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A
Almost like I feel like he's offering people the diet caffeine free version.
B
Yeah.
A
Yeah, right. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Sky Pod, brought to you by Holy Post Media and Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill. I am joined today by. By my colleague Caitlin Shess. Hi, Caitlin.
B
Hi, Sky.
A
Do you know that reference?
B
No, I have no idea. I was actually mentally going, is that a real. Are you being serious or is that a joke? I couldn't tell.
A
I'm just gonna leave it. You never know. Maybe we have a new sponsor. Okay, maybe we don't. Thank you all for joining us this week. So Caitlin is here because we're gonna have a discussion. Things pop up from time to time that just happen. And we're like, we need to talk about this.
B
Yes. Or really we're like, already talking about it in the office. And then we go, we. We should record this.
A
Exactly. So you and I, and I think others around us at Holy Post Media, we take in a lot of other shows, podcasts, content, podcast people. And one of the more regular things we engage in is the Ezra Klein Show.
B
I love him. I love the Ezra Klein Show. I just. I think he's so smart and I. Even where I disagree with him, I'm made better by listening to him.
A
Okay, well, for those who don't know, Ezra Klein is a columnist at the New York Times.
B
Yep. He.
A
I don't know. He's been there for a long time.
B
Yeah. And he started vox.
A
Yes.
B
The kind of explainer news source. That was a while ago.
A
That was a while ago. So Ezra has. He does great interviews. Interviews, Interesting people. He did an interview on January 13 on the Ezra Klein show with James Talarico. Some of you might know that name. Hopefully you do. He is a representative in Texas, a Democratic representative in Texas who is running for the Senate seat there. He's in a primary representative runoff with Jasmine Crockett. And he was on our show back on episode 684, meaning the holy Post flagship show. I interviewed him there. He's a Democrat. He's progressive in his politics, but he's very outspoken about his Christian faith. He's in seminary right now. He got a lot of buzz when he went on the Joe Rogan podcast. Joe Rogan said you should run for president. He's not shy about integrating his Christian faith with his politics, which makes him, for some, an appealing candidate in a place like Texas. So he came on the Ezra Klein show and gave an interview that you listened to. I listened to it separately. We ended up having A conversation in the office with Mike, our producer, and others. And we just thought there's a lot here that intersects with themes that have come up on stuff we do. You seem to have a crush on Ezra Klein.
B
Okay, that's putting it on the cross.
A
You said you love Ezra Klein and you put a lot of emphasis on that.
B
Listen, here's the thing. And this is actually a helpful context for anyone who's about to listen to this and doesn't really know the show. One thing I really appreciate about Ezra Klein, he is coming not just from a pretty progressive social context. Like you could look at him and go, you know, coastal elite vibe.
A
He's from Southern California. I think he lives in San Francisco now.
B
I thought he lived on the east coast now.
A
I thought he was in the Bay Area.
B
Either way, okay. Well educated, very progressive in his politics. One of the things I appreciate about him in the past few years, I've appreciated for a long time the way that he. He's very wonky in the policy details. Like he gets into all of the. Especially domestic and economic policies. He's really into the mechanics of how these things work. And if you've listened to a show in the past, it can be really helpful for him to just. I mean, he'll be interviewing someone who is an expert in whatever policy he's talking about. And he still manages to sometimes know as much as they do.
A
He's a very smart guy.
B
He's super smart. He's in the details of all this policy. And what I've appreciated in the last couple years of. Couple of years is that he's really taken a turn to talking about faith a lot more.
A
Right.
