The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, September 29, 2026

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses the Democrats trying to sell religion, why Democrats will struggle to win Christian voters, and Robert Schuman and the worldview clash behind Pope Leo’s visit to secular France.Part I (00:14 – 13:17)Democrats are Trying to Sell Liberal Religion: These Politicians Represent the Fault Line of Religion Between Historic Christianity and Political Activism Dressed Up as ReligionCan Democrats Reclaim the Christian Moral High Ground? by The New York Times (Jia Lynn Yang)Why Democrats can’t close the God gap by The Spectator (Damian Thompson)Part II (13:17 – 17:21)The Parable of ‘Go and Do Likewise’: Democrats Will Struggle to Win Christian VotersGo and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country by Macmillan Publishers (Andy Beshear)Part III (17:21 – 26:19)‘Democracy Will Be Christian Or It Will Not Be’: Robert Schuman and the Worldview Clash Behind Pope Leo’s Visit to Secular FrancePope Leo visits secular France as surge of converts jolts a flagging faith by The Washington Post (Anthony Faiola)Pope Leo to visit a secular France at odds with Catholic views on abortion, euthanasia by France 24Leo XIV, Trying to Be Everyone’s Pope, Tours Secular France by The New York Times (Motoko Rich and Mark Landler)Schuman Declaration May 1950 by European UnionFor Europe by European Parliament (Robert Schuman)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, September 29, 2006. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Is liberal Christianity, liberal religion now running right onto the political headlines? Now, the New York Times Magazine on Sunday ran an article asking the question, can Democrats reclaim the Christian moral high ground? Very interesting. Just hear that headline again, the question, can Democrats reclaim the Christian moral high ground? J.L. N. Yang is the reporter here, the story in the New York Times Magazine. It appears, by the way, in the print edition, the very first article in Sunday's edition. It's asking a very significant question, but the question, can Democrats reclaim the Christian

moral high ground means that they haven't had it for some time, at least according to this analysis. So the basic structure of this article is that liberal religion is big in politics in a big way, and this is at the expense of the influence of conservative Christianity. Now, before we go any further, let me make very clear that when we're talking about what's here described as liberal Christianity, I'm a Jay Gresham-Machan, the famous Presbyterian of the early 20th century who said, it's Christianity versus this new religion that people are calling liberal Christianity. It is not a variant of Christianity. It's something else entirely.

But it is, of course, one of the big issues that we face. And so when you are looking at the secular media, they will say, here's a liberal Christian, here's a conservative Christian. Once again, with Machen, I don't believe there are two variants of the same thing. I think the continuing Orthodox biblical Christianity is Christianity. And yet you have on the other side those theological liberals who basically abandoned some, if not all of the basic doctrinal truth claims of Christianity, but they are still claiming a continuity. So this is as relevant as driving down Main Street in so many American communities where there's the big first church, this, first church that they are in these old dying mainline liberal denominations.

And they haven't been much a part of the headlines in recent years. So the big thing here is the New York Times Magazine asking the question, is liberal religion back? And there are some specific Democratic candidates who are clearly identified in this direction. And so you look at this. You can see James Tala Rico running, of course, the Democratic nominee for the United States. Senate seat in Texas. Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the United States, who's running for the U.S. Senate in Kansas. And you also have some who fit this category,

who aren't on the ballot this time. That includes Senator Raphael Warnock, who is a pastor in Atlanta as well as a United States Senator from Georgia. And Sarah Trone Geriot, who is now the Democratic nominee for the third congressional district in Iowa and is a Lutheran pastor, or has been a Lutheran pastor. interesting stuff. The article by G.L. Lin-Yang asked the question, can the Democrats reclaim the Christian moral tradition? It starts with James Tala Rico, as I said, who's the Democratic nominee in the Texas Senate race, or that is the race for the U.S. Senate in Texas. And the article quotes him as saying, I often wonder what would Jesus do if he visited the U.S. Senate. Now, that's a very interesting rhetorical question, but you can pretty much see where he's going

here. As the magazine says, he gained more steam, quote, for I was hungry and you cut my food assistance. I was sick and you kicked me off Medicaid. I was a stranger and you deported me and my family. And then I think he would flip over those fancy desks on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Tala Rico said, and demand that we take care of all of our neighbors, especially the least of these. The article then says, quote, the audience broke into cheers before he had even finished. The interview has been viewed more than 11 million times. That was, by the way, on a television show. It was an interview with Jimmy Kimball that wasn't broadcast on television but was put on YouTube, and that may actually have expanded its influence with the controversy.

