Mark Labberton:
What a joy it is today to welcome David French as our guest on Conversing. For many of you, David’s name may be known as a New York Times Opinion writer, a role that he’s had since January of 2023. David was born in Alabama, grew up in a small town in Kentucky, and attended Lipscomb University in Nashville before eventually graduating from Harvard Law School. David went on to have a career as a lawyer working both for commercial and for public interest law firms and was the former president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He spent most of his career as a lawyer defending free speech, religious freedom, and due process in courtrooms across the country. But it was after 21 years of this legal practice, including some of it as a military lawyer and service in Iraq, he changed careers. In 2015, he joined the National Review as a senior writer, a role that he left in 2019 to help start The Dispatch, a conservative media company. He also became a contributing writer for The Atlantic and it was after that that he became part of the Times Opinion writing staff. His most recent book, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation, outlines the dangers of polarization and the need to engage with people who have opposing views.
David, what an honour it is and joy to have you as our guest in Conversing today.
David French:
Well, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Mark Labberton:
David, you’re a wunderkind that’s a little, I suppose, anachronistic giving your age, but there is a quality to your strengths and gifts that I think is really quite remarkable, and I want to come back to that in a minute. But often we start in this conversation just giving people a little bit of a framing of your background and your formation that brought you to the point that you’re in right now in your role in the New York Times.
David French:
It’s been a long and winding road, so I’ll just give you the Reader’s Digest version. I was at a panel discussion last night at Lipscomb University, my alma mater, where I teach, and someone said, “How did you become a journalist?” And I said, “Accidentally, I stumbled into it.” So essentially, I began my legal career as a commercial litigator working for big firms and then I took a lot of First Amendment cases on the side. And after 10 years, I reached a point where I had to decide, am I going to be a commercial litigator with a First Amendment hobby or am I going to be a First Amendment lawyer and just dive into the First Amendment? And I chose to dive into the First Amendment, and very quickly after I did that and I was a full-time First Amendment lawyer, I got really frustrated with the way the media covered complex legal issues.
And so I started this habit of every time I filed a new case, I would also write an op-ed for the local paper to explain in layman’s terms what it was about and everything. And then that grew into starting to write generally about constitutional law. When I joined the military and served in Iraq, I started to write much more generally about war and the war on terror and foreign policy and military policy. And I just started writing more and more, so that 10 years after I switched to First Amendment litigation, I was a First Amendment litigator with a writing hobby. And so I had to decide, am I going to be a writer full time or not? And so I switched into journalism in May of 2015, which was the months before Trump came down the escalator. And so I was with National Review from 2015 to 2019 until really the tensions in the conservative movement reached a point where it was just hard. It was just hard. I was a flashpoint at National Review. There were donors who were very angry with me. There were some colleagues who were very, very angry with me about my stance on Trump. So to quote my friend and Dispatch colleague, Jonah Goldberg, I was a problem for my employer.
And so when Jonah and Steve founded The Dispatch, I went over there to help them start it. I was present at the launch. They founded it, they built the company, and then I helped with the launch and loved it there, loved being at The Dispatch. And then in December of 2022, Katie Kingsbury, who runs the Opinion page of the Times, came to visit me and asked if I’d want to become a Times columnist. So I said yes. So that’s the Reader’s Digest version. But I will say, at no point in my career did I do something that I had long planned to do.
Mark Labberton:
Right, right. You were staying flexible.
David French:
This is not the culmination of a plan. It is just what happened. But I’m very grateful. I’m very grateful to work at the Times. I have just awesome people who I work with and they give me an enormous amount of what I would call academic freedom, but it’s more like columnist freedom.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
And so, no, it’s been a real blessing and I’m just grateful for the opportunity.
Mark Labberton:
Let’s lay alongside that track, a parallel track, which is your own spiritual formation and development and your commitment as an evangelical Christian and your political conservatism. Just lay those tracks alongside as well.
David French:
Yeah. So I grew up in the Acapella Churches of Christ, which many of your listeners will be familiar with and many will not. This is a restorationist movement that began in the early 19th century, Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone. They really had this idea that Christianity had been done wrong. There’s a lot of movements that were … Everyone’s been doing Christianity wrong, we’re going to do it right. But they had this view that one of the problems were creeds, creeds divided. And I believe one of their early statements was no creed but Christ, theological arguments divided. So they began to really teach a lot about forbearance and patience with other believers and really interesting movement that arose in the early 19th century, almost in some ways Anabaptist-ish in that more separate. Some Early Church of Christ folks, for example, would not participate in Civil War, which sat it out, and it turned into something separatist, sectarian, and ferociously legalistic by the time that I was growing up. And so I-
Mark Labberton:
It’s quite a set of words.