B
But not in the way that some progressives seem to want to talk about faith, where it's, you know, an interesting tool or it's an untapped resource. Like, he seems really genuinely interested in spiritual things, and not just spiritual things that are personal and private, but he's increasingly talking about the need for something outside of policy to address the problems in our country. I mean, one of my favorite episodes he's ever done is he was talking about some of the questions of. Of loneliness and technology use with kids. And said pretty explicitly, like, I just don't think that policy can solve the loneliness issue in our country. There are deeper spiritual, cultural things at play here. And religious communities are better at dealing with this than non religious communities. And his reasoning wasn't just they exist as a community. His reasoning was they believe something specific. Specific about what makes a good human life. And and we don't actually agree on that. We don't know how to talk about that in our context. And so I just like him because he's in the details. He's thought about the policy a lot. But he's someone who we're getting to watch in this interesting moment where it seems like he's acknowledging something that a lot of progressives don't want to acknowledge, which is one policy is not just this mechanistic thing that if you get the right policy in place, you'll pop out the right result, the right culture, the right people. But also he's talking about faith in a really robust way, where it seems like he acknowledges that people believe very different things. They deeply matter, they shape our communities. And. And he talks about spiritual practices like he's just in the weeds, more about faith than the average person who's talking about faith as well.
A
There's definitely been a change in him. I don't know Ezra Kleiner, I've never had a conversation with him, but I get around the country. You get around the country, and especially in more conservative red parts of the country, there is this, I think, assumption that the blue parts of the country are just these secular, godless bastions of progressivism. And yet I probably have my nose in the New York Times every day on some level, either for news or some of the commentary. David French writes. There are the people we know that writes there. And I'm shocked at how much spiritual searching is going on.
B
Totally.
A
In the New York Times. And I think Ezra Klein epitomizes that totally. I've followed him for years. I admitted to you earlier, like, he used to kind of drive me crazy. I never doubted his intelligence. He knew issues and he was a policy wonk on a lot of fronts. How old is he? Probably in his late 30s, I'm guessing. I would guess late 30s, early 40s, maybe late 30s. But he. In the past, I would take him in smaller doses because I sometimes felt like he presented his views with an awful lot of certainty. And to the wrong ear, it could sound like smugness. And I've noticed that's not the case anymore. I think he's a father of young kids. I think he grew up secular, but Jewish, and. And he seems to be a lot more humble in his thoughts and curious about things outside of his elite coastal kind of experience. He's giving a lot more deference and benefit of the doubt, maybe to some conservative and even MAGA voices, which you can still disagree with on a lots of fronts. But I'VE just noticed a mellowing of him and a willingness to admit, hey, maybe blue American progressive thought isn't right about everything. And that comes up in this interview, too. So all that to set up this conversation about someone else's conversation. I think there's two main things we're trying to accomplish here. One is Ezra Klein is giving us a glimpse into what might be going on in parts of our country that we don't often talk about, and that's the more secular progressive side and the spiritual hunger and searching that's going on there. But then the other piece of this interview which made it worthy of our time today is James Talarico. Beyond my interview with him in this one, I think he feels more at home. And so he opens up more about his particular view of Christianity, which is a very mainline, progressive form of Christianity. And I think it's a good glimpse for, again, people who don't know that world to see what does that kind of Christianity look like, and how does it answer or fail to answer the longings that someone like an Ezra Klein is expressing? So it's kind of our critique and exploration of progressive mainline Christianity and I think a somewhat hopeful view of what's going on in secular, elite parts of this country that are spiritually hungry.
B
Yeah.
A
Is that fair?
B
I think so. And the one thing I would add is, and you were getting to this a little bit, one of the things that's happened with Ezra Klein that interestingly pops up in and out of this interview is not just kind of, as you said, more, at least, sympathy for more conservative viewpoints. He is, I think, one of the best representatives of progressive pundits and commentators who post 2016, post 2020, post 2024, are increasingly going. There's something I'm missing if I keep seeing what I'm seeing and going, it's absurd that Donald Trump would win an election, but he does. Or there's something I'm missing. If I was so confident Hillary Clinton would win and she didn't, and I appreciate the way he has both without treating with kid gloves any of the real evil that has come out of the Trump administration. He has been very willing to acknowledge that there are deeply felt values and needs and desires that are met by at least some of the rhetoric from that administration that need to be taken seriously. And he's done a lot recently. I mean, he wrote a whole book that I would commend to people on polarization that really helpfully describes some of the dynamics happening from a sociological standpoint. But also offer his kind of suggestions for what we might do differently. And I appreciate how often he has said in the podcast, like, I can't just cut off half, more than half the country. Like he's pushed some people in his interviews to go along the lines of James Talarico, who might on the progressive end of the spectrum be tempted to go, this is the Christian policy or this is the Christian way to do things. And he's so often been the person who goes, but you gotta learn to live with all these people who disagree with you and we gotta find a better way to do that.
