Sacred Tension: Burning My Leftist Card | Jonathan Rauch

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In this episode of Sacred Tension, author and journalist Jonathan Rauch takes the helm to interview me about my political transformation from progressive leftist to liberal centrist. We talk about cancel culture as a form of thought control, why I have turned against identitarianism, how the left’s response to the Hamas invasion of Israel galvanized me, and much more.

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Sacred Tension: The Illusion of Race | Subrena Smith and David Livingstone Smith

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In this episode of Sacred Tension, I’m joined by philosophers Subrena Smith and David Livingstone Smith to discuss the challenge and necessity of abolishing race. Subrena tells her story of moving from Jamaica to the deeply racialized culture of the USA and explains why she is Race Queer instead of Black. We discuss the many ways the ideology of race obscures actual human diversity, the difference between race and ethnicity, the similarities between race and witchcraft, and much more.

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Identity, Homophobia, and Obsession

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One day, when I was a college student on a conservative Christian college campus, I found myself hurrying to the college therapist’s office fighting back tears. The therapist’s office felt like the one haven where I could freely talk about my life without judgement. Once I reached her office, I broke down and sobbed. I could not make them stop. She sat with me quietly as I wept, a gentle presence who accepted me in a community that felt menacing and unforgiving.

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Sacred Tension: Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies | David Gushee

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In this episode of Sacred Tension, I’m joined by ethicist and Christian dissident David Gushee to discuss his new book Defending Democracy From Its Christian Enemies. We discuss why some Christians are turning on liberal democracy and why we should all defend democracy despite its flaws. We also discuss “thin democracy” and why it is not sufficient for a cohesive society.

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Why I Am Not a Christian: The Gift of Unbelief

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This is the finale of my Why I Am Not a Christian series.

In part one, I explored why I came to doubt claims of the miraculous, thereby undermining my core Christian convictions. In part two, I explain why I came to doubt the veracity of inner experiences of God. In part three, I describe how my fear of a godless universe kept me from accepting nontheism, and how I came to understand that my fear of such a universe was no argument against it.

I could cover quite a bit more: why I came to doubt the historical claims of Christianity, for example, or why I no longer believe the Christ story is unique. I could also tell of how my near conversion to Roman Catholicism permanently hobbled my faith. Perhaps I will, at some point, tell those stories.

But, for now, I will bring this series to a close. I want to circle back to where I started, and the podcast conversation that launched this series.

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Why I am Not a Christian: The Problem with Fearing Godlessness

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This is the third installment in my Why I am Not a Christian series. I invite you to read the other articles, but they are not necessary to follow what I will argue in this post.

One of the things that kept me from accepting my disbelief for so long was a fear of what the universe would be like without God. As Soren Kierkegaard wrote in Fear and Trembling:

“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?”

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Sacred Tension: The Identity Trap | Yascha Mounk

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In this episode of Sacred Tension, I’m joined by Yascha Mounk to discuss his new book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. We discuss why the progressive fixation on identity categories undermines the goals of progressive movements, my own experience as a gay man, the dangers of binary political thinking, and much more.

Yascha Mounk is an expert on the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism. The author of five books that have been translated into over ten languages, he is a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Moynihan Public Scholar at City College. He is the Founder of Persuasion, the host of “The Good Fight” podcast and serves as a publisher (Herausgeber) of Die Zeit.

Read The Identity Trap.

I love hearing back from my audience. Did you agree with us in this conversation? Disagree? Let us know in the comments below. If your comment is excellent, I might feature it in an upcoming post.

Why I Am Not a Christian: The Problem With Experiencing God

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This post is a continuation of my series on why I am no longer a Christian. In my last post, I explored how I came to doubt the core miraculous and supernatural claims of Christianity. I invite you to read that post, but it isn’t required to follow what I’m arguing for here.

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Why I am Not A Christian: The Problem of Miracles

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In a recent podcast with my Christian sister, she pressed me on the reasons why I don’t believe. I always struggle with answering this question because the reasons are so complicated that I’m never prepared to give a succinct answer.

Instead, I gave a more meta answer: doubt is something that happened to me. I can’t say what it was that made me the skeptic, and why my skepticism was so relentless when others in my life were content to just believe. That is a mystery of temperament. To this day, I continue to believe that, ultimately, faith and lack of faith are not conscious choices, but forces beyond our control that emerge from the depths beneath conscious cognition.

But the questions keep coming, and they probably won’t stop. Prompted by my sister’s question, I decided to sit down and write out my post hoc reasons and the story I tell myself about why I lost my Christian faith. The document started to run long, though, and this is just one portion. If readers enjoy this essay, I might release the other segments.

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Sacred Tension: The Buddha and the Bard | Lauren Shufran

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In this episode of Sacred Tension, I’m joined by Buddhist and Shakespeare scholar Lauren Shufran to discuss their book The Buddha and the Bard. We discuss the similarities between Buddhist and Shakespearian wisdom, how reading Shakespeare is a mindfulness practice, how to explore beginner’s mind, and much more.

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