The Daily Signal - 2 Components Necessary for a Prosperous Society with John Stonestreet

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

The success of America is, at least in part, dependent upon its citizens' ability to “self-govern,” John Stonestreet says.  “Faith and family are the most obvious” ingredients required for people to be able to govern themselves, says Stonestreet, president of the nonprofit Colson Center and host of the “Breakpoint” podcast. The Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Colson Center was founded by Chuck Colson, who served in the Nixon administration and went on to become one of the most influential Christian thought leaders of his time. Why? Because faith and family “play the most significant role in forming us,” he explained. But today, much of the U.S. population has lost sight of these two necessities for self-governance.  According to a recent Gallup poll, 68% of Americans say they identify with a Christian religion, whether in the Protestant or Catholic tradition, but 24 years ago, that number was 86%.  Today, children being told they may have been born in the wrong body, abortion still the leading cause of death among babies, and about 1 in every 4 U.S. children is growing up without a father in the home, according to the National Fatherhood Initiative.  Stonestreet joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss how Christians can rise to meet the current moment in history with hope and solutions to the troubles facing America. Stonestreet also discusses Christians’ role within politics.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, July 15th. I'm Virginia Allen. The success of America, at least in part, it depends upon its citizens' ability to self-govern. That's according to John Stone Street. Stone Street is the president of the Colson Center and the host of the Breakpoint podcast. And he says that those two ingredients that we need for self-governance is faith and family. He joins me today on the podcast to explain why faith and family are the two things the society needs in order to thrive. Stay tuned for my conversation with John Stone Street right after this. Hey, it's Rob Bluey from The Daily Signal. Want to stay ahead of the curve on conservative news and analysis?

Subscribe to our free Daily Signal email newsletters. You'll get the latest headlines, detailed policy coverage, and exclusive interviews delivered straight to your inbox. Whether you're interested in our morning update, breaking news alerts, or weekly roundups, we've got you covered. Don't let the liberal media control the narrative. Sign up now at dailysignal.com slash email and join thousands of informed conservatives who rely on the daily signal to cut through the noise and get the truth. I am so pleased to be sitting down today and joined by the president of the Colson Center and host of Breakpoint John Stone Street. Thanks so much for being with me today. I appreciate it. Oh yeah, you bet. Thanks so much for having me.

So the Colson Center has a really neat mission. It's a policy organization, but what you all are looking at is where that world of culture and faith really intersect. Explain a little bit about what you guys do. What does that look like to tackle that issue of faith and culture? In a nutshell. In a nutshell. 30 seconds. No, no.

You know, the thing is about the Christian faith, which one of the things that makes it distinctive from other faiths is that it makes public. claims on reality. So it's not just about how to have a good private, moral, morally ordered life, or it's not just about how to find meaning and purpose, or even find individual salvation for when you die. Certainly all of that is baked into the Christian worldview, but the scriptures actually tell the story of reality. And so there are these public implications that the world is this way, that people are this kind of creature, not that kind of creature, that history is headed here, that moral norms are not just kind of esoteric, maybe partially discoverable, you know, by the enlightened,

but actually are baked into the universe like gravity. And so what that means is, is to be a Christian, is to have public implications on one's faith and then how one lives in the world. And so that's what's really tough because we often talk about faith as if it's kind of private. And listen, Christianity is personal. I mean, that's, you know, inherent to this idea of who Jesus is as God, who became flesh, you know, lived out the human experience and brings individual salvation.

But it's also very public that he is king of kings and Lord of Lords, that he was there at creation and he's restoring his creation. And so the public implications of faith, that really is where we try to think and to help people wrestle through, because that really has implications for our calling. What does God want us to do? Or as Francis Schaefer wrote in his series, How Shall We Then Live? And Chuck Colson updated it, How Shall We Now Live? So you can kind of say we're doing, well, now how shall we live? But we're running out of adverbs, but that's the framework that we're trying to look at.