We are then told, quote, Tala Rico, 37 years old, is surging in the polls against the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and as the country's most famous Presbyterian minister in training, a seminarian at Austin Theological Seminary there in Texas, quote, he is winning over voters with messaging drawn straight from the Gospels. Okay. Now, the article then goes to Adam Hamilton. the pastor, the Church of the Resurrection there in Leewood, Kansas, and it is the biggest church

in the United Methodist Church. You're looking at a profile here, so I'm just going to take those two for a moment. But I want to add a governor to the mix. So we're talking about two senatorial candidates on the Democratic ticket. I then want to go to the state of Kentucky right here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, where Governor Andy Beshear has just written a book entitled, Go and Do Likewise, How We Heel a Broken Country, It follows very much the same pattern, the same trajectory. When it comes to Andy Bashir, he's a member of a church affiliated with the disciples of Christ. This book very clearly posits him on the theological left, and yet he's trying to turn that to his advantage. That's exactly what Tal RICO is doing. That's exactly what Adam Hamilton

is doing. Will they be successful? Well, time will tell. But this really is a very interesting story. And wow, does it come with Christian worldview and theological significance? Okay, so when we're talking about these three figures, what makes them liberal? In other words, what is the liberal doctrinal tradition that they're really representing here? Well, it is interesting that the reporter in this case does pretty much get the history right. She goes back to the early decades of the 20th century when mainline Protestant liberal denominations became openly identified as liberal because they basically had the liberal side win in what was called the fundamentalist modernist controversy in the early 20th century, and a lot of the Orthodox, a lot of the conservatives just left.

And that's a huge pattern. But cultural Christianity, establishment Christianity was so much a thing in the early half of the 20th century that a lot of folks across the country in these mainline Protestant denominations, now very much a part of the liberal mainline, old mainline, as it's called. As you look at this, many people in the pews didn't really have any view of this at all until things really began to change in the 1960s. And in this case, again, the writer of this article is right. As you go back to the 1960s, the infusion of liberal activism came into these churches, and all of a sudden, a lot of lay people in these churches started hearing reports about professors at seminaries and all the rest

and leading figures such as bishops who were openly siding with fairly radical views in the 1960s, both theologically and politically. And so you look at the Episcopal Church, and not only that, the Church of England, where you had some paramedical. developments, in some cases, even more infamous at the time. And then you look at the other mainline Protestant denominations, the liberal Presbyterians, the United Methodists, as they became known, the continuation of the Methodist Church in the United States, the Disciples of Christ, you could just go down the list, the Congregationalists, the United Church of Christ. The American Baptists are often, most often associated with the old Protestant mainline.

But as you're looking at this, you see that there has been a dormancy in terms of a lot of political identification here. If you go back to look at Congress, say in the 1950s, 60s, even the 70s, the vast majority of members of both the House and the Senate, but especially the Senate, were upscale establishment mainline Protestant church members. And so you're looking at the fact that Episcopalians have always been, well, at least ever since the Second Great Awakening, a relatively small percentage of the American population, but they have been, in some cases, is the largest percentage of members of Congress. In the totality of Congress, yes, more in the Senate, however, than in the House. But you are looking at the fact that there was a political

establishment and a liberal religious establishment, and they were the same people. They were very much a part of the same social circle and all the rest. They shared the same worldview, which was radicalizing in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. And when I say radicalizing, I really do mean in terms of such things as the sexual revolution, the changes in terms of what came in in the wake of the women's feminist revolution, all kinds of things. And of course, they started with what were claimed to be fairly small natural changes. But then the next thing you know, you've got the rainbow flag out front decades later. And of course, you're also looking at what a lot of people did not know at the time. And that is that there has been an absolute collapse in terms of the

membership in these liberal churches. And so you're looking at just looming disaster in the 1960s. It was when these churches had maximum political influence, but they were losing membership and all the rest. And I will argue this precisely because they were abandoning the gospel. Even the article in the New York Times Magazine says this, quote, faced with a changing country and called by their conscience, a number of elite Protestant leaders made a bold choice. Beginning in the 1960s, they pushed their congregations to embrace pluralism and the cause of black civil rights. They rejected literal readings of the Bible and validated science. Let's understand all that's encoded into that, evolution and all the rest.

