdam for the annual academic colloquium of the International Baptist Theological Study Center. Among the scholars present there was my friend Fyodor Raychynets, a distinguished Baptist pastor and theologian, and a leader of the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kyiv, which I had the privilege of visiting several years ago. I …
An Interview with Ukrainian Baptist Theologian Fyodor Raychynets
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The State Murder of Tyre Nichols
Joint article by Lisa Sharon Harper and David P. Gushee. Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison. — Mark 6:27 On the day we write this post, during the week Tyre Nichols was buried after being murdered by Memphis police …
The State Murder of Tyre Nichols
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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