David French:
Yeah, yeah. No, so many wonderful people in the Church of Christ, but by the time I was a young man, the Church of Christ theology was we are the ones saved. That’s it. This is the church, which I never agreed with, I never agreed with. So I grew up with this real grounding. So the Church of Christ, if it teaches you anything, it teaches you to read the New Testament a lot. So I grew up with a real grounding in reading the Bible, which actually, ironically enough, was the seed of me leaving the Church of Christ. I just couldn’t cope with these exclusivity claims and it was very, very, very works-oriented. Now, most Churches of Christ are not. They’ve changed a lot. So if you’re in a Church of Christ now, a lot of what I’m describing to you might just seem like, “What are you even talking about? This guy’s a charlatan. It’s nothing.” But Church of Christ has largely integrated itself within the larger evangelical church. And at the same time, I’m growing up in the Cold War. And so I was a Cold War conservative and a conservative Christian, and they were related, but they weren’t inextricably tied together. So, for me, my ideology was downstream of my faith, but I didn’t think that my ideology was the inevitable result of my faith, if that makes sense.
So I was very much a Cold War conservative out of prudential concerns. I thought strategically, the Republican vision of confronting the Soviet Union was better. Over time, as I grew older and I got to learn more about things like abortion, for example, by the time I got into college, I was a pro-life advocate, but my conservatism really began with the Cold War, to be honest. And then it continued into social conservatism as I grew older and became a pro-life activist. And I was a pro-life. I think my first concrete pro-life bit of activism was in my Christian college where I tried to get the school to change a policy where if you were pregnant out of wedlock, you would be automatically suspended for a semester. And I said, “I think that that contributes to abortion because people will lose their college community.” And so I tried to get that changed as one of the first things that I did. And then I formed a pro-life club at Harvard Law School. And then my entire legal career, I was representing pro-life individuals and engaged in pro-life fundraising and advocacy. So that was always a big, big part. But my initial conservatism really was prudential more than theological in the sense that just weighing the various approaches to the Soviet Union, which one was best, and younger listeners will not remember that existential clash.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
They’ll be mystified that that would be so formational in your conservatism. But at that time, it was the, the number one issue and the world was the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, and everything else was details by comparison.
Mark Labberton:
Right, yeah. Now, David, that has meant, of course, that you’ve then gone on to live and operate as a Republican and vote Republican and to have deep association and advocacy within the Republican Party in various ways. And now we are in this unusual blip of a season that began, as you mentioned a few minutes ago, a descent on a certain escalator, and the story that has unfolded since that time. I recently listened to your post on the Opinions, the New York Times audio, the Opinions Audio, which is really quite a wonderful and surprising piece. And I wonder if you could just summarize for audiences and listeners what it is that you’re arguing about our presidential vote in a few weeks’ time?
David French:
Yeah, it’s really pretty simple. So my party loyalty has always been related to two things. One is the ideology of the party and the other one is the character of the party and the party leaders and the people that I vote for. I’ve always had a character test and an ideological test. And so I’m a Republican not because there’s something magic about that R. I was a Republican because I largely agreed with Republican values and believed largely, not all, of the Republican candidates that I supported were men and women of good enough character to operate well within the offices that we’re seeking. And so if either one of those two things changed, either the character of the leadership or the ideology of the party, I had no underlying loyalty to bad character or what I thought would be bad policy.
And so as the Republican Party began to embrace bad character initially by embracing Donald Trump and then over time began to embrace more and more bad policy by leaving behind the policies that drew me to the Republican Party in the first place, I had no … Why would I be attached to that? There’s no claim on my loyalty there. However, even though the Republican Party moved, my belief in the importance of character did not change, it’s only been amplified.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
And my belief in the core underlying principles of my conservatism has not changed. In many ways, they’ve only been amplified. And so my point and my position is essentially if the conservative perspective that I have wants to have any purchase in American politics, MAGA has to lose. Donald Trump has to lose. Donald Trump is distorting the character of Republicans or maybe better word is exposing the character of some Republicans, but definitely there’s a major distortion effect here. There is a major character effect that is occurring.
Mark Labberton:
Yes.
David French:
And on every key point of what my conservatism was rooted in, he’s departing from that. So I’ve long believed in a strong national defence with forward deployment with enclosed foreign alliances. He’s much more isolationist. I’ve always believed in … I’ve been persuaded, for example, by many arguments against the efficacy of central planning. And so I’m much more in favor of federalism and less in favor of seeking large-scale government solutions for social problems. It’s not that I have a theological devotion to smaller government, it’s more that I have a practical understanding that smaller government is better, that’s being discarded.