And of course, now the transgender revolution, they also say, that's just affirming the science. Quote, some more radical voices even openly argued for secularism, end quote. So yes, that is true. There were those inside the liberal church, the mainline Protestant denominations that were basically celebrating the secularization of the culture. But all right, this article celebrates Tel Rico in Texas and Adam Hamilton in Kansas and also looks at some of the other candidates. By the way, if you look at the Lutheran candidate here, let's just say she's on the liberal wing of a liberal part of Lutheranism. I mentioned the candidate there in Iowa's third congressional district. The Democratic nominee for that post is the Reverend Sarah Trone Gariot. An article about Damian Thompson published in The Spectator says this, quote,

It's hard to overestimate just how liberal the mainline denominations have become. Garriott not only supports gender transition surgery for children when she was a trainee minister she participated in the church wedding of two Satanists." So again, you can't make this stuff up. Truth is stranger than fiction. Thompson also gets the trend right. He says, quote, and most of them belong to mainline Protestant churches with shrinking congregations.

Hamilton may oversee the largest United Methodist Assembly in the country, but the denomination itself is in desperate trouble. Listen to this. Here's the bottom line and the argument by Damien Thompson. This deserves attention. quote, we can dispose of the fiction that liberal Christians will influence this year's midterms or indeed any future election. There simply aren't enough, and even if there were, it wouldn't help. He goes on to say, when Democratic candidates try to do God, put quotation marks around that,

they quickly run into trouble. And by the way, the kind of trouble he cites, for instance, with James Tilarico in Texas, is the fact that he has described God as non-binary and, let's just say, a very radical argument using the Virgin Mary in favor of abortion. It's absolutely horrifying. And he also, by the way, in terms of the gender issue when it comes to human beings, has said basically there's no end to them. There could be 16 different genders. And there are various versions of his quote. The bottom line is that he represents the basic fault line now in American religion, which is within what is designated Christian by the larger world, you have two different religions. One of them holds to authentic biblical Christianity, historic Christianity. The other one is basically political activism with some vestments and bishops and nice-looking buildings and all the rest. As a theologian, I just want to say the biggest thing you need to look for here is whether or not these churches preach the gospel. Do they preach the gospel in terms of the faith once for all delivered to the saints? Is that central? As evangelism and missions, is that central to their understanding of Christianity?

what do they believe about the Bible? Now, here's where they really show themselves. So I just happened to have brought these with me. Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest United Methodist Church in the country shifted his position on all kinds of issues. When it comes to abortion, the LGBTQ issues, and all the rest, he's been in flux for some time. He wrote a book years ago with the headline, Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, that kind of tells you where he's going. But I'll just simply say he's pretty much out there now in a book entitled Making Sense of the Bible rediscovering the power of scripture today, he makes very clear he doesn't hold to anything like verbal plenary understanding of the inspiration of scripture. He doesn't hold to anything like

the traditional inerrancy and infallibility of scripture. He finds all kinds of interpretive latitude and actually writes about how he changed his position on some of the crucial issues of the day. And by the way, one of the other things you need to note is that when you look at LGBTQ, it's virtually impossible these days in terms of the battle between biblical Christianity, and what's called liberal Christianity, it's very hard for those on the liberal side to stop at one of those letters. Pretty much it's a logic that makes them go all the way through right down to the plus sign. Okay, the governor here in Kentucky, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Andy Bashir, he's of conversation right now, not so much because he's just about to come to the last year of his second term, but because he is

considered a likely candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Is that likely or not? I'll simply say one big question is, how, the governor of a state that went so overwhelmingly for the Republicans in recent years, how that governor can become a viable candidate for the Democratic nomination. On the other hand, his brand, he says, is that he has been able to bridge the divide, etc., etc. Let me just say that inside Kentucky, the governor is pretty much at odds with the General Assembly, with the legislature, and with a lot of Kentucky voters. But nonetheless, he was elected. His father served two terms as governor. Now he's finishing.

