Faith Angle

Can more faith—not less—heal our public life?

For a century, scholars argued that shrinking religion's public role would make politics calmer and more rational. In the last few decades, American religious participation has fallen faster than at almost any point in the nation's history, but our politics has only grown more polarized. What happened?

In this episode, we sit down with Matthew Kaemingk and Shadi Hamid, an evangelical and a Muslim, friends and collaborators across deep difference, to discuss their new book, which makes the case for religion as a constructive force in democracy.

Find their book Can Religion Save Democracy? here.

In this episode, two eminent philanthropy leaders, Daniel Stid of the American Enterprise Institute and David Nassar of the John Templeton Foundation, discuss how charitable giving in America has transformed over the past three decades.

Their wide-ranging and insightful conversation traces philanthropy's turn toward "outcomes-oriented" giving, the growing influence of effective altruism, and how funders interact with religion and religious communities. The discussion also tackles a deeper tension: as funders seek measurable impact, are they inadvertently narrowing the diversity of ideas they can pursue? 

Daniel and David explore the questions of philanthropic pluralism, the declining share of everyday Americans who give to charity, and why religious organizations, sometimes overlooked by secular funders may hold an underappreciated key to civic renewal.

What “The Wire” Has to Teach Us about Nonprofit Performance Measurement

Aspen Institute Generosity Commission Report

For decades, Americans have debated what kind of relationship there should be, if any, between religious institutions and public schools. Can schools honor the diverse religious beliefs of a student body without prioritizing one tradition? If religious institutions can use their resources to bolster public schools, should they?

In today's conversation, we're joined by Bryant Jensen of Brigham Young University and Irvin Scott of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They've coauthored a report, which argues that partnerships with faith communities can enrich student learning opportunities, especially for those in disadvantaged communities. They advocate for a "third way” that avoids the two extremes of endorsing religion in schools, on one end, or entirely excluding it from the work of schools, on the other.

In this episode, we'll delve into what this "third way" relationship between faith institutions and public schools could look like, and what benefits it could bring to students, educators, and faith leaders.

Read the report here:

https://wheatley.byu.edu/0000019c-fd37-d3b9-a1dc-ffffc6470000/faith-in-educational-renewal-religion-as-a-resource-to-transform-learning-opportunities

In this episode of the Faith Angle podcast, Religion & Society Director Josh Good sits down with three contributors to the new book Modeling Religious Pluralism: Cultivating Religious Equity in Today's World (Oxford University Press)--Simran Jeet Singh, Assistant Professor of Interreligious Histories at Union Theological Seminary, Diane L. Moore, Co-Director of Religion and Public Life at UTS, and Asma Uddin, Assistant Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law. Together they explore why religion so often gets overlooked in public life, and what it means to move beyond mere "tolerance" and toward genuine pluralism. The panel unpacks religious literacy as a framework for understanding faith's internal diversity, its constant evolution, and its deep entanglement with politics, law, and culture.

Journalist Jon Rauch’s smart new book from Yale University Press, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain With Democracy, offers three provocative and insightful essays. Though an outsider to Christianity—as he tells his long-time friend Pete Wehner of the Trinity Forum, Jon is a “gay Jewish atheist born in 1960”—Jon’s new treatise follows a dozen books, and hundreds of articles, covering topics from free inquiry to gay marriage, political realism to happiness, and the constitution of knowledge to matters of American political economy. 

The book explores the history and implications of three modes of the Christian faith in America. The first Jon terms Thin Christianity, embodied by mainline Protestantism. The second is Sharp Christianity—really MAGA white evangelicalism, what Jon calls a “fear-based” church.

But the third chapter, Jon makes a case for Thick Christianity, exemplified by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and other creative exilic religious minorities who have made peace with the fact of pluralism and the democratic opportunity of compromise and negotiation—the principles James Madison also affirmed. He calls this book a sort of atonement for his past arguments that American society, and its political system, would be better without the influence of religions convictions. What changed for Jon? Partly it was his realizing that religion is a load-bearing wall, in any democracy. But partly it was an emergent friendship with Pete Wehner and with other thinking believers who have enlarged Jon’s vision.

