**Rusty Reno on Christian Nationalism, the Empire of Rights & Why Nations Matter #121 — Transcript & Summary | SozAI**
Source: https://sozai.app/transcript/rusty-reno-christian-nationalism-empire-rights-nations-matter/

Rusty Reno discusses Christian nationalism, the meaning of nations, and why globalism and transhumanism threaten them, drawing on Augustine's definition of a people.

## Key Takeaways

- Nationalism, not religion alone, is the core of the Christian nationalism debate; every society has some ideological nationalism.
- Nations are valued for their existence and the loves that bind people, not merely for economic utility.
- Globalization and universal human rights projects may have weakened ordinary citizens' bonds to their own nations.
- Without metaphysical anchors, politics expands to remake all of human life, making power the central concern.
- Preserving a nation's distinctive identity is a legitimate first duty of the sovereign.

## What the video covers

- Rusty Reno, editor of First Things, joins host Shawn Whatley to discuss the book 'Five Views on Christian Nationalism'.
- Reno argues that nationalism matters more than the word 'Christian': anyone who treats a single master truth (liberalism, Hinduism) as the basis of civic life is effectively a nationalist of that kind.
- He defines nationalism as prioritizing the common good of a nation's own citizens, partly as a reaction against post-Cold War globalism and the human rights and rules-based order.
- Reno contends that globalization has disenfranchised ordinary Americans, and that elites like himself have diverging interests from the average citizen.
- He examines Augustine's definition of a people as rational beings bound by shared loves, arguing that nations are not mere aggregations of utility.
- Using Canada as an example, he argues a nation is valuable simply for existing, not because of a calculable utility function.
- Reno warns that a multicultural or universal ideal can become a utopian project that breaks from historical roots in shared place, language, and religion.
- He critiques the view that everything can be remade, which makes politics all-consuming, and points to transhumanism as the extreme version of this.
- The discussion touches on the risk of immanentizing the eschaton (Voegelin) and of the state claiming moral authority beyond prudential judgment.
- Reno suggests that in a settled world with metaphysical anchors, politics is constrained to prudential questions, while in a fluid world it becomes a totalizing struggle for power.

## Chapters

1. 00:00 The Sovereign's Duty and Why Nations Matter
2. 02:58 Introduction and Guest Background
3. 06:18 Defining Christian Nationalism and Nationalism Itself
4. 09:06 Augustine on What Makes a People
5. 13:00 Multiculturalism, Universalism, and Historical Roots
6. 20:30 Human Rights, Globalism, and the Dangers of Nationalism
7. 30:00 Internal Threats and Politics Without Metaphysical Anchors
8. 44:10 Pluralism, Atheists, and the Limits of Majority Rule

Answers

## Questions about this video

How does Rusty Reno define nationalism?

Reno defines nationalism as prioritizing the common good of the citizens of a nation in governance. In the current context, he sees it as a retreat from globalism and a compensatory emphasis on the national project.

Why does Reno say the debate is more about nationalism than Christianity?

He argues that anyone who treats a master truth such as liberalism or Hinduism as the foundation of civic life is also a nationalist. Thus the controversy turns more on nationalism than on the adjective Christian.

What does Augustine's definition of a people imply for Reno?

Reno uses Augustine's notion of a people as beings bound by shared loves to argue that nations are not merely aggregations of utility. A nation has value in its existence and shared identity, not just in economic outcomes.

## Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00

Speaker A

The first duty of the sovereign is to preserve the realm. And oh, why? Why shouldn't Canada be absorbed in the United States?

00:09

Speaker A

I mean, you'd probably be richer if you were absorbed in the United States. But a Canadian rightly says, well, but I but Canada is something worth preserving.

00:19

Speaker A

And you ask, well, wait a minute, like give me a justification for that. Like show me the utility function that will arise from preserving Canada. And I think then you begin to say, well, you're just missing the point.

00:31

Speaker A

It's that, you know, I love my country. Uh my country is valuable simply for being what it is, for existing.

00:40

Speaker A

If you're a liberal, if you think liberalism is the master truth for civic life, then you're a liberal nationalist. Or if you're Hindu, then you're a Hindu nationalist. So part of the controversy really turns more on nationalism than it turns on the word

00:58

Speaker A

Christian. If everything is available to be remade, then politics becomes all important because you you have to grab, you have to seize the levers of power to remake things in a better image. And the transhumanist would be the most extreme

01:17

Speaker A

version of that that our our condition is is fundamentally flawed. Uh we need to recognize that the human the human person is an arbitrary thing um and that we can do to our humanity what we've done to the atom.

01:37

Speaker A

You know, we [music] can split it, we can finally release its inner energy. Uh and and and then so then yeah, politics becomes all important.

01:47

Speaker A

Concepts with Sean Watley. Welcome to Concepts. My name is Sean Watley. I'm delighted to have Professor Reno back with us. Rusty Reno is the current editor of First Things magazine.

01:58

Speaker A

He serves on the advisory board of the Edmund Foundation, and he taught theology at Creighton University for more than 20 years. He's the author of many successful books, and he's also an avid rock climber, so a pretty hardcore

02:10

Speaker A

adrenaline junkie. Welcome back, Rusty. Yes, and I I have such fond memories of many mountain climbing trips to the Canadian Rockies. So I'm I'm a great lover of of Canada. It's a beautiful outdoors and very challenging mountains, the Canadian Rockies.

02:28

Speaker A

Oh, wow. Well, that's not the only challenging thing in Canada for sure. So I also went ice climbing once in Northern Quebec, and that was a that was a great experience.

02:41

Speaker A

Yeah. Do you actually have an life insurance policy or does it you have to have a rider in there?

02:47

Speaker A

It's interesting that that doesn't seem to come up. I don't know. Maybe they just kind of factored that in. Maybe they think I'm so old that it's probably not relevant.

02:58

Speaker A

Yeah, that's right. You're so expert now, you don't have to worry about it. So so the reason we're chatting today is the publicist for this book, Five Views on Christian Nationalism, reached out to me, and I love this format of book.

03:11

Speaker A

It's written by five authors, Joe Rigney, Paul Miller, Albert Mohler, yourself, and Douglas Wilson, and you present a case and then you argue back and forth. And I said yes right away just because I knew I'd have the

03:25

Speaker A

opportunity to speak with you and I also get a free book, so you know, full disclosure.