his second term as governor in a book entitled, Go and Do Likewise, which comes, of course, from the gospel of Luke from the conclusion of what we know is the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Jesus said, go and do likewise. What you have here is another pattern we need to see, which is when the people on this side of the political and theological equation cite scripture, they're almost always going to cite the synoptic gospels. They're going to go to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They're going to go to, well, some of them even called themselves red-letter Christians. And think about the red-letter New Testament where supposedly the words of Jesus are printed in red, I'll simply say, as a theologian, that's not the best idea. All scripture is

given of God. Every single word of scripture is given by God. And it comes to us with full authority, every single word. But nonetheless, you see what they mean. They're saying, we're just quoting Jesus here. And this is where, you see, on the big issues of the day, they often end up in a very leftist position. And so Andy Beshear writes about, for instance, the abortion issue, and he says he turns it into a compassion issue. Compassion for who? Not the unborn baby. But he writes about women who are in what he sees as a situation of distress and need. By the way, pro-lifers do not deny that women are often found in a position of desperate need. But the answer to that is not the abortion of their unborn baby. Okay. Then on the LGBTQ issues, he brags about numerous vetoes that he has had.

handed down because of a very conservative general assembly on issues, including the fact that he has vetoed legislation concerning transgender teenagers and all the rest, most importantly, or at least most famously in the state, when it comes to participation in sports teams, et cetera. And again, he just claims this is inclusion. This is what it means Jesus loves everybody. But of course, when they do deal with scripture, they have to be within a very limited confine of scripture because we as Christians understand we're accountable to all of scripture. And let's just say the New Testament is emphatically clear about the fact that if we love our

neighbor, we do not love them when they are engaged in activities and following lifestyles and making claims that are absolutely at odds with the creator's design and the creator's command, as made very clear in scripture. The issues, LGBTQ issues, for instance, could not be more clearly addressed than by the Apostle Paul in the book of Romans and also in First Corinthians. So that's very, very interesting. we're going to be following this story, and I mentioned some of the big names. I think the two races that are going to get the most attention are the Senate races in Kansas and Texas. And at this point, at least, the polling is not conclusive in Texas. It's going to be a very interesting race.

But just to understand, what is at stake? If the Democrats pick up a seat there in Texas, and especially with a candidate like this, it's going to turn not just from red to blue, it's going to turn from conservative to, let's just say not just a little bit liberal. And likewise in Kansas, the situation with Adam Hamilton, the polling there may be less, less close than what you see in Texas. The margin may be larger, but then again, it all comes down to who turns out to vote on Election Day. Okay, shifting to a related issue, but now we're going across the Atlantic. We're going to France, where just yesterday, Pope Leo the 14th ended an official visit there to France.

and this was a big deal because just think about the historical setup here. You have the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, of visiting France, which in the wake of the French Revolution has been one of the fastest secularizing societies on Earth. And in the French Revolution, let's just remind ourselves that the revolutionaries on the far left, they actually declared war on God, on religion, on Christianity in particular. they desacralized Notre Dame Cathedral and put a statue of goddess reason in place of the Virgin Mary in terms of that Catholic space. And so the Catholic Church and France have been pretty much at odds for a long time.

But the interesting thing is that going back even to the French Revolution, the average French citizen was still overwhelmingly likely to identify as Catholic and to be involved as a Catholic, at least in some sense. So get this. even when you are looking at just the last several decades. If you go back to the beginning of the 20th century, about 90% of the French identified as Catholic and said that they at least with some regularity attended Catholic Mass.

Okay, so that's France, where you have this radical secularism driving so much of the culture in particular in the elites. But predictably, as you see geographically here in the United States as well, the closer you get to cities, closer you get to a campus, closer you get to the politics, the more secular space becomes. But the big issue in France right now is that less than half of the French people now claim an identity that includes Catholicism and their involvement there. And since the 1960s, that secularizing trend has just accelerated. But just to give you one statistic, and this one I'll cite from the Washington Post, in covering the Pope's visit, it mentions that right now only about 2% of baptized Catholics attend Catholic Mass.

And so you're talking about 2%. that's down from 90% just a matter of, say, a century ago, you're looking at a very, very rapid secularization and decline. Pope Leo decided to go nonetheless. The headline at France 24, a major news agency was Pope Leo to visit a secular France at odds with Catholic views on abortion and euthanasia. And yes, in recent years, the French government has gone so far as to put a right to abortion in the French Constitution. It wasn't necessary. That's to say it was already legal, but they put it in the Constitution to make a point that came after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision in 2022.