Well, and that's a powerful framework because we know whether we like it or not, faith influences culture, culture influence faith. There's a give and a take there. According to our recent Gallup poll, 68% of Americans say that they identify with Christianity, whether that's within the Catholic tradition or the Protestant tradition. You go back 24 years and that number was 86%. So a pretty big gap there going from 86% back in the year 2000 to now. 68%. In your opinion, is America still a Christian nation? Well, you know, look, I'm not sure the Bible has those kind of strict categories and using Christian as an adjective that way. But certainly the founding ideals of America, what influenced

the way those who kind of put this system together thought about the human condition in particular, in which there's individual human dignity, there are baked in rights that are not granted by the government, but as we all know from that phrase in the declaration, endowed by their creator, this is something that's given to us in a pre-political way by our creator. And then also needing to kind of rein in the human impulse, right, the checks and balances that are built into the way America governs, and that there are these other realities, not just individual people, but also, or the big states. but there's all of these other institutions that are good institutions that help us become moral people and are formative for us.

I mean, all of that really closely aligns with a Christian vision of life in the world. It closely aligns with a Christian understanding of the human condition, both dignity and fall. Or as Blaise Pascal once said, humans are the glory and the garbage of the universe. I always like that phrase. And so it much more closely aligns than others. others. But there is a sense in which the system is made for those who are able to self-govern. And I'm not sure, you know, in terms of the institutions of moral formation as they get weaker and weaker and weaker. And I'm thinking here of the non-political institutions like the home

and the church. As they have less of a role in society, then we're moving away from that vision or we're trying to implement a system without having the ingredients. inherent to that system. And the sustainability long term, I think is very, very, very much in question. So then let's talk about some of maybe the problems that are driving that, where we've come from, where we're going, what is the trajectory that we're on? If we need different ingredients, what are those? Well, listen, you know, faith and family are the most obvious ones. These are the ones that play the most significant role in forming us. Chuck Holson, you know, used to use the phrase, I'm sure he borrowed it from somebody that the conscience or the constable. In other words, either you self-govern,

or you have to be, you know, the police force essentially has to be expanded. Now, of course, you look around the world and that becomes obvious, both historically and even in contemporary very society. But, you know, faith and family are the things that basically form us as individuals as citizens and to the self-governing, you know. You don't need someone looking over your shoulder all the time if you just do the right thing and you don't, you know, steal from your neighbor. And when you lose that sort of kind of those institutions of moral formation, then that's when the state grows. And the state, you know, obviously, as I think Reagan put it, is super hungry and is never satisfied. It's really hard to put the genie back in the bottle when more and more and more and

more of our lives are kind of governed by the outside. And so I think there's no way forward without faith and without family. This is especially true when it comes to the formation of young men. Young men are just not doing well. And I'm not, you know, and I'm not, you know, I think, for example, of the year 2019 prior to the pandemic was the third straight year on record in which the average life expectancy of the American male declined. Three straight years. The last time that had happened was at the time of World War I and the Spanish flu. And, you know, despite all the advances we've made medically, scientifically, ambulatory services,

or understanding of immunology, so what's explaining this? It's not a, you know, again, this is pre-pandemic. It's not a medical condition. It's an emotional, psychological. It's what we call deaths of despair. And you might say a crisis of meaning and purpose. Where does meaning and purpose come from? The government can't give you that.

The state can't give you that. It has to come from other sources. And Christianity talks about this being baked into the universe from the creator. and also in the presence and person of God in the flesh, Christ Jesus, and all that gets communicated through non-political ways. So the very fact that politics takes so much air out of the room right now in the American experience, that so many areas of our life have become politicized, even the most significant, fundamentally important moral questions of the day.

What does it mean to be human? who counts as one of us, that sort of thing. Now having become so politicized, that says a lot about, you know, kind of, that says a lot about the sort of world we're living in, the sort of culture we're living in, and it's not healthy. So would you say that it's impossible to have a society that is self-governing, that embraces that theory of self-governance without a culture that's also very, very connected to faith and connected to God who loves them. Yeah.

