535 | Ross Douthat: Why You Should Be Religious & the Rise of the Post-Christian Right

The Realignment

Technology, News Commentary, National Security, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, News, Public Policy, Economics, Politics, Saager Enjeti, U.s. Politics, Policy

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ross Douthat, New York Times columnist and author of Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, returns to The Realignment. Marshall and Ross discuss the case for serious religious belief in a secularized America, the rise of the post-Christian right, why America could swing in an increasingly religious direction over the next few decades, Ross's recent interview with Steve Bannon on tech's relationship to the right.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the show. Today's guest is making
0:06.4	a return appearance. I'm speaking with the New York Times' conservative columnist Ross Douthit about his new
0:11.7	book, believe why everyone should be religious. As with all the things of your alignment, we're covering
0:17.1	a mix of politics, policy, and of course, the sociocultural reality of the United States in the year 2025.
0:24.2	Ross, in the book, Believe, discusses his actual belief that in the next 20 years or so,
0:29.0	we're going to see a swing away from the new atheism of the 2000s and 2010s and towards a possibly more religious society over the course of the next few decades.
0:38.3	We also discussed the rise and fall of the religious right and how with the rise of the new right
0:43.9	and the tech right, we see something else emerging during Trump's second presidency.
0:48.8	We also, of course, discussed the overall realignment and his recent interview with Steve Bannon, Trump's former
0:55.4	strategist, on Ross's New York Times podcast, Matter of Opinion. Hope you all enjoy the conversation
1:01.7	and a huge thank you to the Foundation for American Innovation supporting the work of this podcast.
1:07.6	Ross Douthit, welcome back to the realignment. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be back.
1:12.6	I'm super pumped to chat with you. So we're going to discuss your new book, Believe,
1:17.6	why everyone should be religious, and we're going to get into a bunch of other realignment-centric topics.
1:23.6	But a way of tying both the book of the weak nature of this episode to the discourses.
1:28.9	I'm going to read a tweet.
1:29.8	This is probably one of your most famous tweets within a very specific intellectual son.
1:34.0	But I think you will get at the actual topic we're covering today.
1:37.9	This is February 29, 2016, a thought sent back in time to the theocracy panic of 2005. If you dislike the religious
1:47.5	right, wait until you meet the post religious right. That, I think, is at the core of both
1:54.4	understanding the Trump moment, but also the religious conversation we're having. We're going to go
1:58.8	back to 2006, the new atheism,
	...

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