City of Man: A Conversation with Michael Gerson and Pete Wehner

The Religious Right has already survived a thousand death knells. But something seems to be different this time. A number of key leaders, including Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy, have died. The millennial generation doesn’t appear eager to pick up their cause. We live in a transition period. Younger evangelicals may try to avoid the mistakes of older generations, but we don’t yet know what they will offer by way of a positive program for bringing religion to bear on politics.

There is no shortage of writers who would advise evangelicals on how to proceed. Just this year we’ve heard from several top-flight thinkers, such as James Davison Hunter, who suggested a period of political withdrawal in his book To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Indeed, evangelicals would be wise to reconsider the first principles of how, why, and what we contribute to politics based on our beliefs. But White House veterans Michael Gerson and Pete Wehner respectfully disagree that evangelicals should step back. Too much is at stake. Yes, the Religious Right made a theological mistake by equating biblical Israel with the United States. Yes, its defensive, apocalyptic tone alienated non-Christians. At least they understood, though, that human life and marriage are worth fighting to protect.

Gerson and Wehner draw on biblical doctrines, such as the image of God, to propose a political agenda concerned with human rights that applies to all Americans. And they apply lessons learned from the civil-rights movement and other achievements to suggest how Christians can love God and their neighbors through politics. I sat down this fall with Gerson and Wehner in Washington, D.C., to talk about these and many other ideas. Their book is the first in the Cultural Renewal series, which I am editing for Moody Publishers with Tim Keller. He wrote the book’s foreword.