A
To cite an often cited quote from Hillary Clinton Back in 2016, I think James, not James. I think Ezra Klein would probably argue, and I would agree with him, that Donald Trump is pretty deplorable. But the hundreds of millions of people who voted for him, you can't just label them all as deplorable and throw them away. There's a wide spectrum of people in that coalition. No doubt some are really awful, but a whole heck of a lot of them are our neighbors and they had their reasons. You can agree or disagree with them, but you do need to understand them and maybe even sympathize with some of them. So, yes, that's what I mean by he has a more humble posture.
B
Totally.
A
All I have to say, Ezra Klein, if you're listening to this or this ever crosses your we love you. Your earbuds. No, we appreciate you and we would love for you to engage more directly with holy post media the way some of your other colleagues at the New York Times have. Okay, let's get into the conversation they had itself. All right, so let's jump into their actual conversation. It starts off with Ezra asking Telorico his understanding of faith. Yeah, and we'll play the clip.
C
And one of the mind blowing things that happened to me my first year of seminary is I was studying this word, faith, and many translations. It is belief. You know, the idea of believing in a concept or an idea, which makes sense in English, Western translations, but it can also be translated as trust, which to me is much more experiential. Trusting that love is going to get you through the hour, through the day, through your life, that love is going to carry all of us forward. That love will ultimately prevail even when it's temporarily defeated. To me, that's what my faith feels like. It feels like trust. Almost like I learned how to swim in our neighborhood pool. And I remember my swim teacher telling me, don't fight the water, let the water carry you. And there's so much temptation in our lives to control our surroundings, control other people. And I think the opposite of that control is faith, is that kind of trust, letting life, letting the universe hold you up and not fighting it. And so that's. That's what it feels like for me.
B
Okay.
A
What's interesting is if somebody asked me to define my faith or what I believe faith to be, I would agree with Telorico that faith, at least in a biblical sense, is synonymous with trust. Or I often use the word allegiance.
B
I like that even better.
A
But trust, that's good. But I would say I put my trust in Jesus Christ or in the God revealed through Jesus and through the scriptures. And he talks more vaguely about trusting love, which sounds lovely. It sounds like a Beatles lyric or something. But it's very much in line with 20th century progressive white Christianity.
B
Totally, totally.
A
So talk a little bit about your understanding of how progressive Christianity strips the particulars out of.
B
Right, right. And I think this is important in part because a lot of people listening who aren't as in tuned with the kind of tradition that James Filarico's church and the seminary he's at comes out of, might think you guys are being way too harsh. Like, God is love. It says that in the Bible. And like, we believe in love, and we, you know, and he's saying lots of things that I think are totally true to your point. But there is something really important to know about how that history plays into the theology that he is being taught and shaping the institutions that he's in. And a lot of us are. Our ideas of progressive Christianity might be largely shaped by modern people on the Internet talking about progressive Christianity. And we might encounter lots of what we would consider progressive Christians who essentially all of the theological infrastructure is the same. Like the most essential truths of the faith are there. It's just that the outworking of them is in a more progressive rather than conservative direction. So, I mean, honestly, a lot of the people who get labeled progressive Christians or label themselves progressive Christians on the Internet today often hold pretty orthodox beliefs if you were to press them on them. But the expression of their faith online has more to do with progressive politics.
A
Right. So that's the difference is they use the progressive term to define themselves politically, not theologically. But Tellarico is both.
B
He's both.
A
He's both progressive in his politics, but he's also progressive in his theology.
B
Yes.
A
Which is the part that's interesting.
B
And this is where I think some of us haven't been given the resources to tell the difference between, okay, there's someone who I might disagree with how they think our faith works itself out politically, or I might agree. But that's really different than someone saying, hey, I have these progressive politics. But it's rooted in this pretty different expression of Christianity. For a lot of people who grew up in evangelical contexts are familiar with the fundamentalist modernist split. The fundamentalists got lots of things wrong. The modernists also got things wrong. And sometimes I think we're too harsh because they're our own people, sometimes with the fundamentalists, because we forget they were responding to something that was getting something really wrong. Yeah.