03:30

Speaker A

However, I didn't realize how deep into the theological weeds this goes. So I need you, Professor Reno, to try to give us a working definition of what this is. I realize the book the whole book is a debate about the definition. Give us a

03:45

Speaker A

working definition and tell us why we should care about this in a secular and even post-Christian society.

03:52

Speaker A

That's a great question about a secular post-Christian society, but Christian nationalism is a it it it I mean has many uh dimensions.

04:03

Speaker A

Uh and the contributors to the volume all think that the Christian faith should inform our thoughts about how we should live together in a society, how should how we should govern um our society. Although there's disagreements about how the Christian um Christian truths

04:27

Speaker A

should shape society. But I think there's a it's kind of an unavoidable thing. And you could put it this way. You know, if you're a liberal, if you think liberalism is the master truth for civic life, then you're a liberal

04:44

Speaker A

nationalist. Or if you're Hindu, then you're a Hindu nationalist. So part of the controversy really turns more on nationalism than it turns on the word Christian.

04:56

Speaker A

Uh and and so I I would want to drill down into that. And I mean, nationalism as an ism means that the priority for governance is to promote the wheel of the common wheel. The to promote the good

05:16

Speaker A

um for the citizens of the nation. And that's how I understand nationalism as an ism. And maybe in our particular time, nationalism really means a retreat from globalism.

05:32

Speaker A

So we've been through it since the end of the Cold War, a period of time to build a global order, globalized economy, um the human rights project, and the American-led rules-based international order.

05:48

Speaker A

And I'm in a I'm among those who think that that project has not worked out well for ordinary Americans.

05:58

Speaker A

Uh they've been disenfranchised in the global economy. And we're in a perilous position where beneficiaries of globalization, people like me, wind up, our interests start diverging from the interests of sort of the ordinary man in the street.

06:18

Speaker A

And so nationalism in that context is a kind of compensatory emphasis on the national project after a long generation of taking that for granted and leaning into the global project.

06:34

Speaker A

Yeah. So brilliant introduction and I wanted to jump into your chapter, page 231. You pretty much open your section. It's on the second page with a definition from Saint Augustine on what is a nation.

06:49

Speaker A

And this is from City of God book 19 section chapter 24 quote, a people is a multitude of rational beings joined together by common agreement on the objects of their love end quote. And I thought I don't recognize that quote.

07:07

Speaker A

So I ran and got my copy, my abridged copy of City of God. And I double checked you and I thought you're you're wrong. Rusty Reno is wrong. He he he he mis he he mistranslated this.

07:22

Speaker A

And and of course you're not wrong. You are right. But my translation says it's a multitude of reasonable beings voluntary as voluntarily associated in the pursuit of common interests.

07:35

Speaker A

And yet they they also put the Latin at the bottom and and the Latin is diligent. I'm not saying it right, which is he loves. And so it is loves. And I've checked other people. And so maybe I have a bad translation. This is Vernon

07:48

Speaker A

Burks. I maybe you don't want to criticize other authors, but I mean, I think it that is an attempt to put Saint Augustine's insight into contemporary terms. We tend to think of we tend to think of uh our unity as

08:04

Speaker A

ordered around um shared interests, you know. We all have a shared interest in you know, being a little more wealthy.

08:13

Speaker A

And so, GDP growth becomes a a national objective. Or we want to have a society that's equitably distributing uh the benefits of modern industrial or in our case post-industrial society. So we support something like a universal healthcare or something like

08:33

Speaker A

that. But that is too narrow of a account of what binds together uh individuals and makes them into a people. And uh the our loves are to ordered toward things that are not themselves aggregations of utility.

08:57

Speaker A

Uh so if you're a Canadian, you you uh there the the country has a history.

09:05

Speaker A

It it has a it has a common shared project. I think that one of the qualities of contemporary Canada is to be a multicultural society.

09:18

Speaker A

Canadians are very proud of and they hold that up as an ideal. Justin Trudeau was very explicit about that.

09:25

Speaker A

And that's not a utility function. That's a kind of vision uh I I would submit it's a kind of utopian vision of a new way of being a people.

09:39

Speaker A

You know, historically people it is strongly rooted in common history, um shared place, uh shared language, and in many respects shared religion. And the multicultural ideal is we can actually break away from that parochialism and embrace something that is universal in

09:58

Speaker A

character. And and you know, I I mean as a as I've given my account of nationalism uh I think that that that won't work very well.

10:10

Speaker A

But be that as it may, it is a project. Uh, it is an ambition. It's a shared goal.

10:17

Speaker A

And yeah, and insofar as it is shared, it's functions as a kind of glue that um that holds together a place like Canada. United States is different. Um, we also have elements of that project.

10:34

Speaker A

Uh, but in the United States our universal novus ordo seclorum, a new order for the ages, the empire of liberty. So in a way, the United States can fuse a very robust patriotism to this universalistic goal. Uh, I I always warn my American

10:56

Speaker A

friends that we're kind of unique globally in our ability to both be flag-waving uh patriots and at the same time embrace all these universal ideals.

11:07

Speaker A

So we're going to make the whole world America. And that's not something that uh that's not something that other nations can um fantasize about quite as easily as we Americans can.

11:24

Speaker A

Yeah. Uh, and you know, Paul Miller in his contribution to the volume, I in my response to him, I accuse him of being more of a nationalist than I am in the sense that he thinks that our liberal

11:36

Speaker A

democratic order is ordained by God as the highest possible form of civic life. And so really we're kind of we have a mandate from heaven to make the whole world American.

11:51

Speaker A

Yeah, liberal universalism. Yes. Yeah, it's a paradox, right? But it's it's it's I've witnessed it throughout my life, this interesting fusion of what I would consider a kind of parochial American attitude that our Constitution is really the only reasonable way to organize a

12:11

Speaker A

society. And then off they go, trying to convert the whole world to our way of doing things.

12:19

Speaker A

Beautiful. So this is you on page 246 in a section where you're discussing the empire of rights and the empire of commerce, which we'll get you to comment on. But this is you, quote, United States was volunteered to pilot

12:33

Speaker A

the post-national future. This role was more explicitly embraced in Canada. Borders were relaxed. Everyone was to be included, which means that those most deeply imbued with the uniquely American character must be pushed to the margins. Even notions of

12:50

Speaker A

Western civilization had to be dismantled and dismissed. It was a paradoxical idea. America would realize its vocation appointed by history by transcending mere nationhood and inaugurating universal humanity, end quote. So that's kind of what you were just commenting on.

