When I met James Davison Hunter at the University of Virginia it was 2016. I asked him about politics. He waved me off and told me to think less about the weather and more about the climate. I’ve never forgotten the lesson.

In his newest book, Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis (Yale), Hunter gives us a climate report that explains why our weather has been so severe. He argues that we don’t share common political ground because we no longer share a common view of a good society. We don’t have the cultural resources to work through what divides us. The left say they want justice. The right say they want nostalgia. But their intensity of longing for an ideal world “is redirected into fury against the present, a fury channeled into the demand to purge, dismantle, deconstruct, and negate.” And we end up locked in never-ending “culture war,” a term Hunter popularized 30 years ago.

So can we hope against hope as Christians who care about the health of our nation? I asked Hunter in the return episode of Gospelbound. In this fall 2024 season we look forward to hearing from Nancy Pearcey, Michael Reeves, Gavin Ortlund, Michael Horton, Hans Madueme, Mark Vroegop, and others.

Thank you for helping Gospelbound reach 6.6 million downloads this summer! Please help others find these insightful authors and their books by leaving a review and rating. You can also find every video (and see our newly redesigned recording studio!) on YouTube. Lately we’ve been releasing shorter clips from classic episodes, including this conversation with Tim Keller about forgiveness.