So I'm thinking back historically, and there's obviously never been a utopian society, right? I mean, I think sometimes we look back and say, well, you know, about the good old days, whether in America or somewhere else, and, you know, we realize the human condition has always been that, you know, always been both. with inherent dignity and also inherent failings. So I'm not trying to kind of portray that there was once kind of a utopian kind of American founding or anywhere else where this was kind of perfect. But listen, you know, to borrow a line from another, cultures that love their neighbors are better than cultures that eat their neighbors.

And where does that actually come from? And I'll say, you know, cultures in which people self-govers. are better than those who have to be, you know, kind of handheld through the whole thing. Cultures with dads in the home turn out better citizens than cultures in which we think the family can be deconstructed and reconstructed and expanded and replaced according to our kind of whims. I would say all of that. So you're not going to have you know, systemically the sort of stability that you want in a society without these ingredients. Now, look, that presumes, again, I'm looking at the first couple chapters of Genesis, right,

the creation of man and woman to form a family as the basis of fulfilling man's fundamental purpose to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, as the truth about reality. Like, that's the way it all began. And what that means is the family is baked into the universe like gravity. One of the ways I think is helpful to think about it is, you know, when we talk about these institutions like marriage and the family, are we talking about a speed limit or are we talking about gravity, right? The speed limit, that's a social construct.

That's something that people get together, look at the social conditions and say, here's how fast you should drive on this road. And if the social conditions change, then we can change the speed limit. That's how we treat these institutions like marriage and family. That's how we're even treating human identity like male and female, as if these things are kind of categories that we have socially constructed and now the conditions have changed. So therefore we can change what those things mean.

That is a dangerous game if, in fact, we're talking about something that's more like gravity. Because we can all get together and say, you know, man, having gravity always mean going down is really oppressive. Let's have gravity on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays mean going up, and then on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and Sundays mean going down. And then we can make a resolution and try to socially reconstruct gravity all we want, but then every time we step off the roof, we're still going to hit the ground, right? And I think when it comes to these very, very important pre-political realities of American society,

you know, family, church, home. marriage, male, female, that we are treating these things as if they're speed limits, as if they can be changed and socially constructed and reconstructed and reconstructed, as if these things are somehow based on the conditions and our will that we're imposing on it when in fact they're gravity. And I think that is the long-term unsustainability point that I'm trying to make here. No, that's profound because you look at the data in the science as well, and it all backs them. You look at kids that are raised in a whole incomplete family versus the challenges of those that aren't,

and the data is just there and says the exact same thing. So then I think the question is, well, what is the response? Because the family is under attack in America, because we see this decline in faith, and we are facing a time when there's questions about what is a woman, what is a man, we see kids being socially transitioned without the knowledge of parents in school. I mean, the challenges are evident. But as both as conservatives, as people who follow Christ, what is the response? And I want to acknowledge it's obviously not cookie cutter because we all have our own roles within this broader picture. And that's good. That's healthy. But maybe

if you could just speak to, you know, what are areas that we should be considering, okay, that what is my, what is my role? How do I respond to this moment of history? Yeah, I mean, gosh, that's the, that's the $1,000 question, right? You know, first and foremost, I think that very often churches tend to talk about these Christian truth claims as if they're highly privatized individualistic beliefs. And to kind of reclaim the disciplining and the formation of followers of Christ, as if we're talking about real truths about reality. I mean, I think we've got to start there. I think, obviously, we have to clean up our own homes.

I think there's a lot of potential and opportunity, and we've seen it, and kind of aiming at the middle of society. And what I mean by that is looking at these pre-political institutions and saying what role can these things have, and how can Christians kind of have a place and rebuilding them? And you can kind of tell when all of our aim is at, you know, the political end of society or something like that, then we've kind of bought into the political illusion. I think that's pretty obvious when we see, and, you know, given the time here when we're having this conversation,

we've just seen, for example, the RNC platform come out. Here you have first principles, particularly something that's been baked into the platform for a long time, the understanding of the value and worth of pre-born lives and that they need to be protected, and that that really is now being treated kind of as a social construct, something that was politically useful in 16, not as politically useful right now in 2024. So we've got to rethink this. I mean, that's exactly what I'm talking about. We can't allow the, you know, the relativizing of something that's absolute.

