Should the American Pope Debate the American President? Jack Hanson on the Radical Reformation of the Catholic Church

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. We're having a Yale kind of week. Yesterday, we had the Yale professor, Steven B. Smith, professor of politics and philosophy at Yale, very distinguished man with a distinguished new book On Statesmanship about why we don't seem to have any statesmen in the contemporary world. Today, we have, another Yale man, this time rather younger than Smith. Jack Hanson got his PhD from Yale in religious studies in 2024. He's taught there, and he has a really interesting new piece. It's the cover of, Harper's Magazine, the oldest continuous American monthly, entitled "Holy War: The American Pope." It's a long essay about the Catholic Church's progressive revival called, appropriately enough, "Radical Reformation." Maybe it's a rather inappropriate title. Jack is joining us from upstate New York. Jack, I'm sure you haven't had a chance to, to read, Smith's On Statesmanship. I'm not sure if you ever came across him when you were a student at Yale. But do you think there's any connection between, it seems, the crisis of secular authority in the world today, the fact that there don't seem to be any statesmen either? They seem to be, technocrats or demagogues, and this rise that you chart in this, Harper's essay of the moral authority of the church?

00:02:07 Jack Hanson: Yeah. I think so. I wouldn't wanna overstate the extent to which there were great statesmen in the past of, strict moral authority in the way that we look for it now, i.e., good men who are capable of doing great things. I think that's always been a problem. But, I think there is a general crisis in institutional legitimacy and the idea that the churches, the states, the organs of governance, and also of community have some kind of natural claim over the way that we're living our lives. Yeah. I think that's in free fall. And one of the sort of great ironies, I think, great historical ironies, is that the church was one of the first, institutions to face that kind of crisis. It's the kind of paragon of that institutional crisis. And for it to now come back as maybe the last moral voice, on the global stage, is part of what, you know, part of the reason I was asked to write this piece.

00:03:16 Andrew Keen: Smith, Smith's notion of statesmanship in terms of paragons of statesmen or examples of decent statesmen, moral statesmen over the certainly in the twentieth century brought up Churchill, of course, de Gaulle, FDR. What does the church historically make of those kind of state leaders? I mean, obviously, you're a scholar of this. Are you a believer too? Are you a part of the church, John [as spoken: Jack]?

00:03:42 Jack Hanson: I'm a part of the church. I have that bad academic tic of not liking any of those words that are usually used to describe religious affiliation. So, the shorthand is yes. But if we had all day and all night and all tomorrow, we could get into why I'm—

00:04:01 Andrew Keen: Another time. So, again, I didn't mean to open that particular can of worms, but, just to get some clarity. What does—

00:04:08 Jack Hanson: Sure.

00:04:09 Andrew Keen: What has the Catholic Church in the twentieth century yours is a history of—

00:04:14 Jack Hanson: Mhmm.

00:04:15 Andrew Keen: What you call the Catholic Church progressive Catholic Church's progressive revival over the last 150 years. What would the church or what has the church made of the moral authority of characters like Churchill and de Gaulle and FDR?

00:04:33 Jack Hanson: I think more often than not, the church over the course of the twentieth century especially saw these figures like this and as, you know, the western democracies more generally, as the home of the church, the base of the church. And so, you know, of course, there are always discrete conflicts and disagreements and that sort of thing. But I think part of what I argue in the church is that in the piece rather, is that, especially by the middle of the twentieth century, the church saw itself as the civilizational guardian, the moral the conscience of the West as the center of the human family. And what I what is referred to as the progressive revival, is really what's happened over the last 20 years or so where the church has ceased to see the West as its spiritual home, and has tried to reconfigure itself as a global institution.

00:05:29 Andrew Keen: What should we make? I take your point over the last 20 years, and that's, of course, the essence of your essay, and we'll talk about it. But can we discount the whole history of the Catholic Church? I mean, obviously, the Crusades, treatment of all non-Catholics, the civil wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, the senior Catholic, officials' associations, with, with the Nazis in the twentieth century. What can we just discount all that? You're clearly a progressive, and you clearly embrace this radical tradition within the Catholic Church. But what do you do with this whole history of this institution? You note at the end of, your piece that the church is the oldest and largest institution in the world.

00:06:16 Jack Hanson: Mhmm.

00:06:18 Andrew Keen: But that accounts for not the last 20 years of the church's history, but the last 2,000 years.

00:06:30 Jack Hanson: You certainly can't discount any of the, the near infinite depredations of the church as an institution and then especially of particular Catholics and Christians, because, of course, remember, it doesn't make much sense to talk about Catholic as distinct from any other kind of Christian before, the sixteenth century and or maybe, you know, before the eleventh century, depending on who you ask. I think, you know, the Second Vatican Council in the sixties tried to deal with this directly and that, rather than the church being the hierarchy or the church being the Vatican, the church is, the people of God. That's how it was redefined in the sixties. And so in that way, it makes it both easier and harder to deal with the whole swath of the church, especially its many sins, which is, on the one hand, it's a human institution. So, of course, it's full of sinners. You wouldn't need a church if it weren't. And on the other hand then, of course, if you're trying to see it as the bastion of some, well, some kind of good, never mind some kind of divine revelation, then, yeah, of course, the task is much, much harder. It's one of the reasons I start the piece, in the mid nineteenth century and not, say, the sixteenth century.

00:07:46 Andrew Keen: You know— you actually start to— you start the piece with a quote from a certain American president. "Open the fucking streets, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell." You may go to hell for putting that into a piece about the church, John [as spoken: Jack].

00:08:02 Jack Hanson: I think the church can take a little swearing. No. I mean, you know, one well, yes. So I start the piece there as to try to re to orient us in, why people are so preoccupied with the church now. But the historical story that I tell starts in the middle of the nineteenth century because it that is when the church loses the Papal States. You know, for the first time in 1,000 years, it doesn't have a major, secular political center. And from then on, it has to continually reorient itself in the world. What kind of institution is it going to be? I think the one what it's saying now is that as opposed to finding the ideal alliance with some kind of power structure, it's going to reorient itself as against power as such, which is almost a paradox in modern terms.

00:08:53 Andrew Keen: A paradox, but also, I guess, convenient. I mean, it comes back to Smith's piece, his new book, On Statesmanship, which is, of course, associated with power and men like FDR, at least in his view, de Gaulle and Churchill, who operate responsibly, sometimes even ethically in terms of the in terms of that power. Are you suggesting that having lost the Papal States in the middle of the nineteenth century, Jack, this essentially freed the Catholic Church to be more moral? And would you argue then that any association with power is by definition, if not immoral, certainly amoral?

00:09:34 Jack Hanson: I wouldn't I mean, yes. Part it was a it was in a certain way a cataclysm, the loss of the Papal States. It was the end of a 1,000-year period of political legitimacy. Everything had to be rethought. I wouldn't say that association with power is necessarily immoral, just that the exercise of power is always, bound up with moral dilemmas. And the role of the church, increasingly is to put a check on power and not allow it to see itself as the final word on human affairs.

00:10:08 Andrew Keen: Is there well, there clearly is a tradition of this skepticism and perhaps hostility to earthly power within the church that goes back to the beginnings of the church. Who in particular do you trace this tradition back to? I mean, of course, there are so many readings, different readings of the Bible, so many different Catholic theologians and theological traditions. Where is all this rooted?

00:10:39 Jack Hanson: Well, as you say, it's rooted in the beginnings of the church. It's rooted in the Gospel. "Have no thought for tomorrow." That apocalyptic vision that, that earthly life is, you know, not only bound to return to dust, but is itself kind of, broken. And were it not for the incarnation and the triumphant resurrection, would have been irredeemably broken. And the early Christians clearly saw themselves as inhabiting, an apocalyptic moment. You know? They were effectively sort of antinomian communists. They held everything in common. They were always staying you know, in times of plague, they would stay behind in cities to take care of the sick, giving no thought for their own well-being, and they were seen as, you know, as freaks for this. More proximately, you know, there are a million examples across church history, and one that comes to mind is Thomas More. So Thomas More, who offered the first really powerful critique of private property in western history, in the enclosures, controversy of the sixteenth century. Again, the reason I start in the sort of late nineteenth century is that's the that is a much more proximate period, where the church is clearly making itself available to the growing labor movement, for example, with the 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum. And then throughout the twentieth century, there's the Catholic Worker and Dorothy Day in the United States, liberation theology in, in South America and places like Peru and El Salvador. There are a number of places throughout. What's interesting now is that the Vatican, the institutional center, is starting to orient itself toward that, more radical subversive tradition rather than being a kind of, avatar for institutional power, or global power.

00:12:40 Andrew Keen: It's interesting, Jack, you bring up Sir Thomas More, of course, the author of Utopia, very influential English theologian. But, of course, there were two Thomas Mores. There was the More who questioned property and inequality and also the More who, seemed to take pleasure or at least support the persecution of heretics. Is that coincidental, or are there always gonna be two Thomas Mores when it comes to radical reformers within the church? I'm not suggesting that guys like you are in favor of torturing heretics, but, is that a challenge for a believer? After all, you're presenting the church in your essay and in our conversation so far as a kind of socialism. So why not just drop all the god stuff? Why not just become a socialist, the secular socialist?

00:13:33 Jack Hanson: There I mean, there's two questions there. One is whether these reformers are always going to have some kind of reactionary or, more, authority—

00:13:43 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Within the church. I'm not suggesting that it was the church. But—

00:13:49 Jack Hanson: Yeah. Maybe. I mean, and if it's not that, it'll be some other sin. As I say, the church is full of sinners. I think part of, the radical claim that Christianity makes is in the, emphasis on personal spiritual development and not having heroes. I mean, it's full of ironies and attenuation, so it's difficult to give a sort of sound bite answer about this. But you, you know, you take what's valuable and you move forward. Why not why drop the god stuff? Well, because I think it's important. And I think Christianity is not just a social movement. It's also many other things. It's a theological movement, an eschatological movement. You can just be a socialist. It's a difference. The question is what kind of social presence is the church going to have?

00:14:47 Andrew Keen: Well, actually, let me revise that question. It was a rather vulgar idea I threw at you. What do you bring, you Catholic progressives, what do you bring to socialism? You're presenting it as this new version of Catholicism, this radical reformation as a kind of socialism, certainly a humanism or a humanistic socialism. What do you bring the left or progressives, that they wouldn't have without God, so to speak?

00:15:24 Jack Hanson: I'm not sure I would frame it precisely as without God, and I'm not sure I would frame it precisely as, you know, there being some deep lack, and then the church can make up for that lack. It's more I would frame it more as just broadening the spectrum of what kind what we owe to one another, and what kinds of communities we want to build, in our time on Earth. From a certain perspective, you could say it adds a broader horizon. It says that, what we do here is not simply a matter of resource allocation, but it actually has something to do with how we relate to our ultimate destiny, and our relationship, you know, not simply to one another, not simply to the environment, but to the nature of reality itself. I think it brings a lot more poetry in, but it also brings, I think, a richer history. One of the problems with the left as I see it is that it has, a big outstanding question about what it means by the secular. For a long time, it was really easy for the and reasonable and justifiable, for the left to see, you know, religion as simply the institutional church, the institutional church being a pretty authoritarian reactionary institution, you know, fairly black and white in an increasingly global context where left movements are, more organically bound up with faith, traditions, be they Jewish, Muslim, Catholic in the global South, whatever they might be. That's that, that straightforward secularism or, anti-religious, sentiment is, I think, harder to hold. It's more complicated.

00:17:13 Andrew Keen: Are we talking, though, about a new, shall we say, popular front when it comes to progressivism? I mean, can Catholics now and what does the pope say about this, the current pope, of course, who's very vocal in these issues? We'll come to him more specifically in a few minutes. But how do you I mean, you in a general sense. I know you represent this in some ways, and you're also writing about it for Harper's. How do you relate and work with other progressives who simply don't believe in the Catholic Church or God or any kind of theology or mysticism?

00:17:59 Jack Hanson: Well, I'm struggling to see what would stop me, from having a productive political relationship. There's again, I think the church is a various and variegated, historical institution, and it there's lots of room, you know, both within the church for non-theological debate, but also lots of room in a Catholic worldview for, I don't know, for doubt, for skepticism, for outright atheism. You know? I'm not trying to say the church is all things to all people, but there is a certain impetus on, within the Catholic worldview to meet people, to use a cliche, where they are. Part of what's interesting about our moment is that the church is meeting the left where it is, not specifically, not to sort of make itself more left, but that those are historical circumstances.

00:19:00 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And it's very ironic that the left itself seems to be or at least the secular left, especially in America, seems to be in a kind of crisis. It's, and it's ironic that the church is—

00:19:10 Jack Hanson: We're seeing signs of life electorally. DSA has more members than it's ever had. But, I mean, the left, it until recently, was at its historical nadir was but so was the church. These things were—

00:19:23 Andrew Keen: Oh, good. That's not coincidental. One thing that I didn't expect to pop up in your excellent essay was 9/11, but you, you make it quite central in your argument. How did 9/11 reshape, especially the American church—

00:19:39 Jack Hanson: Yeah.

00:19:40 Andrew Keen: And the world to create these conditions for what you call this radical reformation?

00:19:47 Jack Hanson: I think 9/11 was one and the war on terror, that followed was one of the things that made it, that drove a wedge between the church and what you might call the sort of the West, you know, capital-W West, the NATO alliance, the rules-based international order. Because prior to that, despite being avowedly pretty rigorously secular, the West saw an ally in the church as, an engine of social cohesion, as a kind of civilizational feather in its cap, you know, however you wanna call it, part of the general patrimony of Western civilization. In the war on terror, especially a lot of the sort of rhetorical debates that may seem epiphenomenal or kind of, sensationalist, but I think had real weight in how people were thinking about these things, the new atheism, for example. What you saw was the enemy in the global war on terror being seen not simply as, a rival religion, but as a representative of religion as such. We on the West, we were secular. If we still had religion, we kept it in check. We kept it as a question of personal morality. It didn't guide our global ambitions, as a political body. One of the ways, the, you know, global jihad, for example, was treated, it was as a relic of a past that we were trying to overcome. And so, you know, Pope John Paul II, for example, was a vociferous opponent of the Iraq War. And I think not just because it was an obviously disastrous, stupid criminal thing to do, but because he saw, he saw a certain kinship in the more outwardly religious countries' terrains that this war was gonna have its most direct effect.

00:21:48 Andrew Keen: The current pope recently, last week called for an end to Middle East violence. I mean, even Donald Trump, I think, wouldn't disagree with that. He's certainly not in favor, formally at least, of violence. But how much of this recent reformation of the church you write about is bound up in the rise of in terms of 9/11, radical Islam, and the threat at least from in the minds of conservatives from Islamic theology?

00:22:25 Jack Hanson: It's a complicated question, and I wanna be careful not to say too much about it. Make too strong a claim, but I think one way you can think about it is a general collapse of what once might have been called the secularization thesis that as societies become more advanced, more literate, more industrialized, they'll become less, quote, unquote, religious. I mean, many scholars place the end of that thesis, in the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. But I think and it's taken a bit longer to, you know, make its way back to the West. But I think that's part of what you're seeing is that the old divide we saw between, say, civilization and religious belief, reason and faith, these things are, are much more intertwined than, you know, many in the twentieth century, for example, would have assumed. So I don't know how much there's a sort of direct causal relationship between, say, the war on terror and the rise of what my editors, called the progressive revival, in the church. But there's a broad, civilizational trajectory that, makes these things not coincidental.

00:23:42 Andrew Keen: So if the church, as you say, and don't seem I don't think many people will debate this, certainly, under the current pope, is defining itself, in terms of opposition to power, what does the church make of power itself? Are people who hold power, by definition, bad, suspect, immoral?

00:24:10 Jack Hanson: General orientation as opposed to guiding any specific, decision. It has. So, for example, you saw the pope in Spain recently praising certain, policies of the Spanish government. But he's very specific not to say praise the great country of Spain, you know, or, all praise to the leader of Spain. He was talking about policies and actions and, orientations towards the poor and the well-being of, the general community. I think that's what you're gonna see more of. Less, strict antagonism towards power as such and more, a positive emphasis on the good.

00:24:57 Andrew Keen: What gives then this current pope such authority? Of course, he recently came out with his Magnifica Humanitas about what he wanted to see and not see with technology and AI in particular. Why should we trust this, morally, at least, this pope? What does he see that others don't?

00:25:20 Jack Hanson: Well, for one thing, he's, he's offered a 40,000-word document making arguments, that you should trust him. I think that's one of the things that people find so interesting is that he's bringing these claims, in a humanist vein, you know, in the sense of rational arguments, on the basis of humane inquiry. For a leader to do that these days is remarkable. You know? We see a lot more bombast than we used to from everyone else. And for the leader of the global Catholic Church, however many, 1.8 billion people, to bring forth reasoned arguments for the consideration of people of all goodwill, is itself, a point in his favor. I also think that it's the obvious of us [unclear], you know, a cynic might be skeptical of this, but in my view, the obvious lack of personal interest in this. That is to say, he doesn't stand to gain anything by being against power this, openly. In fact, it's made a lot of trouble, for him. But as he keeps saying, he's not afraid. He's saying things that a lot of other people want to hear.

00:26:34 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Maybe that's the problem, though. He's as you say, he's saying things a lot other people want to hear. He's saying, for example, that AI must serve humanity, not concentrate power. But the reality out here I mean, I'm in San Francisco. Silicon Valley is about, for better or worse, the concentration of power.

00:26:51 Jack Hanson: Mhmm.

00:26:52 Andrew Keen: If the church does indeed define itself in terms of opposing power, where does it where does its power come from? I mean, you can say these sorts of things about AI serving humanity, whatever humanity is, not concentrating power. But the reality is it does concentrate power. So has he become or is the church becoming, a very convenient and reassuring moral progressive center that doesn't actually make any changes to the world itself?

00:27:28 Jack Hanson: Well, I think one of the things that it does, one of the is, it legitimizes popular dissent in providing this kind of voice, when, you know, every other organ of state, every other sort of form of mass media is saying things like AI is here. Get used to it. You see billboards on the subway saying stop hiring human beings. AI will, you know, take care of all your business needs. No more need to care for one another, and people are rightly terrified by this kind of rhetoric. And arguably, even more powerful, at least sort of discursively powerful institution is saying precisely the opposite, which inspires people to, as it were, find their own voice, take matters into their own hands politically. As I said before, you know, the Vatican, the Second Vatican Council redefined the church, away from, you know, the hierarchy itself towards the people of God. The church is what makes Leo's, voice actually have material power is its legitimation of democratic discourse.

00:28:51 Andrew Keen: But does Leo or do the church bring a new definition, important bit definition [unclear]? I'm always rather skeptical of this word, humanity, because it depends who uses it. Do they bring I mean, if are they speaking in a secular sense about humanity? Are they talking about humanity in terms of being judged by God, in terms of heaven or hell? I mean, what—

00:29:13 Jack Hanson: Yeah.

00:29:14 Andrew Keen: What moral authority does Leo bring or the church bring when it comes to defining what exactly humanity is? We're all wrestling with this in the age of AI, including the inventors of AI. Nobody quite knows. You know, we had the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, on the show few months ago.

00:29:33 Jack Hanson: Mhmm.

00:29:33 Andrew Keen: So no one's immune from confronting this question of what it means to be human in the age of smart machines. What particular authority does Leo bring? Is it 2,000 years of Christian history, of debate? Is it a decency? Is it the fact that he doesn't hold power?

00:29:55 Jack Hanson: I think it's all of those things. I mean, it's a really interesting question, not least because, you know, there have been great critiques of humanism over the last 50 years as a weapon of empire, for example, as a weapon of colonialism. You, you know, you formulate a humanism that excludes many people that you want to take advantage of and exploit. I think, you know, for example, one of the reasons that, Leo included an apology for the church's involvement in slavery in the past in the encyclical was to take specific stock of the ways the word human humanity, has been abused over the last 2,000 years, and that the church is it's a bit ironic to say so, but the church is uniquely qualified to comment on it because it's made so many of the mistakes that it sees being made now. The kinds of exploitation, the kinds of exclusionary humanism that the church once championed, it is now trying to warn against. So it's less, wielding direct moral authority in order to say exactly what humanity is and more taking advantage of the benefit of its, of its past and of its mistakes to reframe the question that we're all asking now.

