New Persuasive Words

What if the deepest divide between conservatives and liberals isn’t simply about policy, but about time?

Conservatives often locate America’s promise in an inherited past—its founding principles, traditions, institutions, and moral order. Liberals are more likely to locate that promise in an unrealized future: a more equal, inclusive, and just society that America has yet to become.

In this episode, Scott and Bill explore these competing visions through the theological concepts of protology and eschatology. Protology asks about first things: creation, original order, and what went wrong. Eschatology asks about last things: redemption, fulfillment, and the destination toward which history is moving.

Is the conservative project a search for a lost Eden? Does liberalism transform politics into a pursuit of the promised kingdom? What happens when the right romanticizes the past or the left treats progress as inevitable?

Scott and Bill consider whether American politics can hold memory and hope together. A nation cannot live entirely in its memories, but neither can it survive without a vision of what it might become.

Scott and Bill head back to ancient Greece—by way of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. They explore what Nolan does with Homer’s strange, violent, morally complicated epic and take up a provocative debate sparked by Ben Shapiro and Ezra Klein: Has Nolan “Christianized” The Odyssey?

What happens when a pagan story about glory, cunning, fate, and the gods is reframed around guilt, mercy, homecoming, and redemption? Is Nolan imposing a Christian moral universe on Homer—or revealing themes that were already hiding in plain sight?

Along the way, Scott and Bill talk myth, movies, Christianity, modern politics, and why stories written nearly three thousand years ago still have the power to tell us something unsettling about ourselves.

In this episode of New Persuasive Words, Scott Jones and Bill Borror wrestle with one of theology's oldest and most unsettling questions: the scandal of particularity. Prompted by a provocative argument from Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony, they ask whether the Enlightenment's quest for universal reason came at the cost of dismissing the particular people, stories, and traditions through which faith has always been lived.

Hazony contends that Enlightenment thinkers viewed the Hebrew Bible as an obstacle to universal morality because of its stubborn insistence on a chosen people, a promised land, and a God who acts within the concrete history of a particular nation. Scott and Bill explore whether this critique gets the Enlightenment right—and whether Christianity itself can ever escape the scandal of God's choosing one people, one place, and ultimately one person in Jesus of Nazareth.

Is particularity the enemy of justice, or the very condition that makes love possible? Can genuine universality exist without first embracing the local, the historical, and the embodied? Along the way, the conversation touches on Jewish-Christian relations, the legacy of the Enlightenment, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, and why every attempt to erase particular identities often creates new forms of exclusion.

A conversation about election, universality, and the strange possibility that the path to what is truly universal always begins somewhere unmistakably particular.

What happens when theology stops shaping private belief and begins organizing public power? Scott and Bill examine the growing influence of Doug Wilson, the religious currents reshaping American conservatism, and the uneasy relationship between faith, politics, and democracy. Moving between current events, history, and theology, they explore how ideas once confined to the margins are finding new cultural and political influence—and what that means for the future of American public life.

In a cultural and political moment defined by outrage, division, and uncertainty, hope can feel naïve—or even impossible. But what if hope isn't wishful thinking? What if it's an act of courage?

In this episode, Bill and Scott explore why hope matters now more than ever. Together, they wrestle with the temptation to give in to cynicism, the exhaustion of living through constant political conflict, and the challenge of remaining compassionate in a deeply polarized society. Drawing from faith, history, and personal experience, they discuss how hope isn't about denying reality but finding the strength to face it honestly while believing that a better future is still possible.

Whether you're feeling discouraged by the headlines, weary from cultural battles, or simply looking for a reason to keep believing in people, this conversation offers an invitation to reclaim hope—not as optimism, but as a practice that can sustain us through uncertain times.

In this episode of New Persuasive Words, Scott and Bill wade into the moral fog of war, asking an old question that never quite stays settled: when, if ever, is war justified? Using the framework of Just War Theory, they unpack the escalating conflict between Donald Trump and Iran, and the public tension between Trump and Pope Leo.

Is this war defensible under traditional criteria like just cause, proportionality, and last resort—or are those categories breaking down in real time? And what happens when political power collides with spiritual authority over the meaning of justice itself?

Expect sharp analysis, a few irreverent detours, and a conversation that refuses easy answers. Because if Just War Theory is supposed to clarify our moral vision, this moment might be testing its limits.

What happens when Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan get dragged into the same geopolitical argument? You get one wild quote from Benjamin Netanyahu—and one even wilder episode of New Persuasive Words.

This week, Scott and Bill react to Netanyahu’s eyebrow-raising claim that history suggests goodness doesn’t really have an edge over ruthless power. In other words: nice guys…don’t finish first. Or second. Or maybe even at all.

Naturally, the guys introduce a new moral framework for our troubled times: WWGD — What Would Genghis Do? (Spoiler: it’s not “turn the other cheek.”)

It’s sharp, a little irreverent, and just self-aware enough to know that comparing Jesus and Genghis Khan might say more about us than about history itself.

Is the war with Iran actually a religious war? That’s the explosive question posed by Tucker Carlson in a viral clip that has ricocheted across the internet. In the video, Carlson suggests that beneath the geopolitical rhetoric—nuclear weapons, regional stability, national security—there may be something deeper and more dangerous at play: religious narratives about holy sites, prophecy, and the possibility of rebuilding the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

In this episode of New Persuasive Words, Scott and Bill react to Carlson’s question and ask what it reveals about the current moment. Are religious ideas actually shaping foreign policy—or is this just another conspiracy-flavored explanation for a complicated geopolitical conflict? Along the way, they unpack the strange alliance of nationalism, theology, and online discourse that now frames debates about Iran, Israel, and America’s role in the Middle East. Is Carlson raising an uncomfortable question… or just lighting another rhetorical fire? Scott and Bill dig in.

In this episode of New Persuasive Words, Bill and Scott dig into “Rod Dreher Thinks the Enlightenment Was a Mistake,” a provocative Atlantic feature that explores how one of today’s most influential conservative thinkers is challenging the very foundations of modernity. They unpack Read the full Atlantic article here, which profiles Rod Dreher’s journey from cultural critic to a leading voice in religious conservatism and the surprising influence his ideas now have on figures like Vice President J.D. Vance.

Bill and Scott discuss Dreher’s critique of secularism, his call for a return to pre-Enlightenment Christian values, and what that philosophical shift means for American politics and public life. They also debate how Dreher’s worldview intersects with political movements that mix faith with nationalist and cultural concerns — and what it says about the fractures within conservatism today. Whether you’re intrigued by the role of faith in political identity or skeptical about the consequences of rejecting Enlightenment ideals, this conversation offers a thoughtful, critical take on one of the most talked-about ideas shaping the right.

Tune in for a deep dive into culture, belief, and the future of persuasion.

In this week’s episode, Bill and Scott unpack The Atlantic’s provocative analysis of how Charlie Kirk’s assassination has reshaped the conservative movement and exposed deep ideological fractures within the Trump-aligned right. Drawing from Yair Rosenberg’s Atlantic article, “The Second Death of Charlie Kirk,” they examine how Kirk’s absence has opened space for previously marginalized figures — including extremists and provocateurs — to vie for influence and redefine the coalition’s boundaries.

Bill and Scott explore questions at the heart of contemporary American politics: