Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Jonathan Rauch, and Others Discuss Dallin Oaks, Christianity, and American Democracy

On Tuesday, March 18th, the UVA Miller Center hosted Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Jonathan Rauch to discuss his new book, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy. The Richard L. Bushman Chair of Mormon Studies and Professor Laurie Maffly-Kipp featured on the panel with Rauch, as well as Director of Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law Colin Bird and Miller Center Senior Fellow and Taylor Professor of Politics John M. Owen IV. Each panelist took turns asking Rauch about his central thesis: that Christianity’s virtues and transcendent ideals used to provide a load-bearing wall to support democracy, which has been lost as churches have given into political and cultural warring.

Rauch expressed hope that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, especially under the leadership of First Counselor to the First Presidency Dallin Oaks, might emerge as an example of how Christians can support democratic processes while still upholding their distinctive doctrines. He cited Dallin Oaks’s 2021 Joseph Smith Lecture, in which he called for settling political differences without compromising core values (see the video clip below for an excerpt from this lecture).

Rauch explained that Latter-day Saints exemplified this tenet in Utah Republicans’ support of the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, which provided religious freedoms for Mormons to continue to oppose same-sex marriage within the church, while compromising with LGBT citizens in the broader American public. 

You can watch a recording of the event on the Miller Center’s YouTube channel.