00:31:16 Andrew Keen: But the church itself must be divided. You've noted in the essay that the history, over the last certainly 20 years or 100 years is this tension between reaction, the forces of reaction, and progress. I'm assuming that there's a significant, maybe, minority, but, nonetheless, a good number of people both within the formal establishment and Catholics in general who don't like this pope.

00:31:49 Jack Hanson: No. In fact, in the in this Harper's issue, one of the index items was, I believe it said, number of, Americans who dislike this pope is one in ten, and the number of American Catholics who dislike this pope is one in five. So it's always going to be—

00:32:09 Andrew Keen: Which isn't surprising, really, actually. I mean, it sounds surprising, but it isn't if you give it a little bit of thought.

00:32:16 Jack Hanson: No. Especially in the American context where there's always been a fraught relationship with Rome. You know, the in a way, the relationship between the United States and the Catholic Church is the sort of hinge question of Western modernity. And, you know, there's always for American Catholics, there I think there's always a question implicit or otherwise is, which are you more, you know, American or Catholic? Doesn't mean anybody has to come down on an answer to that question, But it is it does tend to be a question for us. But—

00:32:50 Andrew Keen: No. Yeah.

00:32:51 Jack Hanson: Of course, there's conflict, within the church. I think that's one of the reasons that Leo is always emphasizing unity, especially, you know, in—

00:33:00 Andrew Keen: Yeah. But it's his unity on his terms, isn't it?

00:33:04 Jack Hanson: No. Not necessarily. I mean, he's happy to draw red lines on, when it's a question of traditional dogmatic teaching. But for example, the recent excommunications of the, the Latin Mass partisans, the Society of Saint Pius X, you know, they were welcomed back into the fold after being initially excommunicated decades ago. And Leo repeatedly, you know, publicly begged them simply to not cross the red line of ordaining their own priests [ed.: the July 2026 rupture turned on the SSPX consecrating four bishops without a papal mandate]. He said we can keep the conversation going. We can continue to have, debates within the fold about liturgical legitimacy. You just can't ordain your own priests. And they went and did it, and he said, you know, sadly, we now have to follow through on what is clear church doctrine. I think he's unusually open to dissent and debate, as—

00:34:02 Andrew Keen: And what would he make? I mean or what do you make? I mean, you noted that one in ten Americans don't like the current pope and one in five Catholics, which means that nonbelievers, or at least non-Catholics, are more sympathetic to the pope than American Catholics.

00:34:18 Jack Hanson: Yeah.

00:34:19 Andrew Keen: What would he or you make of all those nonbelievers? Are they really Catholic? Is there an argument to be made?

00:34:30 Jack Hanson: Are the nonbelievers really Catholic—

00:34:32 Andrew Keen: Yeah.

00:34:33 Jack Hanson: Is the question.

00:34:34 Andrew Keen: Would that be a kind of, an Aristotelian conclusion?

00:34:41 Jack Hanson: Yeah. I could yes. Yeah. I could see. I mean, you know, it's the sort of triumphalist argument that, that the church is less inclined to make these days. But I do think that there's a certain way in which the church sees itself as the final expression of what is essentially human. And this really is what, for example, Pope Francis meant when he said that, not long before he died, that there are many paths to God, that the church in his estimation was the clearest and most direct, but that there are many others. In a way, you could see that as deflating the church's authority, but in another you could in another way, you could see it as precisely the obverse that every spiritual expression is trying to do the same thing that Catholics believe Catholicism does the best.

00:35:27 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And maybe it's not coincidental that this kind of universalism comes at a time where the American promise of universalism, for better or worse, seems to have broken down.

00:35:40 Jack Hanson: Yes.

00:35:40 Andrew Keen: And it may not be coincidental that we have an American pope at a time when we have a particularly controversial, at least in my mind, rather unpleasant American president.