Guests

Jonathan Rauch

Peter Wehner

Additional Resources

“Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy,” by Jonathan Rauch

“Let It Be: Three Cheers for Apatheism” by Jonathan Rauch

"Evangelicals Made a Bad Trade" by Peter Wehner

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Brad Fulton, professor of Nonprofit Management and Social Policy at the O’Neill School of Public Affairs at Indiana University, alongside Amber Hacker, Chief of External Affairs at Interfaith America. Our guests discuss the role of religious giving in philanthropy and the surprising trends that emerge from the underlying data. Out of the $557 billion dollars given annually in the United States to charities, twenty percent of the funds come from foundations. Does religious commitment influence that giving? Do we know from available data that generosity makes a person healthier or happier? Does the generation a person’s born into—say, a Boomer vs. a Millennial—impact giving patterns? They also discuss new networking tools as it relates to philanthropic giving. 

Guests

Dr. Brad Fulton

Amber Hacker

Additional Resources

“Religious Organizations Crosscutting the Nonprofit Sector,” by Brad R. Fulton

“Faith-Based Public Foundations: Identifying the Field and Assessing its Impact,” by Allison Ralph and Brad R. Fulton

“Money, Meet Meaning,” by Amber Hacker and Tom Levinson

In this episode, we are joined by Jaweed Kaleem of The Los Angeles Times alongside Knox Thames, author of the new book Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom. Knox reflects on his long career advancing the cause of religious liberty around the world, including in the some of the world's most repressive contexts. Our guests assess the current state of religious freedom across different contexts, from India to Israel and Gaza, and reflect on how the eroding of religious freedom often serves as a "canary in the coal mine" for the loss of other fundamental human rights. 

Guests

Knox Thames 

Jaweed Kaleem

Additional Resources 

Ending Persecution: Charting the Path to Global Religious Freedom, by Knox Thames

"France Struggles to Confront One of Its Biggest Taboos: Race," by Jaweed Kaleem

"Swastikas, bullhorns, guns: Antisemitic Incidents in U.S. Hit 43-Year High," by Jaweed Kaleem

In this episode, New York Times opinion columnist David French sits down with Pulitzer Prize winner Eliza Griswold of The New Yorker to discuss her brand new book, Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church. These two journalists with firsthand familiarity and longstanding expertise in covering religion embark on a fascinating exploration of the book's coverage of Philadelphia's Circle of Hope, a little-known yet influential progressive evangelical movement, and how the sobering disintegration of that spiritual community mirrors broader dynamics at work in American Christianity. 

Guests

Eliza Griswold 

David French 

Additional Reading 

Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church, by Eliza Griswold 

"The Church Preached Love and Tolerance. Then Racial Politics Tore It Apart," by David French 

"Losing a Beloved Community," by Eliza Griswold

On this episode, we are joined by Elizabeth Oldfield to discuss her newly-released book Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. After beginning her career covering religion for the BBC, Elizabeth for a decade ran a London-based think tank called Theos, which seeks to stimulate the debate about the place of religion in society, challenging and changing ideas through research, commentary and events. Under her leadership, its staff increased tenfold—and still supports podcast she hosts today, "The Sacred."

Joining Elizabeth is Damir Marusic, an assignment editor at The Washington Post. Along with Shadi Hamid, a longtime friend and advisor to Faith Angle, Damir co-founded the podcast "Wisdom of Crowds." Damir writes extensively on US politics, polarization, US foreign policy, and European affairs. Bringing a non-religious vantage point, he highlights with Elizabeth key themes in Fully Alive and the two get right into it, not mincing words even when there are differing views of sin, grace, evil, and the possibilities for human community.

Guests

Elizabeth Oldfield

Damir Marusic

Additional Resources

Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, by Elizabeth Oldfield

"The Sacred" Podcast, with Elizabeth Oldfield, a Theos Think Tank podcast 

Fully Alive Substack, with Elizabeth Oldfield

Wisdom of Crowds Podcast and Substack, with Damir Marusic and Shadi Hamid