In a country splitting apart over so much, three words point toward a better way to live: attention, agency, and power. David French returns to Conversing to take up all three. A New York Times opinion writer since January 2023, French writes from a conservative theological background about law, culture, religion, and armed conflict, and has found himself writing directly into the middle of divided hostilities.

French comments on how attention, agency, and power took shape in him, and how each gets distorted by partisan fundamentalisms (on both the right and left) built to shut conversation down rather than open it up. He and Mark discuss the courage required to seek out the strongest version of an opposing view, the ways we extend ourselves grace we deny to everyone else,  the spiritual danger of believing you must hold power before you can do any good, and the Civil Rights Movement's commitment to "reconciliation over victory" as a promising model for Christian public life today.

Episode Highlights

  • "One of the things that was so damaging … was that humility was often seen as inconsistent with conviction."

  • "A lot of life is … embracing agency and … becoming more and more aware of the tidal forces that brought us to a particular point."

  • "Curiosity and openness requires courage because you're told what to think about everybody, and if you … question that, you can be thrown out of your tribe. You can lose your community."

  • "We must pursue justice, but when we think we have to have power to pursue justice, then we're on the road to perdition."

About David French

David French is an opinion columnist for The New York Times writing on law, faith, and politics. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he spent much of his career as a constitutional litigator and once led the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He grew up in the Churches of Christ in Kentucky, studied at Lipscomb University—where he now teaches—and served in Iraq as a US Army judge advocate, earning a Bronze Star. With Russell Moore and Curtis Chang, he created The After Party, a curriculum for Christian political engagement. His most recent book is Divided We Fall.

Helpful Links and Resources

Show Notes

  • Three words to guide public life: attention, agency, power

  • A born contrarian shaped by a fundamentalism: "collectively contrarian" yet "individually very conformist"

  • Harvard Law exposed how "contingent and place-based my own beliefs are"; experiencing a pull toward "the story behind the story"

  • Attention as discipline—seeking "the best expression of opposing views," never the other side's worst

  • Partisans slander rather than engage: "language designed to shut off conversation, not to invite it"

  • Reading the Bible cover to cover in sixth grade, arriving at the lesson that "we're way too dogmatic about stuff"

  • How to embody a faith that can hold conviction and humility side by side

  • Agency according to Gandalf: "It's not up to us to determine the times in which we live," only how we respond

  • Curiosity requires courage, since dissent threatens loss of community

  • Power's real peril—"the spiritually corrupting power of power" and fooling yourself into virtue

  • The undermining of justice by seeking to hold and maintain power; examples in Rosa Parks and Jim Crow segregation / Jesus and the Roman Empire

  • Christian nationalism as "for the nation to be good, Christians must rule"

  • Restoring the Civil Rights Movement's commitment to the way of Jesus: reconciliation, not victory

#DavidFrench #Conversing #FaithAndPolitics #ChristianNationalism #Attention #Agency #Power #Curiosity #CivilRights

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