You also have the fact that just recently the government has approved euthanasia. The Catholic Church rightly in this case as opposed to both of those moral evils, but nonetheless, they are now a part of the official law in France. The report at France 24 said, quote, Pope Leo the 14th on Friday begins a four-day visit to France where the Catholic Church's views on abortion and euthanasia run counter to the values of a secular country. So notice it just says right out, a secular country that recently enshrined abortion in its constitution and gave final approval to a bill establishing the right

to assisted dying. By the way, Pope John Paul II visited France in 2004. It was that Pope's last foreign trip. And as France 24 comments, at that time, he quote, delivered a forceful condemnation of abortion and euthanasia, even as he gasped for air during the mass. Okay, so Pope Leo's visit was declared by just about everyone to be a radical success. There were thousands of people that turned out on the Champs dez-Zer for his motorcade. There was just a lot of attention, a lot of media attention. But I want to come in on one particular thing that virtually no one in the media seems to have noticed. Listen to this. This is the report from France 24.

Quote, on his final day, September the 28th, that's yesterday. Leo will visit the northern French city of Metz, the birthplace of Robert Schumann. one of the founding fathers of European integration. Okay, that really sparked my attention. So he is speaking at the birthplace of Robert Schumann yesterday. Okay, then listen to this. This is the report in the New York Times. Quote, on the last day of a four-day trip to France, the Pope made a symbolic choice to speak at the Robert Schumann Center, a convention hall named after a Christian French statesman who led efforts to improve post-war cooperation between European nations, and it mentions is on the path to sainthood. Okay, so when I hear the name Robert Schumann, I mean to tell you, that's a very important name.

It's important beyond what these journalists in this generation seem to recognize. In many ways, Robert Schumann is to be credited with the modern shape of Europe, particularly the European Union, even before that, the European Economic Community. It was on the 9th of May, 1950, the Robert Schumann issued what became known later as the Schumann Declaration in which he called for the integration of post-war Europe. in a common project. And a common project was, first of all, about those main nations, some of whom have been at war, such as France and Germany, just as recently as World War II. But Schumann is a very interesting figure because he was not secular. He was decidedly not secular. And so I have been looking at his contribution to this conversation for a long time. Let me tell you, finding his writings in published form is very, very difficult. I had to

eventually order a book from France, just in order to get what I needed. But listen to this. There is a statement by Robert Schumann that just will absolutely shock you, I think. Listen to this. He's writing about the Christian roots of the entire civilizational project in Europe. And he makes very clear, quote, it took Europe over a thousand years of Christianity to fashion what we know as the modern European project. And this goes back to the end of World War II. Western civilization. And he refers specifically to democracy. He says it can't happen without Christianity. But then here's the famous line. Here's the line I just had to see the entire document to understand its context. Listen to this. He said, quote, democracy will be Christian or it will not be.

He said it just that straightforwardly. And I'll just tell you, the sentence is in the English translation, exactly that. Democracy will be Christian or it will not be. B. What an incredibly clear statement. He went on to say, an anti-Christian democracy would be a parody which would sink into tyranny or into anarchy. The Democrat's position can be defined as follows. He will not accept that the state systematically ignores religion or that it opposes it with hostility or contempt. End quote. So the Schumann Declaration offered in 1950 by Robert Schumann is the formation of what became later the European Union, but the European Union has repudiated the very claims that Robert Schumann made.

Democracy will be Christian or it will not be. It is also very clear that Robert Schumann was not calling for a theocracy. He was calling for an acknowledgement that Western civilization makes claims concerning human nature, human dignity, and all the rest that cannot stand on their own. He refers to Christianity and the necessity of society to acknowledge Christianity's, quote, immense moral authority. At that time, he went on to say, which is spontaneously accepted by a great number of citizens and the high value of its education that no other philosophical system has been able to achieve so far, end quote.

So that was then, and this is now. I do find it interesting, maybe a little ironic, that Pope Leo the 14th made his last appearance at a center name for Robert Schumann. I will simply note that I saw no major media giving any attention to what Robert Schumann really believed and what he wrote and what he declared in 1950. Now, I do think it's interesting and not only interesting but ironic that even the mass media do understand that it's a big story when the Roman Catholic Pope goes to a secularized France, where, of course, the church had had massive influence far less now. I think they missed the story, however, when the Pope's last appearance was at the Robert Schumann Center, because that invokes a huge issue that secular authorities in Europe steadfastly do not want to address. Democracy will be Christian or it will not be. I'll just tell you, I think in retrospect that was one of the most important sentences of the 20th century. Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Moeller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to SBTS.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.