13:10

Speaker A

I mean, you know, the human rights project, I mean, I I support human rights, you know, a kind of what I would think the core project of the United Nations Charter on Human Rights, but it it in the

13:27

Speaker A

last ever since the end of the Cold War, it got expanded to all kinds of things.

13:32

Speaker A

And and so, you know, we had American-funded LGBT activists in Uganda and we had State Department people funding pilot programs in Pakistan for encouraging, you know, supporting transgender transitioning and things like that. And this was all cast as part

13:52

Speaker A

of a part of the human rights project. And so you the human rights really winds up describing progressive Western sentiments about any number of different things. And what the bad effect is is that it it runs a risk of

14:11

Speaker A

what I what my friend Marian Glennon calls human rights inflation, which can debase the currency, so to speak, and discredit the the human rights project, which is which is important that there are these core um elements of human dignity that need to

14:28

Speaker A

be protected. Did she write Rights Talk? Is that her book? Yes, that's her book, yes.

14:32

Speaker A

Right, right. Yeah. So I saw she saw this early on um and was worried about it, yes.

14:39

Speaker A

Yeah. So I I I just keep dilating though on the the you use the term and you capitalize Empire of Rights, capital E and then capital R, and you also juxtapose that with an Empire of Commerce. And it's a it's a helpful

14:54

Speaker A

concept, heuristic, or a model to be thinking about this cuz this isn't simply an idea that, oh, it's a good idea. It's actually there's an imperialist flavor to it. At least that's what I was reading into what you

15:07

Speaker A

were saying. So dilate some more on why did you use the word Empire and you put a capital E, Empire of Rights, Empire of Commerce. Go ahead.

15:15

Speaker A

It's a global project. Uh you know, the um again, the end of the Cold War, you know, the Soviets said as they were folding up their their own their own Russian Empire uh that we would regret it when they're gone. Uh

15:33

Speaker A

they functioned as a bit of a restraint on the the the rampant impulse towards universalism in in the United States and and in the West uh I think generally. I think we we are the West has um a fruitful has had

15:53

Speaker A

I think throughout you know, it's a part of our inheritance from Athens and Jerusalem, which is uh a tension between a kind of concentrating particular you know, legacy and history combined with this universal um ambition.

16:12

Speaker A

Uh so and they can be in fruitful tension uh but when one becomes unbalanced and when we become unbalanced unbalanced in one direction or another, it can lead to unhappy outcomes.

16:27

Speaker A

I mean, you could argue that you know, the disasters of World War I through World War II, which I've written about in my book Return of the Strong Gods, that that reflected an unbalanced nationalism, you know, the kind of blood and soil

16:45

Speaker A

way of thinking to the exclusion of the universal character of our inheritance as as as as inherent inherit our inheritance of Western culture.

16:57

Speaker A

But you know, we kind of overcompensated in the opposite direction. And so here we have this imperial project of subduing the entire world according to our conception of of what are the proper rights.

17:13

Speaker A

Yeah. Like for instance, you know, most Americans we have separation of church and state in the United States and which is really kind of unique globally.

17:25

Speaker A

And not completely Canada also. But you know, to this day there are established churches in in Europe, to say nothing of other parts of the world. And so it's a little bit naive for us in this in trying to

17:44

Speaker A

build this empire of rights. It's been naive of us to think that our way is simply human nature finally realizing itself.

17:56

Speaker A

And then the Empire of Commerce was that's easier to see. That was built out in the 1990s standing up the WTO, World Trade Organization, developing the frameworks for global finance, having supply chains you know, straddle the the globe.

18:19

Speaker A

And so we we see that also um you know American style advertising the tech giants like Google you know they stand to stride the entire globe.

18:34

Speaker A

So you can see the the empire of commerce and as I as as I've observed in the last decade or so there's been a kind of growing awareness that uh that empire hasn't worked it works for some but not for all.

18:51

Speaker A

Um and you know the populism that we see in Europe and in the United States is is is a is a symptom of this of a dissatisfaction with the empire of commerce that's kind of more obvious.

19:07

Speaker A

So you end that section on those two empires by a beautiful paragraph. I won't read the whole thing. It's a bit long for for this but on the universal and homogeneous state but picking it up halfway through that paragraph

19:21

Speaker A

you say that um these were sobering words. I thought well are you being rhetorical or just being hyperbole hyperbolic but I'll read it here. This this is Reno quote but on this continent as well the United States can cease to be a nation in the

19:38

Speaker A

21st century. It will happen not because of conquest or colonization but under the auspices of the already well advanced empires of rights and commerce which express our own very American desire to transcend human limits. The seeds of destruction

19:56

Speaker A

are within our own heritage a hyper moralistic perfect equality post religious form of progressive puritanism combined with America's entrepreneurial genius unleashed on a global scale and quote.

20:13

Speaker A

Yeah I yeah our our diseases in the West are um the diseases they come within, not from without.

20:26

Speaker A

I don't dispute that Muslim immigration to Europe especially uh represents a serious um challenge to the future of those societies.

20:36

Speaker A

But you have to recognize that the the dream of a multicultural society was born in the West.

20:48

Speaker A

The Chinese have no such illusions. Uh, this is not a project that's being undertaken in Saudi Arabia.

20:55

Speaker A

Uh, the Saudi Arabians have a very large percent of people in their own country that are not born there. They're Filipinos that work in uh cleaning rooms in their luxury hotels and so they have people from the subcontinent of India,

21:13

Speaker A

but they don't accord them citizenship. And and they don't they don't have any pathway to citizenship.

21:20

Speaker A

And and so so we look at we look at our problems and I don't want to be a doomerist about it uh or even really to call call into question uh the idealistic sentiments.

21:36

Speaker A

Uh, I just want to highlight that the maybe I put it more provocatively, an anti-Western sentiment is a Western sentiment.

21:48

Speaker A

It is not you know, it's our own effort to transcend ourselves to achieve a universal form. I mean, I don't want to be the boring former professor, but somebody like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, when he uh theorizes about the state of nature,

22:07

Speaker A

he wants to get back to you know, the universal form of humanity which has to be honored in the social form itself uh and criticizes the existing social forms in of his own day as not living up to the true nature of who we are as

22:26

Speaker A

human, universal nature as human beings. And so that that that kind of tradition that that really takes hold in the modern era, instead of converting people, you know, we sent missionaries to the far reaches of the globe. The West did after

22:45

Speaker A

the discovery of the New World. And but that was a that was a kind of making the whole world Christian.