And showing then where our loyalties ultimately lie, I think, is going to be a really important conversation going forward. Allowing politics and the political process to be an important expression of our faith because it is. I'm not talking about abandoning it at all. but understanding that the scope and the limits of the political process and then and the political machine and then realizing that there's a whole lot more to life than just that. And living that way I think is going to be really important, you know, kind of in the days of ahead. So in a sense, it's not really a call to pragmatism. It's a call to live as if we acknowledge the limits of what these various things are made for.

and not absolute, absolute, let me say that again, not absolutizing the relative or relativizing the absolute. Well, praise God, that there's more than just politics, right? Because that would be a depressing reality. It feels like that, though, doesn't it? Sometimes, like this is all we talk about, all we think about. And it's super important.

There's no question at all about it. But, you know, the other thing to realize, too, and we often think about, you know, two great figures, a Dietrich Bonhoeffer and a William Warberforce, and both, you know, basically were living out their faith at a time of real cultural crisis, including political crisis. And, you know, one saw an amazing restoration in Great Britain, and one saw cultural collapse in Germany. And neither man failed. And so T.S. Eliot has this wonderful,

line. It's like, you know, to us, there's only the trying and the rest is none of our business. In other words, we live faithful to what is true and we trust the Lord in terms of what the results look like. Well, I want to, for our listeners, want to promote that on August 13th, you're hosting a breakpoint forum discussing the question, should Christians get political? and I think that's a profound question to be asking at this moment in history and encourage folks to check that out to, I believe it's an online forum so anyone can participate. But want to give you the opportunity, share a little bit of the resources that the Colson Center offers.

It colsoncenter.org. You all have so many practical resources for people that are kind of asking these questions in their own heart and mind of what is the response for this moment in history. When they visit the website, what will they find? Well, I mean, a lot of commentaries, a lot of articles and blog posts and things like that, including audio posts that basically engage specific issues happening in culture but trying to ground them back into a Christian worldview. And what we're trying to do is offer the clarity that a Christian worldview provides and the confidence and what is true. And then the courage to kind of answer those questions, okay, how do we live now?

How do we live now in light of this? We've got online forums that take place frequently. You mentioned one. Should Christians get political? By the way, spoiler alert, the answer is yes, they should. Yeah, we're getting there. But also, you know, an important thing, again, to define what's absolute and what's relative and be able to make that distinction in the way we engage that process.

You know, the other thing, too, and all of this has to do with a vision that Chuck Holson originally had and the founding of the Colson Center before he passed away. And he would say this over and over and over. And it's very profound. It's like, you know, what the world needs now more than any thing else is for the church to be the church. And of course, Jesus talks about the church being salt and light. And sometimes we look at and say, why is the world the world? Well, it is going to be that. The question is, is the church the church? Because when we are, it brings real good to society. It protects children. It helps secure flourishing. It becomes a better context for building a society that respects the inherent dignity and worth of various people,

groups that sometimes get left out. I mean, that's really what we're about and is helping, you know, how can Christians think like Christians about the most difficult and challenging issues that we're facing the culture today? So, you know, you can probably the easiest place to check out is either breakpoint.org. You can also go to our podcast, wherever you download a podcast, look up the Breakpoint podcast. And that's a daily five to seven minute commentary on something happening in our world from a Christian worldview. Excellent.

John Stone Street president of the Colson Center. Thank you so much for time. My pleasure. Thank you. With that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us here on The Daily Signal podcast. If you haven't had the chance, be sure to leave us a five-star rating and review. We love hearing your feedback.

It's really helpful for us to know what you want to hear more of on the show. And be sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from the Daily Signal podcast. We'll see you right back here around 5 p.m. for our top news edition. The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, Mary Margaret O'Holohan, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.