A
Just for those not familiar with this, this is. This goes back 100 years in American history. The fundamentalists were basically saying that term is very derogatory today.
B
They took it on themselves initially, right.
A
Back in the 1920s and 30s. To be a fundamentalist meant you're hanging on to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Things like the virgin birth, the resurrection, that kind of the deity of Jesus, all of that. In contrast to them were the modernists who said, we basically need to get rid of some of these crazy supernatural claims, the things that Christians have historically believed for 1900 years in order to accommodate to modern understandings. Hence the term modernist. Where you get progressive white Christianity in the 20th century is that. And that's the tradition that James Tellarico is in now.
B
I think it's really important to say there might be some expressions, progressive Christianity, that it's a critique of them to say, oh, you just are accommodating to the culture. And it might not be true. In this case, we're talking about a tradition that quite explicitly said modern ideas about science, about politics, about what kind of creatures humans are, should be assumed. We. We have progressed as humans. Like, we now know more than these kind of backwards ancient people did about how the world really works. And so Christianity should be shaped by those modern sensibilities. To your point about the virgin birth, we now know, as if people didn't know back then, but we acted like, well, we now know that scientifically that can't happen, so it must not be true. It's all of these, what they would have called like, accretions on the base truth of the gospel. There's all this other supernatural stuff, historical weird stuff. There's Old Testament stories about war, and we want to shed all of that away to get to the germ of truth underneath, which for many people was often love. Which is great. We love love. But to your point, in how it's used in this interview, and this has been true for all of that history as well. It often was so vague on purpose so that it could be accommodated to whatever the mores of the moment were. Some of those were for very good reasons. There were a lot of modernists in the Civil War era that were saying the germ of the gospel is love and so we should not enslave people. So, like there are good outworkings of this, but there's also a lot that's missed. I've talked about this on the show before, but one of the failures of that era of more kind of mainline Christianity was to recognize that enslaved and free black Americans were not saying let's get rid of all the supernatural stuff and the historical specificity. They were saying God is a liberating God in these particular stories in Scripture that we hold to be authoritative truth for us. So there's an alternative to both the fundamentalist and the modernist approach to these things. But what Talarico here is giving us a good example of is what it looks like when you have been raised in institutions and educated in the seminaries, where that is the explicit theology that Christianity should be accommodated to the mores scientific or theological or political of the moment.
A
Okay. Related to that is a follow up question that Ezra Klein asks him about what do you do with the claims, the exclusivity claims of other faiths? How do you see them? I really like this question because I feel like anybody who's running for public office in 21st century America, or really anybody who's just a public voice in modern America who claims to be a Christian, should be asked, what do you think of your neighbors who hold to other faiths? What do you do with the diversity and pluralism in America? And Telorico, again in line with his progressive Christianity, essentially says another version of all paths lead to God kind of theology, which dates back a long time, but it was probably popularized by Mahatma Gandhi. In a lot of ways. He uses the metaphor of using different languages to describe the same cup on the table. And it's. We're all just using our own ways of describing the central mystery of God.
B
We're all pointing to truth, but just in different ways.
A
Yeah, yeah, I understand why he's saying that. Both because of his progressive Christian formation and his politics, frankly. Yeah, it's not how I would have answered it. Again, and we've talked about this a lot at Holy Post Media because we are having conversations in the public square about faith. We use the language of being orthodox, meaning we hold to the traditional doctrines of historic Christianity, but we are pro neighbor, which is our way of describing the diversity and pluralism of our society. Not as a threat.
B
Yes.
A
But as a blessing. And at the same time, and this comes from my own background and the diversity of my family, I believe the final and fullest revelation of who God is is revealed to us in the person of Jesus. There are things in other faith traditions which are true. When Hinduism teaches to love your neighbor, I'm going, yeah, great, true. But the reason I'm a Christian and not a Hindu is because I think the revelation of God through Jesus is fuller, more complete. And having studied comparative religion as an undergraduate at a secular university, there are fundamentally irreconcilable beliefs in different religious systems that just get plastered over. When you say that doesn't matter. It's all ways of talking about the same mystery, I'm like, no, like. So explain where his model is coming from in progressive Christianity and why it may fall short in your mind.