22:52

Speaker A

And it kind of got turned on its head to make the West universal rather than the whole world Christian.

22:59

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. And and that's the that's the impetus behind the Empire of Rights. You know, we want to we we have this internal project that we want to make global.

23:10

Speaker A

Yeah. Internal project is, you know, ordering every aspect of our societies in accord with the universal principles.

23:21

Speaker A

Yeah. As opposed to like a like one of the one of the thinkers that very much influenced me as a young young man in my 20s was George Parkin Grant.

23:34

Speaker A

And his beautiful book, English-Speaking Justice that our legal inheritance is rooted in the particularity of the English common law.

23:47

Speaker A

And it's more than that. It's evolved and has been supplemented by other other influences and sources. But he he is, you know, I think quite brilliantly shows that the things that we cherish most have their have their roots in the particularity of our

24:05

Speaker A

history. And so we're back to that point I made. We have to achieve the right balance between our rootedness and our perennial desire for transcendence.

24:19

Speaker A

Thank you. Thank you for the shout out for Grant, too. I'm a I'm a huge fan of George Grant. He's way more of a Tory than I am. So but that's not really the topic of our of our conversation. But

24:30

Speaker A

this is that don't you think the Toryism he was a red Tory, wasn't he?

24:34

Speaker A

Well, that was that was a the smear word applied to him. He he denied it.

24:39

Speaker A

Okay, fair enough. But uh the Toryism fits with this notion that I think Toryism is a it's a it's a recognition that um honoring and perpetuating a particular inheritance is the primary task of leadership.

24:59

Speaker A

Yes. So I I love him on his philosophical points. So his his comments about technocracy and and and technology and managerialism. I differ a bit on his deference to the state. I think he's a little too bullish on on

25:14

Speaker A

the state, particularly the production instantiation of the state. Um and I again, we're splitting hairs between what I think is a real conservative and a Tory, but but this is my favorite line of yours in the whole book. And so get

25:28

Speaker A

ready for this. This is And it's it's not doom and gloomer, but it's to do with this particularity. And you mentioned illusion. Other countries don't have this illusion.

25:36

Speaker A

And I was so jealous when I read this. So the sentence begins. You say the upshot of this grand project and you're you're speaking about disenchantment. It's in a section on disenchantment. Page 135 quote, the upshot of this grand project, and this

25:52

Speaker A

is my favorite part right here, of confecting a society without a majority, a culture without a center, a vision of reality without truth has been a soul-dissolving nihilism that now operates like a vacuum underneath American society end quote. So maybe I'm

26:13

Speaker A

just attracted when you get a little doomerish, so I apologize. It's not all that way, but I love those phrases you say confecting. Just just that that I guess that's a gerund form of the verb.

26:25

Speaker A

Confecting a society without a majority, a culture without a center, and a vision of reality without truth.

26:34

Speaker A

Isn't that what That's the essence of multiculturalism. You know, diversity is a word that it it just attained such high prestige in my lifetime. And I came to see that diversity is something that you create.

26:50

Speaker A

In other words, you seek it and you encourage it and if it if peace or people are recalcitrant and refuse to embrace it, you you engage in all kinds of methods of social engineering to ensure it.

27:07

Speaker A

Uh and so, you know, the hiring policies of the University of Toronto were explicitly or organized or ordered towards creating diversity and in in faculty.

27:25

Speaker A

So, it was a project to confect. Uh it it's a it's I'm pulling from uh the verb used to describe what the priest does in the mass. Um you know, it's a uh you know, confecting of the presence of of Christ on the altar. Um

27:48

Speaker A

and so there I mean I do deliberately because there was a kind of sacred quality to the quest for diversity. And so I'm back to my point. That's not a utility function. That That's this it's a kind of ambition uh

28:02

Speaker A

to become a certain kind of people. It's a very paradoxical kind of people. You know, we're going to become a kind of people that doesn't rest in any unified peoplehood.

28:13

Speaker A

Or maybe we're going to be united in our commitment to diversity or united in our commitment to tolerance or what have you.

28:20

Speaker A

Uh and which it can be done to a to a certain extent. Um you know, uh the true believers in the multicultural project feel a sense of common purpose. They work shoulder to shoulder to to achieve the goal. They're

28:33

Speaker A

willing to make sacrifices in order to attain that goal. Uh it's just that I I look at it and say, yeah, but the problem is here, the project dissolves the natural forms of solidarity.

28:47

Speaker A

And what it really does is it atomizes um society and makes individuals increasingly remote from each other and makes us more easily uh subdued by uh the empire of commerce and less likely to be able to resist the kind of

29:10

Speaker A

therapeutic managerial ethos of of our governments. That's the point at which I think Grant that's one reason he was in favor of the state. He said he thought the state was the people acting in common purpose and that the state

29:27

Speaker A

could therefore be a counterweight to the technocratic uh um uh ethos that would he feared would would wind up treating us all as kind of interchangeable patients you know that needed to be properly uh managed and you know subjected to all

29:48

Speaker A

kinds of ideologies from our childhood. Brilliant. So I'm I'm I'm thinking I've been thinking about your book that this book and then your chapter and our discussion. Well in parallel I've just part way through a chapter by John von

30:02

Speaker A

Hiking. He's written uh he's at the Arizona State now. He was at University of Lethbridge.

30:08

Speaker A

Uh he was chair of the department there of political philosophy or political theory. But in his chapter and he's published on August Augustine and political thought and in his chapter in a recent book that's just come out he's he's talking

30:22

Speaker A

about why or why what's the source of this tension that we have when we talk about Christian nationalism? He doesn't use those words but just Christianity in general with the state. And when you use the word confecting, he delves into the 17th

30:40

Speaker A

century development of this notion of private vices leading to public benefit and how the proto-liberals A miracle. A miracle.

30:50

Speaker A

Yes. Kind of like, you know, of the sacraments, you know? Yes. Miraculously, you know, Bernard de Mandeville, the Fable of the Bees, and one of the great hopes of T. S. Eliot in one of his plays talks about

31:09

Speaker A

the desire for justice without virtue. Right. So how can we have a just and and prosperous society without the moral pressure of having to combat vice and and and and praise virtue?