00:35:53 Jack Hanson: Not a coincidence, I don't think. Again, many of the cardinals were very specific. I think it was I don't wanna misattribute this. I believe it was, Cardinal McElroy of DC who is a member of the last conclave. I could be wrong about that. Who when asked, you know, did you elect an American pope because of the American president? This cardinal said, "His name wasn't mentioned once." I will— cannot overemphasize how little he was thought of in this.

00:36:22 Andrew Keen: That's not like the end of Casablanca when he said, "Shocked. Really shocked."

00:36:30 Jack Hanson: That may be true. I'm not suggesting anyone's lying. It could also be the case that these two things are not coincidences.

00:36:38 Andrew Keen: What do your friends, or associates within progressive Catholic movement, supporters of the pope, what do you make of the American evangelical support for Trump and MAGA? Are these people really Christians in not in your mind, but in the mind of somebody like Leo? What's the take on radical American evangelicalism?

00:37:04 Jack Hanson: Well, radical American evangelicalism's, love affair with reactionary politics is nothing new. You know, we saw in, late seventies and early eighties the rise of the Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell, hitching their wagon to the presidency of Ronald Reagan as they smashed labor and, began the slow or, well, the rapid destruction of the welfare state and the social safety net. The question of whether they're Christians or not, sure. Why not? It can be I mean, the I think the Catholic perspective is that they and you don't wanna put too paint with too broad a brush, but it would be seen as, essentially in schism. You know, there are other Protestant, denominations with which the church is in partial communion, for example. But the kind of non-Unitarian [ed.: possibly "non-denominational"], prosperity gospel or dispensationalist that you find among, the American right, it really doesn't have much to do with historical Christianity, either politically or theologically.

00:38:20 Andrew Keen: You end, your excellent piece with, a comment about Leo that he yeah. He has no intention of entering into a debate with Donald Trump. And, of course, there's a Caesarist quality to Trump, both consciously and unconsciously, certainly, trying to be a Caesar. And, of course, there's much in the Bible about Caesar and politics and moral authority. Isn't that rather convenient that Leo doesn't wanna enter into a debate? He said, "I have no intention of entering into debate with him, which is not in my interest at all." What's in his interest? Surely, it would be in his interest or at least the interest of the church to take on Caesar. Or is that a subject which the church has already been burnt on many times in history?

00:39:12 Jack Hanson: I think the church one of the things that's so exciting is the church is making itself available for that kind of burning. It's I think what he's saying is very specifically, that he doesn't see himself as a political figure of the same stripe as somebody like Donald Trump, or any head of state. He says—

00:39:34 Andrew Keen: But, Jack, isn't that the whole point? I sorry to interrupt you, but I mean, it's a very convenient definition when you don't wanna be, quote, unquote, political, but he is, by definition, political. So particularly, and coming back to where we began with this scarcity of statesmanship and moral leadership, political moral leadership in the world today that Steven Smith writes about in On Statesmanship, isn't the need for the pope to actually take on Trump and say, okay. I'm gonna sit down with you. I'm gonna talk to you. I'm gonna tell you why I'm right and you're wrong.

00:40:08 Jack Hanson: Well, he's had a couple of, diplomats, heads of state come and visit. He's JD Vance and Marco Rubio both went. Vatican diplomats are meet are talking to, the American government, pretty regularly. I think what he's saying there is actually he's making things harder on himself, not more convenient, but less. He's saying that his role is not to, win a poll or, effectively campaign for the next election. He's saying that his role is to, as it were, beat Trump on a higher register to not simply to win a political debate, but to shape consciences, both in the United States and across the, the globe in that context. No. A direct debate with a president who's gonna be out of office in a couple years isn't in his interest. It's too small a task.

00:40:57 Andrew Keen: Maybe your, piece should be called, on the American pope, "Holy Peace" rather than "Holy War," but it's an important piece and certainly a very, very important subject. Jack Hanson is very articulate, very well versed in both the history and the contemporary realities, for better or worse, of the church. His new essay is the cover piece for Harper's this month: "Radical Reformation: The Catholic Church's Progressive Revival." And, Jack, you've been very polite with my impertinent secular questions. I very much appreciate it. Excellent conversation. Thank you so much.

00:41:34 Jack Hanson: Thanks very much for having me.