B
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest problem I have with it is that it doesn't actually honor the religions that he is trying to be kind to. Like telling other religions that you basically know what they believe and it's basically the same as you sounds really loving. If in your, to your point, we live in a world where any difference is automatically threat, then it is kindness to say, oh no, we actually don't believe anything different from each other. But if you recognize that there is not necessarily threat, but there could be even gifts, there could be hospitality extended where there is difference, then it is not treating your neighbor kindly to say, oh, we actually believe all of the same things. You're not honoring the distinctiveness of that religious tradition. It reminds me of Steve Besner, who's been on the show before, who's a pastor or was a pastor in Texas. Now he teaches it at Truett Seminary. He has really deep and long standing relationships with Muslim leaders and has done a lot of interfaith work. But it's not the kind of interfaith work that often happens, especially in progressive cities. In my experience, even in Durham, North Carolina, interfaith work typically meant all of the representative, all the representatives of every religious tradition that believe everyone believes the same thing show up together in one room and talk about how we all believe the same thing. The people who hold to the real kind of orthodoxy or dogma of most of those religious traditions don't show up to those, those interfaith gatherings, not because they couldn't I think we could have great conversations amongst people who really deeply believe different things. But the structure of those organizations tends to be wishy washy, tends to be like, we all should just, you know, to Talarico's point, it should just be love. It should just be love. Steve has had deep relationships with people and he's written about this and I think it's really powerful. He has said, I've sat across from someone and we have both said, I think you're going to hell.
A
Isn't that a great conversation starter?
B
It's a great start relationship. But I appreciate one the witness, he is that we assume that's not possible, and it totally is. But I also appreciate how he has articulated that, especially in the context he's in with Muslim leaders. Those leaders have felt more honored and dignified by him saying, I'm not gonna lie to you. My religion teaches that you believe something that is wrong and it will have eternal consequences for you. And you believe the same about me. And I'm not going to dance around that like it's not there.
A
I've told this story before, but it illustrates the same point. I, I grew up friends with Eboo Patel, who's a well known interfaith advocate, and he. But he's a very committed Muslim. We went to the same elementary school, high school.
B
How did I not know this? You didn't know this?
A
Yeah.
B
Oh my gosh, no.
A
So we reconnected, you know, many years later. He was living here in Chicago. We, we've actually done some interfaith events together at Wheaton College and other places. But we, we went out to lunch one day and we were getting caught up, you know, family, blah, blah, blah. And our food came and I, I said, can I pray for our meal? So I prayed for our meal. And then we went on, we had a great conversation. And I don't know, like an hour into the conversation, IBU said to me, hey, can I talk about your prayer before?
B
Yeah, our food.
A
I was like, sure, what about it? And he said, you, you prayed in the name of Jesus. I said, yeah, I'm a, I do that. I said, I'm a Christian. That's kind of what we do. And he's like, no, no, you don't understand. He's like, I, I meet with a lot of Christians and a lot of times they won't pray in the name of Jesus because they don't want to offend me or they don't think they're being respectful. And he's like, I just really want to thank you for praying in the name of Jesus. He said, because your willingness to own your identity as a Christian communicated to me that it's safe for me to own my identity as a Muslim. And we don't have to pretend that we don't have differences. And I think that's the kind of leadership, moral, spiritual, political leadership that the country's hungry for right now. It's people who will own their particularity, but also honor their neighbor, who will say, I am what I am. I believe what I believe. I don't agree with everything you believe, but I fully defend your right to believe it.
B
Yes.
A
And my respect and honor for you is not diminished in any way because we don't share all the same beliefs.
B
Yes.
A
Rather than saying, let's erase our differences and pretend they're not there. And so. And I think this is part of the reason why progressive Christianity. Not entirely, but part of the reason it isn't finding as many adherents.
B
Yes.
A
Among a younger generation, because they're looking for the grounding that comes with particularity.