31:25

Speaker A

Right. And And so so von Hayek is saying, well, actually we're we're twisting Augustine's original thought about the in the two cities. So you mentioned the, you know, City of God, City of Man, and he said actually there's an I forget the

31:39

Speaker A

exact word and you you use the Latin term for it, but there's an intermingling. You can't separate these things distinctly. We're We're messy and blended together. I think of Josh Mitchell referring to the wheat and the tares. He says, you know, the world now

31:54

Speaker A

is So that's a parable from Matthew. I forget the chapter. Is it 14 or where the world is is a blend, including the church itself. It's a blend.

32:05

Speaker A

And we can't achieve this artificial separation or purity. The other book I'm reading is by Letwin, Shirley Robin Letwin's on The Pursuit of Certainty.

32:15

Speaker A

And And how Hume and and Webb and these major thinkers were actually reacting to this rationalist morality. And so I I feel like flowing through I I feel it I I sense That's the right word. I sense in your writing a response to this You

32:33

Speaker A

use the word puritanism and a moral rationalism that we can confect a society beyond the need for any kind of uh um reference to Christian virtues. I better stop. Looks like you're going to say something. Go ahead.

32:47

Speaker A

No, I I think that that does characterize a lot of my my thinking. Uh uh it's the modern, you know, unable to believe in the kingdom of heaven, um we try to create the heavenly city here below uh

33:09

Speaker A

cuz there's that perennial human desire for transcendence. And I think a lot of progressive politics, I mean, I've been influenced by Eric Voegelin, this notion of immanentizing the eschaton, as he said.

33:22

Speaker A

That is to say, um rather than this being God's work to be done in God's time, we assume responsibility for for perfecting the human race or perfecting um society.

33:42

Speaker A

And so a an a fitting and natural desire for justice gets And and I think that that leads to the destruction of a lot of the, you know, imperfect but real um uh goods that we enjoy in society.

34:03

Speaker A

I mean, Michael Oakeshott was always very good at at emphasizing the fact that we should be resting in the good that we that we can attain rather than pining for the goods that are are remote. They may look

34:19

Speaker A

pure, but they're not available to us. They're in the future. And the future doesn't exist.

34:24

Speaker A

Uh not yet. And so you mentioned Voegelin. I I hope I'm not cutting you off here, but that that he's one of his or my favorite term that he uses is metaxy, and this this sense of being between or the already

34:39

Speaker A

not yet. And it seems to be related to the wheat and the tares and the the blending of the two of of on hiking again. John talks about you know you have the city of God, city of man, but he said then

34:52

Speaker A

you also have the Commonwealth as its own ontological status. And so this is the thing that is valuable and worth um building fostering supporting showing deference to. And it's a thing that's distinct from the ontological status of the city of man and the city of God and

35:12

Speaker A

it only exists because of the blending of the two. So I better stop there.

35:15

Speaker A

Maybe you disagree with that, but go ahead. Uh it uh one effect there there's a desire to get to sort of the sort of the real things, you know, interests or what have you, economic matters, but uh I I agree with him. This the the

35:37

Speaker A

you know our countries have they are persons um in a sense they're corporate realities that have ontological weight.

35:48

Speaker A

And we justly cherish them even as we can criticize aspects of them uh uh but we we justly cherish them.

35:57

Speaker A

It's like marriage you know it it's um the it's a one flesh union. So marriage creates a new a new reality. It's not just me and my wife as individuals. There's a third thing that uh that emerges out of

36:15

Speaker A

marriage which is the marriage. And similarly with respect to uh the Commonwealth uh it's uh I mean the first duty of the sovereign is to preserve the realm.

36:27

Speaker A

And well why? What if preserving the realm? What if what if uh we're effective altruist and we can kind of calculate that everybody would be better off if the United States ceased to exist?

36:41

Speaker A

You know it's something like that. uh Or you know like why why shouldn't Canada be absorbed in the United States?

36:48

Speaker A

I mean, you'd probably be richer if you were absorbed in the United States, but a Canadian rightly says, well, but I but Canada is something worth preserving.

36:58

Speaker A

And you ask, well, wait a minute. Like give me a justification for that. Like show me the utility function that will arise from preserving Canada. And I think then you begin to say, well, you're just missing the point.

37:10

Speaker A

It's a, you know, I love my country. Uh, my country is valuable simply for being what it is, for existing.

37:19

Speaker A

And and this is true for you know, it could be there are things that come and come and go uh, and they don't have the same kind of central role in God's providential plan as do nations. But you know, your high

37:36

Speaker A

school sports team or you have a there's an awareness when people come together to pursue a common task, they create something that's intrinsically valuable.

37:46

Speaker A

Uh, and even if it only lasts for the period of time when you're pursuing those goals, you look back on it and you cherish you cherish the camaraderie, you cherish the common sense of purpose and these are very natural human impulses.

38:03

Speaker A

And you know, one of my concerns about the Empire of Rights and the Empire of Commerce is neither of those empires have any respect for those entities.

38:11

Speaker A

Uh, it it there's a place in the ontology of rights for the right of the country or the the right of uh, British Columbia or Alberta or the right like the right of Quebec. And who cares whether the French language survives? I

38:29

Speaker A

mean, the Empire of Rights couldn't care less and the Empire of Commerce couldn't care less, but real people do care.

38:35

Speaker A

Yeah. Uh, you know, and I think that's a bulwark that that kind of passion which can become disordered and it can become destructive even.

38:46

Speaker A

Uh, but it is the strongest bulwark against uh, what I described as kojevian, universal, and homogeneous state.

38:56

Speaker A

Uh, we're not going to be protected from governments kind of subduing us all under the bureaucratic managerial ethos on the basis of appealing to a charter of of rights.

39:10

Speaker A

The most effective bulwark is uh, the power of our loves for other things. Yeah. Yeah.

39:16

Speaker A

Um, it causes people to stand up and say, no, I I uh, you you can't take that away from me.

39:23

Speaker A

Yeah, everyone's a conservative on what they love. I that maximizing utility function that that is such an important phrase for us to continue remembering.

39:32

Speaker A

Uh, this is my second favorite line of Rusty Reno in this book. So I've been dying to read this. It's actually It's actually more than one sentence.

39:40

Speaker A

It's a couple sentences, but this is Reno's final rejoinder. And so this is you. Quote.

39:48

Speaker A

The important things of life are both solid and elusive. Take ourselves, for instance. I am often frustrated by the immobile density of my personality. So stubborn in bad habits, so resistant to change for the better.