Trump, for example, compared to Harris, would add five times the deficit than she would add. So that’s being discarded. And then social conservatism, I mean, first from a character standpoint, there’s nothing socially conservative about Trump or MAGA. And then from a policy standpoint, the Republican Party is now sprinting away from a pro-life platform, for example. It’s got a pro-choice platform. And so the combination of running away from the pro-life ethos at the same time that you’re doubling down on this libertine hedonistic leader has meant that no element of the current GOP appeals to me.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
But at the same time, however, there are still seeds of the old GOP and remnants of the old GOP that are in there. They’re just silenced, suppressed, cabined off. And for that, those seeds to sprout and grow at all, MAGA has to lose.
Mark Labberton:
Right. And it’s very important that America has a strong conservative normalized Republican Party.
David French:
Right. And it’s not because conservatives are right about everything, but it’s because if you’re going to have a healthy two-party system, the distinction should be around good people of high character approaching policy solutions from different perspectives as opposed to what we have now, which is … And look, I’m not a Democrat, the Democrats have problems, but you have one party that is dedicated to the rule of law in the American constitution and largely in alignment with historic democratic traditions and another party that is becoming an occult of personality in it along the way, embracing dangerous conspiracy theories and sometimes even to the point of rejecting the rule of law. And so that’s not a healthy two-party system when one of the parties is very, very sick. And again, that’s not to say the Democrats have it all right, but it is to say that one of these parties has left the norms of American political engagement. So that means that we’re in a very unusual situation.
Mark Labberton:
So given your convictions and repudiation of the current Republican Party and of Donald Trump in particular, then move to the affirmation, the workable solution, I guess, the much better choice in your opinion piece then would’ve been Donald Trump, even with your misgivings. How does that work out in your explanation?
David French:
Well, my explanation is … So for 2016 and 2020, what I did was I voted third party. As I tell people, I voted for Mitt Romney more than Mitt Romney’s probably voted for Mitt Romney. I’ve written him in a ton. But in 2024, by 2024, issues had changed. So I’ve always had this view, as I said earlier, if I’m voting for a politician, I have a test. One is, do they have the character necessary for the job? And the higher the position they’re seeking, the more character that is necessary. And number two, do they broadly agree with me on the most important policies, not on everything. If I completely agreed with a politician, I need to check myself because that means I’m a follower, not an independent thinker, right?
Mark Labberton:
Yes. Right.
David French:
So not on everything, but on the most important thing. So, to me, voting third party was 2020 thinking because there are two big things that occurred after 2020 that changed the race. Number one was January 6th, 2021 when we had an insurrection. And it’s way too simple to just say, “Okay, well, Kamala Harris and the Democrats are “for democracy”. No, no, it’s actually more … It’s less amorphous than that. It’s more precise. If Kamala Harris wins, Donald Trump will be either pardoned or prosecuted, which is how the rule of law operates in this country. And so I think it is extraordinarily important that Trump be prosecuted, that this is an important historical moment that says that no person is above the law.
Mark Labberton:
Yes.
David French:
And so, to me, prosecuting a former president of the United States for attempting to overthrow the presidency of the United States is of paramount importance. So that’s number one. She’s for the prosecution, he’s against. And here’s number two, and it’s related to another date, February 24th, 2022, and this is when Russia attacked Ukraine. And that is if there’s one issue … Well, let me put it this way, both of those issues, if Trump is prosecuted, historians will be talking about in a hundred years. If Russia … Regardless of the outcome of this war, historians will be talking about it in a hundred years.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
And then those are probably two of only three things in this whole election that we know going into that historians are going to be addressing in a hundred years. The third, of course, is the Middle East. And that’s more muddled than Ukraine or January 6th. But on both Ukraine and January 6th, two of the three issues that I feel confident historians will be talking about in a hundred years, Kamala Harris is on the right side and Trump is on the wrong side. So from that standpoint, the issue set began to change. And so the Democrats who … While Joe Biden I thought had the character to be president, I disagreed with him on a bunch of policies. I could not vote for him. But with Harris, it’s not that Harris … I agree with Harris down the line, it’s that on the policies she disagreed with me about, she began to move in my direction. She’s not advocating the Green New Deal anymore. She’s not advocating for single payer healthcare. She’s not entertaining defund the police stuff. So she’s moving in my direction. And then on the two, two of these issues that are of just paramount importance, we’re squarely in agreement with each other. And so in that circumstance, to me, it’s not even that hard to call.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
And then a lot of people then come back and say, “Well, what about the life issue?” I’m like, “Well, wait a minute, both candidates are pro-choice and one’s been adjudicated a sex abuser.” So I have very little patience for those people who say, “I’m somehow not a Christian for voting for a pro-choice candidate when they’re voting for a pro-choice candidate who’s been adjudicated a sex abuser.” That is difficult for me to discern how that is a more Christian stance.