B
Yes.
A
And the squishiness of a lot of progressive Christianity just doesn't offer that.
B
I've probably told this story before on the Holy Post, but I found it so striking when I first moved to Durham and attended a church that was very close to Duke's campus. And there was a row of pretty progressive mainline churches all around Duke's campus that would always put up, you know, a pride flag. And then right before the semester started, they would put up a bunch of big signs saying, we welcome everyone. You know, they would do kind of vague ways of showing, like, we're one of the good ones, like, we're one of the more progressive churches, and they would welcome students explicitly. Most of those churches are dying. The big evangelical megachurch the students have to get bused to outside of town has tons of students going there. And I think part of what's going on is if a student is interested at all in spiritual things and they look at the church across the street, they kind of go, everything you're doing, I can do in a social justice group on campus. Nothing you are doing is distinctive. It doesn't ask anything of me. It aligns perfectly with all of the other opportunities for belonging and activism that already exist on campus. This church outside of town, and it's not a church that I would go to. I have some criticisms of the church, but there have been students I have talked to specifically who have said they believe something specific.
A
Right.
B
Like they believe something different than the world that I am in. And I'm looking for something that's different. And to your point too, about just kind of about what Eboo Patel said, there's weirdly in some progressive corners, even though it's attempting to just kind of go along with, with whatever the cultural moment, political moment is trying to pretend like we all believe the same things, there is inherent in it often still this kind of weirdly more Christian dominance than some of the evangelical or more conservative traditions that say, no, we don't actually all believe the same things. A lot of the history of some interfaith work and some more progressive Christian work in interfaith circles has been critiqued more recently by people saying, hey, you say everyone believes the same thing because you assume everyone at the end of the day basically believes Christian things. That doesn't honor other religions, it doesn't treat them well, and it doesn't to your story, give people the space to express their particularity, their specific religious tradition. I had a really similar encounter when I was in Durham with most of my neighbors in my pretty low income immigrant neighborhood were Muslim. And a lot of the women would say to me, like, the more specific you are about your Christian faith. One of them thanked me one day for, for carrying a Bible outside into my church or into my car. And I was confused because a lot of the progressive talk about this, especially with Muslim immigrants in this country, is I should, you should think I'm a threat to you and you should maybe even be upset that I'm carrying a Bible or that I'm, I'm, I'm showing faith publicly in the way that I'm showing it. And for these Muslim women who wear head coverings and their faith is very visible in their public life, they express that it was a gift to them that I was showing religious particularity in a very progressive secular city where religion is not very common. It gave them space to express their particularity too.
A
I am thinking. Two conversations I've had in recent years with friends of mine who are gay. One is part of a Roman Catholic congregation, the other is part of an evangelical congregation that actually has a conservative sexual ethic. And separate conversations, I asked them both, why aren't you in churches that are fully affirming or have gay clergy or weddings, that kind of thing. And what they both said to me in their own particular ways, one Catholic, one evangelical, was those churches that are, you know, that have the rainbow flag outside in their communities don't take doctrine in the Bible that seriously. And they both wanted to be in churches that took the doctrine seriously, but they couldn't get that and the sexually affirming ethic that they wanted. So they opted for the churches that were more conservative in their specificity, in their fascinating. I mean, I respect respect the dilemma that they face, but I think that gets to something that people are hungry for in the diversity of our culture. And again, I think it's a blessing that we have the pluralism diversity that we have. But that doesn't mean people aren't looking for something to be grounded in and in particularity. And that's what I think Telorico and others using the progressive white Christian Protestant model in their politics. We aren't quite figuring out totally. We need to move on. I don't want to take a ton of time to talk about abortion, but Ezra does ask Telorico about that. I think I asked him about that too in our conversation, but I want to jump from his particular answer about abortion into what it says about his view of faith in general. So don't worry, this is not the end of the episode. There's actually plenty more. But to listen to the rest, you need to be a Holy Post plus subscriber. So head over to holypost.com skypod and sign up for just $5 a month. Not only will you get uninterrupted episodes of the Skypod, which means you'll never have to hear this dumb announcement again, but you'll also get access to everything else at Holy Post plus, including episodes of Getting Schooled by Caitlin Chess, bonus interviews, live streams, the Holy Post Book Club, exclusive merchandise, and a whole bunch more. And you'll get the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing that you're supporting our work of creating smart, pro neighbor Christian content. So head over to holypost.com skypod and subscribe.