40:02

Speaker A

And yet, I'm often at a loss to know what I think or even feel.

40:06

Speaker A

The same holds for something so fundamental as marriage, family, children, or nation. Stubbornly real and yet difficult to pin down with scientific exactitude. End quote. So that speaks to your ontological status that you were just talking about.

40:22

Speaker A

Beautiful paragraph, by the way, though. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we uh, we we tend to think the only real things are the ones that we can quantify or um, reduced to some sort of analytic definition.

40:39

Speaker A

But that's not the case. The most important things are uh, they're very real. We feel them.

40:45

Speaker A

Uh, often regret their recalcitrant reality. Uh, but there they are. And you know, the right thinking about civic life or personal life more broadly is to is to honor those things and not to dismiss them or pretend that it don't

41:07

Speaker A

exist. Yeah. So we've spent about 40 minutes being well probably almost 40 minutes being very positive about especially your chapter. I loved it and and I loved other things that people said too, but I I wrote a book review once and one of

41:23

Speaker A

the people that I was trying to get it published with said, well, you weren't very critical.

41:28

Speaker A

So [laughter] so we we have to try to be a little bit critical here. And so I'll I'll critique myself, but I'll also try to share some of the the problems I had with with the book, but again in a very

41:40

Speaker A

gentle way. I won't don't want to be un-Canadian about it here. But on page 288, so this is still you.

41:51

Speaker A

So it took me almost 300 pages to realize this and this speaks to my own ignorance.

41:56

Speaker A

I was unfamiliar with Canon Press. I didn't know who Doug Wilson was, but this is Rusty Reno, you say.

42:05

Speaker A

However, it so quote, however we may conceive of God's call for us as American citizens, whether it's Doug Wilson's post-bill reconquest under the banner of Christ or Paul Miller's restoration of an older liberal settlement, our task is daunting. And it

42:23

Speaker A

the part that hit me was Doug Wilson's post-mill reconquest and it finally clicked. I was like, oh, so that's why it's this rigid five-point Calvinism. So for the listeners now who aren't into Christian theology, you can this this is

42:39

Speaker A

where we're going to go way down the rabbit hole. But for the next 20 minutes, Professor Reno, just maybe I'll tip my cards.

42:48

Speaker A

I sense a sense of I I I detect a sense of fairly rigid rationalist kind of approach to things. Although Mr. Wilson says well we we we it's organic. We can't have plans and I'm scribbling in the in the margin. Yeah, right buddy.

43:06

Speaker A

You're the most rigid five-point Calvinist I've ever seen. And so you you have no worry about your soteriology so you have to go hyper on your eschatology and use that as a way to conquer the world. So that's me tipping my cards.

43:19

Speaker A

Talk me off the ledge professor. I I worry about it. Go ahead. He's a theocratic libertarian. It's a very wonderful paradox. So yeah Doug Doug will talk a kind of hard line in terms of the lordship of Christ.

43:39

Speaker A

But it turns out that he wants the lordship of Christ to to to be complete all under the sign of choice.

43:49

Speaker A

Right. Oh that makes sense. it turns out to be really is this I mean what I think yeah I mean gosh if if there's a third great awakening and a super majority of Americans wind up becoming very devout.

44:07

Speaker A

Of course you know if they're Protestants they'll be fighting with each with each other all the time. But if they become super devout I would be we would have a very different political order as a consequence. It wouldn't mean getting

44:19

Speaker A

rid of the Constitution of the United States. But the kinds of laws that we would pass would be would be they would be more they would be more to use the technical term integralist. That is to say there

44:32

Speaker A

would be a more a more direct application of Christian moral principles to the governing of people's behavior in society.

44:42

Speaker A

You know that would be a natural outcome of a democratic system where the super majority of people have deep convictions about what constitutes right and wrong and the moral truth of the matter.

44:53

Speaker A

And and uh you know and Doug great. He wants to get there. Um but he wants to get there by getting out onto the street corners and evangelizing people and convincing them, bringing them to Christ and not gaining

45:07

Speaker A

control of the levers of power in Washington DC and somehow imposing it on them from on high.

45:15

Speaker A

So you know like welcome to America. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. And then other friends of mine they're all they have they get all in a tizzy uh you know and I say look the most powerful voting block of the religious

45:30

Speaker A

right are Baptists. They invented separation of church and state. And in fact Al Mohler uh was criticized by the Southern Baptist Convention for uh endorsing um laws against blasphemy because it violates the core Baptist principle of separation of church and

45:53

Speaker A

state. So you can see that uh that that a lot of secularists could read this kind of book and just be horrified like oh my god these people want a ocracy.

46:05

Speaker A

And to a certain extent the word the ocracy is you know an open ended concept. I mean we do want I think it's not it's kind of hard to see how you could be a believer and not want

46:20

Speaker A

uh want God's law to to govern. But the devil's in the details. How? How does God's law? What are the mechanisms of of governance by which God's law will rule?

46:37

Speaker A

Um and you know and and uh what I found particularly helpful in this volume was that they forced me and all the rest of the contributors to answer very specific questions about a hypothetical republic.

46:53

Speaker A

Yeah you know many decades from now and in this hypothetical Republic, a super majority are evangelical Christians.

47:00

Speaker A

And I think a great deal of political life should be governed by prudence. And and you know, some things are doable and perhaps even wise in a society that is dominated by you know, ardent Christians and would be very imprudent and unwise

47:23

Speaker A

in our highly secularized societies in 2026. Yeah. I was influenced by Althusius and Althusius is a he's a Calvinist, not maybe not strictly Calvinist, but reformed thinker who was actually a magistrate as well as a theologian and he has a section on what to do with

47:46

Speaker A

heretics. And you know, first of all, people who don't believe five point Calvinism, what do you do with them? Other Protestants.

47:53

Speaker A

Or then what do you do with the Catholics? What do you do with the Jews?

47:55

Speaker A

What do you do with the atheists? And at every stage of the way, he is he recognizes that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

48:07

Speaker A

So what what would be the ideal is only going to make matters worse. And and that really drove home to me that every good governance beware of people who are too quick to apply principles without we're back to that rationalism

48:27

Speaker A

problem. And you know, because the art of governance is to is to you know, be able to guide you know, guide society in a way that actually gets you to a better place.

