Faithful Politics

What if America’s political polarization is connected to the decline of traditional religion?

Christian theologian Matthew Kaemingk and Muslim political scientist Shadi Hamid make a provocative argument in their new book, Can Religion Save Democracy?: as religious participation has declined, Americans have increasingly looked to politics for identity, meaning, community, and even a struggle between good and evil.

We discuss Christian nationalism, secularism, political tribalism, religious certainty, pluralism, and why democracy requires people who can lose elections, live alongside deep disagreement, and resist treating political opponents as enemies who must be destroyed. The conversation also explores epistemic humility - including the Islamic tradition of saying “God only knows” - and how Christianity and Islam might provide resources for disagreement without domination.

Kaemingk and Hamid also explain why local religious communities may help develop the patience, humility, relationships, and “democratic table manners” that social media and national politics often fail to provide.

Book: Can Religion Save Democracy? How More Faith - Not Less - Can Heal Our Public Life
Authors: Matthew Kaemingk and Shadi Hamid
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781587436895

GUEST BIOS
Matthew Kaemingk is a Christian ethicist and public theologian, professor of public theology at Theological University Utrecht, and senior research fellow at Georgetown University. His work focuses on Christianity, Islam, pluralism, and public life. He co-hosts Zealots at the Gate with Shadi Hamid and co-authored Can Religion Save Democracy? Hendricks Chapel

Shadi Hamid is a political scientist, Washington Post columnist, and senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, where he co-directs the Faith and Future of Democracy Initiative. His work focuses on Islam, democracy, political pluralism, and American politics. He co-hosts Zealots at the Gate and co-authored Can Religion Save Democracy?

Albert Mohler has spent decades as one of the most influential voices in conservative evangelical Christianity. Now he is arguing that America’s Constitution should explicitly acknowledge Christianity - a position Warren Throckmorton says represents a major departure from the Baptist tradition of religious liberty.

Throckmorton joins Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram to examine Mohler’s evolving views on Christian nationalism, the Constitution, religious tests, and blasphemy laws. They discuss Mohler’s proposal that the constitutional order acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ and authority of Scripture, why Throckmorton believes that conflicts with the founding-era approach to religious liberty, and how Mohler’s position differs from Christian nationalist figures such as Doug Wilson. Warren Throckmorton

The conversation also examines an important development: after criticism of his position on criminalizing blasphemy, Mohler said he had “blew it” and that theological judgments should be left to the church rather than government. He has continued, however, to defend constitutional acknowledgment of Christianity.

BOOK
Book: The Christian Past That Wasn't: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History
Author: Warren Throckmorton
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889835820

GUEST BIO
Warren Throckmorton is an author and retired professor of psychology who taught at Grove City College. His recent work focuses on religion, politics, American history, and Christian nationalism. He is the author of The Christian Past That Wasn't: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths That Hijack History and co-author of Getting Jefferson Right. His current writing through The Throckmorton Initiative examines Christian nationalism, religious liberty, and competing claims about America's founding.

Latino Christians are often discussed as a voting bloc. Rev. Dr. Cristal Silva-McCormick and Dr. Daniel Montañez explain why that misses much of what is actually happening.
Silva-McCormick, a professor at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary who researches Latino Christianity and Christian Zionism, and Montañez, founder and executive director of the Center for Public Theology and Migration, examine how theology, migration history, church authority, national identity, and the search for belonging shape Latino political life.
The conversation explores why some Latino Christians have supported Donald Trump, how Pentecostal and evangelical theology can influence political identity, the role churches play in attitudes toward immigration, and how Christian Zionism has spread within Latino Christian communities. They also discuss biblical interpretation, undocumented immigrants who understand their own migration through the language of sin, the difference between what is legal and what is just, and why the idea of a single "Latino vote" obscures a much more complicated reality.
GUEST BIOSRev. Dr. Cristal Silva-McCormick is Assistant Professor of Missions and Evangelism and Director of Latinx Studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Her work examines Latino and Latin American Christianity, migration, Christian Zionism, missions, and the relationship between theology and political life. Her forthcoming book with Orbis Books develops research from interviews with Latino Christians about Israel, Palestine, faith, and solidarity.
Dr. Daniel Montañez is founder and executive director of the Center for Public Theology and Migration. His scholarship focuses on theology, ethics, migration, Latino Pentecostalism, and the experiences of undocumented pastors. He holds a PhD from Boston University School of Theology and co-edited The Church and Migration: A Theological Vision for the People of God.

Most Americans know Hobby Lobby as a craft store. Investigative journalist Michael Blanding says the bigger story is how the Green family has used the fortune behind the company to advance its understanding of the Bible in American law, culture, education, and politics.
Blanding joins Faithful Politics to discuss his new book, The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby. We trace the family’s rise from an Oklahoma craft business to the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, which held that closely held corporations could receive protections under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
We also examine the Museum of the Bible, the Green family’s controversial acquisition of antiquities, relationships with conservative Christian organizations, Dominionism, Christian nationalism, and Blanding’s reporting on the museum as a gathering place for religious and political networks in Washington.
The conversation asks a larger question running through Blanding’s book: what happens when sincerely held religious convictions are backed by billions of dollars and an effort to shape a pluralistic democracy?
BOOKBook: The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby: Inside a Billionaire Family’s Quest to Craft a Christian Nation
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781541703940
GUEST BIOMichael Blanding is an investigative journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, Smithsonian, Slate, The Nation, and other publications. He is the author of The Map Thief, In Shakespeare’s Shadow, and The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby, which examines the Green family’s religious, cultural, and political influence. Blanding is a former senior writing fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights and a former senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.

What happens when your political opponent becomes more than wrong and starts to look like an agent of evil?

Religion scholar Michael E. Heyes joins Faithful Politics to trace America's long history of mixing demons with politics. From spiritualists, abolition and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War era to Billy Graham, the Satanic Panic, modern spiritual warfare, C. Peter Wagner and the New Apostolic Reformation, Heyes shows how demonic language has repeatedly been used to explain political conflict and social change.
We also explore why conspiracy theories thrive when complicated problems are reduced to cosmic battles, how suffering can make people more susceptible to othering, and what happens when Christians begin seeing themselves as soldiers fighting human opponents on God's behalf.
The conversation ultimately raises a larger question: How do we recognize genuine evil without turning our neighbors, political opponents and fellow citizens into monsters?
BOOK
Book: Devils of Democracy: America's Love Affair with Political Demons from the Revolution to Today
https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798341900936
The book was published September 15, 2026, by Broadleaf Books.
GUEST BIO
Michael E. Heyes is associate professor of religion and chair of the Department of Religion at Lycoming College. His research focuses on Christianity, demonology, monsters, religion and culture, including the ways ideas about demons have shaped American religious and political life. He is the author of Demons in the USA, Margaret's Monsters, and Devils of Democracy: America's Love Affair with Political Demons from the Revolution to Today. He earned his PhD in religious studies from Rice University.