The SkyePod
Host: Skye Jethani
Guest: Caitlin Schess
Episode: Responding to Ezra Klein’s Interview with James Talarico
Date: January 23, 2026
In this episode, Skye Jethani and Caitlin Schess respond to Ezra Klein’s recent interview with James Talarico, a Texas state representative and Senate candidate known for his outspoken progressive Christian faith. Skye and Caitlin critically explore themes from the interview, including progressive Christianity, spiritual searching among secular progressives, interfaith dialogue, and the limitations and challenges of mainline progressive theology in addressing contemporary longings for spiritual particularity and groundedness.
“I think Ezra Klein epitomizes that totally...he seems to be a lot more humble in his thoughts and curious about things outside of his elite coastal kind of experience.” — Skye ([06:00])
“...I can't just cut off half, more than half the country...we gotta learn to live with all these people who disagree with you and we gotta find a better way to do that.” — Caitlin ([09:40])
“The opposite of that control is faith, is that kind of trust, letting life, letting the universe hold you up and not fighting it. And so that's...what it feels like for me.” — James Talarico ([11:38])
“We want to shed all of that away to get to the germ of truth underneath, which for many people was often love...so vague on purpose so that it could be accommodated to whatever the mores of the moment were.” — Caitlin ([16:15])
“It doesn't actually honor the religions that he is trying to be kind to...you're not honoring the distinctiveness of that religious tradition.” — Caitlin ([20:25])
“Your willingness to own your identity as a Christian communicated to me that it's safe for me to own my identity as a Muslim. And we don't have to pretend that we don't have differences.” — Skye ([23:19])
“If a student is interested at all in spiritual things and they look at the church across the street, they kind of go, everything you're doing, I can do in a social justice group on campus. Nothing you are doing is distinctive...They believe something different than the world that I am in. And I'm looking for something that's different.” — Caitlin ([25:48])
On Ezra Klein’s evolution:
“He used to kind of drive me crazy...I’ve noticed that’s not the case anymore. I think he’s a father of young kids...he seems to be a lot more humble...a mellowing of him...a willingness to admit, hey, maybe blue American progressive thought isn’t right about everything.” — Skye ([06:00])
On faith as trust:
“Letting the universe hold you up and not fighting it. That’s what it feels like for me.” — James Talarico ([11:38])
On the limits of vague, love-centered spirituality:
“We love love. But...it often was so vague on purpose so that it could be accommodated to whatever the mores of the moment were.” — Caitlin ([16:15])
On honoring religious particularity:
“It is not treating your neighbor kindly to say, oh, we actually believe all of the same things. You’re not honoring the distinctiveness of that religious tradition.” — Caitlin ([20:25])
On younger generations’ response to progressive churches:
“They kind of go, everything you’re doing, I can do in a social justice group on campus. Nothing you are doing is distinctive.... [The evangelical church] believe something specific. Like they believe something different than the world I am in.” — Caitlin ([25:48])
Interfaith authenticity validation:
“Your willingness to own your identity as a Christian communicated to me that it’s safe for me to own my identity as a Muslim.” — Skye quoting Eboo Patel ([23:19])
The conversation is thoughtful, charitable, and constructively critical. Skye and Caitlin exhibit intellectual respect for their subjects while maintaining a distinctly orthodox Christian perspective—prizing specificity, depth, and neighborly engagement over vague universalist platitudes. Their tone is friendly, nuanced, and at times gently humorous, both with each other and their subjects.
Jethani and Schess see hope in the spiritual searching of secular progressives like Ezra Klein but are critical of mainline progressive theology’s “diet caffeine free” approach (as referenced at episode start): agreeable but lacking in distinctive power and rootedness. They advocate for an orthodox Christian posture—specific in belief, generous in civic engagement—meeting the modern longing for something particular and creating genuine space for honest pluralism.
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