In this week’s episode of Politics In Question, Lee and James talk with Jonathan Rauch about Christian nationalism and its relationship to democracy. Rauch is a senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at Brookings and the author of Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy (Yale University Press, 2025).

How new and distinct is this version of Christianity in American public life? What has been the historical role of Christianity in American democracy? And what exactly is civic theology? These are some of the questions Lee and James explore in this week's episode.