48:44

Speaker A

And if you set up the conditions where people are at each other's throats over this is the genius of liberalism after the wars of religion, which was to take down the temperature of civic life and to prevent people from fighting for

48:58

Speaker A

control of the of the secular sword in order to impose one or another religious orthodoxy on the entire nation.

49:06

Speaker A

And and you know in in that context, historical context, I hope I would have been on the side of the liberals.

49:15

Speaker A

Yeah. But we're we live in a very different kind of context today. And one reason I I'm not one reason I I'm happy to adopt the term Christian nationalism is that you know our societies are are as I said there's this kind of

49:35

Speaker A

soul eating nihilism at the root of our society. And you know it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have a little more god. I mean put the Ten Commandments in elementary schools for children to look at. I mean

49:51

Speaker A

is the great danger of facing our societies that we're at the cusp of theocracy?

49:59

Speaker A

Not at all. The great danger in our societies is that there's a kind of moral relativism, a cynicism, you know a kind of disorder, kind of disordered souls. I mean school shootings are not are are a symptom of a of a deep

50:17

Speaker A

spiritual sickness. And so putting the Ten Commandments in a classroom might let a young person say hey maybe there is objective moral truth.

50:26

Speaker A

Huh. And maybe there's even a law giver. And would that be such a bad thing?

50:34

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or even to make them We've we've experimented with the opposite and the results are not great.

50:41

Speaker A

No. Yeah. Or even we we could change course and say well what what about the older settlement? Can we can we restore? I'm in favor of overturning the Supreme Court cases on school prayer from the early 1960s.

51:00

Speaker A

I mean some of my theological friends say well, that's they would just be heretical deistic anodyne supreme being prayers. That's worse than what we have now.

51:09

Speaker A

And then I think you're misjudging the situation. I think just any sense that there's a transcendent truth for young people would be um a helpful antidote to the messaging that they're getting from social media, you know, across the board. Life is

51:25

Speaker A

life has no meaning other than get get get or the pleasure of the moment or what have you.

51:31

Speaker A

Yeah. I'm glad you brought Al Mohler in here too because he was very he could stick handle through these issues. You can see he's he's answered these questions a lot. But but back [clears throat] to Doug too, I'm glad

51:42

Speaker A

you mentioned a theocratic libertarian. I I now that you say it, I can see it in his writing because many of my comments on the on the margins, I'm looking at the bottom of page 215, I said he's

51:53

Speaker A

emphasizing agency. He's so over the top emphasizing will, agency, choice. And I'm thinking, wait a second, you're a five-point Calvinist. I thought the first point is total depravity. Oh, okay, now your will is redeemed, so it's perfect and you have perfect reason and

52:07

Speaker A

perfect So I I just felt that there was it was blending two things and it ended up being a a rationalist um a celebration of will and reason and as long as you reason it the way we're telling you to reason it, things will go

52:23

Speaker A

well. So I'm ranting and raving again. Is that an unfair accusation? I mean, I I found uh he he advances this notion of a theonomic um kind of analogical theonomy.

52:39

Speaker A

Uh and he gives the example of you know, parapets on your rooftops uh to prevent um people from falling off the roof to their death. And he sees that as a a general principle we should have a society that requires

52:54

Speaker A

you know, businesses We we already have a such a society where people have to take take prudent measures to prevent bad things from happening um that they can foresee. So we have guard rails on our on our streets,

53:09

Speaker A

uh on our highways, and uh we have laws of liability for corporations that um you know that if their products do harm to harm that they could foresee would happen, then they're liable for that.

53:25

Speaker A

So it's not as radical as it sounds. Um and maybe it's uh important for people to read that and to react to like, oh my goodness, this is this kind of hardcore Christian language.

53:36

Speaker A

Yeah. And realize that, well, maybe a lot of our society is latently already influenced by those Christian principles.

53:44

Speaker A

Yeah. Well, one one thing that I really agreed with him on is he said, okay, you say we're a creedal nation. Well, what's the consequences of not living up to that creed? Are we really a creedal nation? And go ahead. Looks like you're

53:57

Speaker A

going to say something. No, no, no. Go ahead. Yeah. So no, the the the whole notion that, well, if if that is the essence of what America is, we're just a creed, well, how do we deal with people who

54:08

Speaker A

trounce on that creed or go against that creed or don't abide by that creed? And And so I thought he he had a strong point there.

54:16

Speaker A

Well, I also point [clears throat] that out that the creedal nation people cannot be right because we don't deny we don't say, well, you know, you're you're a maybe you're a a certain kind of old school Marxist who rejects uh

54:30

Speaker A

um you know, the liberal creed. Well, we don't ex- we don't exile them. They're US citizens. They have all the rights of you. So that means that our citizenship is rooted in something deeper than just the creed.

54:42

Speaker A

Because people who reject the creed are still citizens. Right, right. Brilliant. Right. Yes, that is that beautiful. And And Al Mohler, I think I'm trying to bring the plane to ground and so we're going to end with a a quote from Al and then a

54:54

Speaker A

quote from you. So Mohler says this on page 219, quote, proceduralism and pluralism do not offer any corrective for the society is now at war with onto- ontological reality itself," end quote.

55:11

Speaker A

And and so I read in that that he's suggesting that we're not saying we need to make radical, rigid, you know, theocratic pronouncements, but we need something more than what we're doing now with this uh proceduralism and pluralism. Now that's

55:28

Speaker A

how I read it. And you've already said, well, you know, maybe just posting the Ten Commandments on the walls isn't such a bad thing. Is that how you read him?

55:37

Speaker A

No, I think that what he's observing is that uh we're back to St. Augustine's definition of a people united in shared loves, that the procedures are important and uh equitable treatment very important, but at the end of the

55:54

Speaker A

day we can't really be a nation or a people unless we grapple with what are metaphysical questions uh about I mean does truth even exist?

56:07

Speaker A

Is there such a thing as human nature? And is that nature does it have authority over well the laws we can that that we can pass?

56:17

Speaker A

You know, you whether it's has to do with transgenderism, which is a kind of obvious instance of that, uh but other aspects as well.

56:25

Speaker A

I mean and, you know, Canada has a uh assistance doctor assisted suicide and I mean that that's not a question of procedural.

56:37

Speaker A

That can't be we can't kind of we can't just say, well, if the majority wills it, votes for it, then it's okay.

56:45

Speaker A

I mean all of us recognize that there are certain things that are not okay just because the majority of people voted for it or just because the uh Supreme Court or whatever the Canadian equivalent um dictates it.