Mark Labberton:
I’m Mark Labberton. Thanks for listening with me.
David, one of the things that I think all of this illustrates, and part of the reason I was indirectly wanting to discuss it, is that it illustrates to me some of the skills that you bring to this particular moment and to your work at the New York Times and before that, and it falls out in a number of categories. It’s partly your capacity to be a clear thinker, a clear and independent thinker. That’s one … I would put those two things together and it’s a very strong part of how you communicate and how you, I think, process life, period.
Secondly, this often accompanies that but doesn’t always as we know, and that is that you’re also exceptionally logical. So there is a kind of intentionality around logic and reason itself, which is really very much a part of your thinking. Another part of it, I would say, is your courage. And by that, I mean to be an independent thinker, to hold your own convictions and to speak courageously about them, knowing the blowback and experiencing the blowback and having been burned by the blowback, nevertheless choosing to exercise that kind of courage. And another quality absolutely is your faithfulness. That is that your faith is an active agent, not a category so much as a living faith, which then it needs to be a tool by which you think through other things while also bringing this incredible set of gifts that God’s given you in order to do the analysis that’s necessary.
So it’s not as though you place your faith over the top of issues nor that you only tag it on at the end. You’re trying to think all of these things through and all of these dimensions simultaneously. Now, that’s my take on David French. So I know that that maybe puts you in an awkward spot, but respond to that and tell us how these things live in you.
David French:
Well, a lot of what you’re describing about me is actually, in many ways, how I’ve been trying and hoping that the Holy Spirit will work through my flaws. So there’s a fine line between stubbornness and courage.
Mark Labberton:
Fair enough. Fair enough.
David French:
And so I’m a stubborn person. If you tell me, “You have to do this,” the first question I’m going to ask is, “Do I really?” And so that can have some negative element to it, right?
Mark Labberton:
Sure, yeah. Absolutely.
David French:
But in the process of sanctification, hopefully by God’s grace, you make your stubbornness more targeted to the point where it can be a virtue and can maybe even be present as courage sometimes. But I feel like what has happened to me in these last 10 years is that I’ve really had to ask myself, “Who are you really?”
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
And let me explain that a little bit more. I think all of us have a set of ideas about ourself that I am this or, in our best days, we might think of ourselves as I am honest, I am courageous, I’m rational. These are qualities we want to ascribe to ourselves. But the reality is we never know if we have any of them until they’re tested.
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
You just never know. And so I’ve always had in my mind this question about myself, “Where would I be when tests come? What would I do when tests come?” And part of the reason why I’ve had that question is because of my mom and dad are extremely faithful, courageous people. They have always modeled faithfulness and courage.
Mark Labberton:
Wow.
David French:
My dad one time lost a job because he was not willing to lie and to conceal misconduct and lost a job without another job to have to replace it with a young family. And so I grew up in this world where you walk your talk and also you don’t know if you have a value until it’s tested. That was the ethos of our family.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
And so I really, in these last 10 years, have been very cognizant of that we are all facing a series of tests. We’re all values of being put in tension with one another. Honesty carries costs that it didn’t use to carry. And so I’ve just been very keen to pray and seek God’s guidance in how to meet these various tests. Because one of the things, I’m an amateur student of history. Well, that’s maybe a little generous. I’m a young grandfather dad, which means I’m always reading World War II and World War I books. So calling myself a student of history, no, I’m just like a normal dad who the Amazon algorithm has figured out that, yeah, he wants to read another book about the air war in Europe.
Mark Labberton:
Yes, yes.
David French:
But the one thing that when you read a ton, especially about the Civil War or World War II, is you realise that the prelude to both of those wars, a prelude to both of those wars, a prelude to World War I actually also, in some ways, was a whole lot of cowardice, was a whole lot of people being unwilling to confront evil a lot of times for good reasons. We’re very angry. A lot of people historically are very angry, for example, at Neville Chamberlain and others who enabled Hitler’s rise. But we can’t … I would urge people to put yourself in their shoes. They were less than a generation removed from the most catastrophic war in European history with a level of loss and suffering that we in the United States cannot comprehend. And they wanted to avoid that. And so I have a lot of sympathy for that position. But the bottom line was some of the worst things that have happened in American history have happened because people didn’t want to do hard things.