56:56

Speaker A

Yeah, we we all everybody I mean left, right, and center everybody in has a sense that, no, it wouldn't be okay just because the procedures are followed.

57:06

Speaker A

And that's what and you know, we there's always there's contestation around the edges throughout history as to these deep metaphysical truths, but we're in a time in the 21st century where we're we're we're undergoing uh the there's a

57:23

Speaker A

collision um a very profound kind of conflict over uh I think it's um it's a notion like everything has to be made open and plastic so that we can remake it uh in a new in a fundamentally new way

57:42

Speaker A

and I think that's a progressive um sentiment uh even though but it some progressives will see limits somewhere, but there's a general tendency things would be better if we could make everything more open and plastic and more available for re

57:57

Speaker A

re you know uh to to restructure everything at a deep level and a person like me says no there are these deep truths about what it means to be human and um and that and and thank goodness because

58:15

Speaker A

it it gives us a a place to stand a place to be uh it you know it it gives us it makes us who we are and that that's a blessing not a curse.

58:26

Speaker A

Yeah yeah well said. I've been saying that if if if modernity marks the era when we ruled metaphysical questions out of order, ours marks their return. So we're now asking these fundamental metaphysical questions again. What does it mean to be human? Why are we here?

58:44

Speaker A

How should we live together? Th- this is Reno again page 136 and I I this isn't my favorite I've already given you my two favorite sentences, but this this is right up there too. You say this quote in America and throughout the

58:58

Speaker A

West we are suffering from an idolatry of politics fueled by an inner worldly progressive messianism which is echoed by Miller.

59:08

Speaker A

So I like that con that that term you say we're suffering from an idolatry of politics fueled by an inner-worldly progressive messianism. Go ahead elaborate.

59:20

Speaker A

If everything is available to be remade then politics is uh becomes all important because you you have to grab you have to seize the levers of power to remake things in a better image. And the transhumanist would be the most extreme version of

59:40

Speaker A

that that our our condition is is is fundamentally flawed. Uh we need to recognize that the human the human person is um it's an arbitrary thing um and that we can do to our humanity what we've done to the atom.

60:02

Speaker A

You know, we can split it, we can finally release its inner energy uh and and and then so then yeah politics becomes all important.

60:12

Speaker A

Uh in a settled world uh that has these metaphysical anchors uh politics is constrained. It can only operate in the limited field of of what I would call these sort of prudential judgments about how to how to improve the circumstances

60:30

Speaker A

of our lives, not to transform them. Yeah. Yeah, I like it. So you're almost sounding a bit like there and separations. And maybe oh you're sounding pretty liberal there uh Professor but my last question I ask everybody and you can respond to it when

60:43

Speaker A

you answer this question too. Um what should I have asked you about? What keeps you awake at night when you're thinking about Christian nationalism? Go ahead.

60:52

Speaker A

Yeah, gosh. Uh you know, I don't uh I try to follow my own advice and think about things other than politics.

61:01

Speaker A

And so you know, I like to always have a novel at my bedside uh to be reading and uh you know, I like to you know, do some spiritual reading and um I don't I'm not on social media. So I

61:17

Speaker A

guess my counsel to to listeners is and we have a duty as citizens. We're at a time of of kind of deep contestation. Important issues are before us.

61:32

Speaker A

So I'm not saying retreat from the public realm, but never never let that that civic duty become kind of all consuming.

61:44

Speaker A

That you know have a glass of wine talk to some friends about Climb a climb a mountain.

61:52

Speaker A

Climb a mountain. Yeah. Yeah Professor Reno great opportunity to chat with you. [music] Five Views on Christian Nationalism published by Cannon Press.

62:03

Speaker A

Obviously [music] first things editor everybody should be reading that as well. You've written a number of books.

62:08

Speaker A

We've already talked about Return of the Strong Gods and a few others. Real pleasure having you today. Thanks [music] again.

62:14

Speaker A

Great to be with you. All right. Professor Reno has left the studio and as usual I really enjoyed that conversation. He has so much that he can talk about and I think we could we could probably just ask him one question and I'm sure he

62:31

Speaker A

could lecture for a full hour on the topic. The the thing that strikes me this is one of these so Christian Nationalism right now that's a new smear word. This is something we shouldn't be talking about. How how dare you even

62:44

Speaker A

talk about that topic? It's it's a bit like post liberalism in Canada. As soon as you talk about that oh you're going to lose followers. People aren't going to want to talk about that.

62:53

Speaker A

That's not a conservative way to approach ideas. I have to say it bluntly. We should be investigating and digging into everything and trying to find at least understand what the issues are. I'm so grateful that I read this book. It was way more

63:12

Speaker A

theological and deep into Christianity than I think most people would appreciate. Certainly if that's your background, Christian theology, you're going to love it.

63:22

Speaker A

But a lot of readers, uh general readers on politics, uh this is going to be more than you need, but we shouldn't be afraid of digging into the topic.

63:36

Speaker A

We should And this is what impresses me about Reno. He says He says, "No, yeah, this is a real topic. Let's talk about it." Uh maybe it's because he's not on social media. Maybe I spend too much time on

63:46

Speaker A

social media. But I really appreciate it. And And the other The other authors, too, I enjoyed them. Paul Miller is very He He attacks the other writers quite mercilessly. I guess he's more on the He appears to take the more center-left

64:03

Speaker A

point of view. He's a professor at Georgetown University. But I enjoyed all of them. And so if if this is your space, politics and theology, then you'll enjoy this book. It was a stretch for me a bit, but

64:17

Speaker A

I I In fact, I've gone out of my way to avoid eschatology as a topic of discussion. It just seems to lead to so many debates and fights and broken relationships.

64:29

Speaker A

So it was good, though, for me to be pushed to say, okay, well, maybe we need to read more about it. How do our thoughts about the end of history relate to our politics?

64:41

Speaker A

And we didn't get into as much detail on that as we could have. I just mentioned mentioned postmill once.

64:47

Speaker A

But that's a a major theme throughout the book. Once again, thanks so much for listening. If you've made it this far, hit like and subscribe. I'd really love to hear what you think about this.

64:57

Speaker A

And tell me what you want to see on on other shows, too. I have still quite a lineup but I always want to know what's of interest to you.

65:05

Speaker A

Talk to you soon.

Topics: Christian nationalism Rusty Reno nationalism Augustine City of God globalism multiculturalism transhumanism political theology First Things

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