And so to the extent that when I think about this time, I just didn’t want to be one of those people who wouldn’t do the hard thing. But that doesn’t mean … And I just want to be super clear about this, that doesn’t mean I’ve made all the right decisions.
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
That doesn’t mean that I have all the best insights. That doesn’t mean that I’ve made all the right calls. This is what I’ve been trying to do. And I can look back over the last eight, nine, 10 years, and I can pick out any number of pieces that I wrote that I think were not right responses I had in the moment where I was disappointed in myself. It’s been a hard 10 years. And so it is difficult, but I think the sanctification process, though, is difficult.
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
It means that constantly your own sin is being exposed to yourself.
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
And so the question is, how do you respond to that? How is it that you respond to the realization of your own sin? And so that’s been the story of the last nine years is my wife and I and our families, we’ve been walking this hard road and trying when our values are put to the test to live our values.
Mark Labberton:
Right. To me, it’s a very moving thing, because even though I tend to be on a bluer side of things than you are, I’m very aware of how much I need and respect your voice and learn from your character and your words and your analysis. And I do so because I’ve lived too long on the West Coast and too long in and around Berkeley, California. So you can imagine the different formation experiences I’ve had in the last decade, let’s say, or 30 years that I’ve been in and around this area. So I need your voice. And I need your voice as a Christian brother because I do believe that both of us are attempting to discern and follow Jesus Christ, that we’re both trying to understand how we see and engage a world of suffering and pain and need, but also of beauty and joy and creativity and imagination and hope. And in that process, one of the other things that I have had a chance to witness is your ability to be in settings where there is such a diversity of opinion and where you become one of the voices, not the only voice, and there are voices that hold different positions. And to watch how you respond to those circumstances has also been very, very instructive to me. So I feel like I owe you another debt of gratitude for that.
I guess if you were going to leave us with a call, let’s say, particularly between now and the election itself, besides what you’ve already said about the vote and how you’re planning to vote yourself, what would you want Christian people, thoughtful, committed, curious, uncertain, tenuous Christian people, to do between now and the election?
David French:
That’s a really, really good question. I have been really focusing in on two verses. So here’s one of them. God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power, of love, and of sound mind. And what’s really important about that is obviously the first sentence, God did not give us a spirit of fear. And I see 95% of the arguments directed at fellow believers in politics are fear-based arguments.
Mark Labberton:
Yes.
David French:
If you don’t vote for this person, then this cataclysm will happen.
Mark Labberton:
Yes.
David French:
And our response to that which says, “God did not give us a spirit of fear but of power, love, and sound mind.” Now, the power is not political power here because remember, this is being written to Timothy in the first century when there’s no power here. The power they’re talking about is power of the living God.
Mark Labberton:
Yes.
David French:
Love, self-explanatory. Sound mind, my goodness do we need that? Just moments before we started recording the podcast, I was calming down some friends who had seen on Facebook or social media some wild rumors that the Biden administration is not letting relief get through to Western North Carolina because they hate white people in Appalachia. And you’re just like, “Hold on, calm down. Let’s take a breath. Let’s check our facts.” And so no spirit of fear. No spirit of fear. And then the other one is … And so that’s much more inward-looking in the sense that, “Okay, what should I replace a spirit of fear with?” Faith in God’s power, love for my fellow man, and sound thinking.
Well, this one is much more outward. What does the Lord require of you, O man, what is good? To act justly, to love kindness, and to walk humbly before the Lord your God, Micah 6:8. And what I tend to do in that circumstance, because you talked about how I’ve been blessed to be in a lot of very diverse settings, well, politically diverse, ideologically diverse, and when I’m with people who I know disagree with me, I reverse the order. I try to walk in with humility. That means, be curious about their views, respect their views. I don’t have all the answers. I need to hear disagreement. So walk in with humility, exhibit kindness, and then engage with your vision of what justice looks like.
And what I have found is there’s no system of human interaction that always works, but what I’ve found is 90 plus percent of the time, that approach diffuses an immense amount of tension. If you just show affection for people and curiosity towards their views, anger tends to drain out of a room, tension tends to drain out of a room. And so when I talk to my college students, I urge that approach in their own because the college students are full of anxiety about conflict.
Mark Labberton:
Yes, yes.
David French:
And so that’s the approach that I try to take is … But I think none of it is possible if you’re dominated by the spirit of fear. And so I think attacking that spirit of fear is job one in American Christendom right now. I was recently speaking to a pretty big church and they had a unified Sunday school. So from youth group to seniors, I was talking the whole Sunday school, and it was a blast. And one of the parents got up and he said, “David, you’re talking to the youth group that’s going to college and you’re talking to the parents who are sending their kids to college and are talking to the grandparents who are watching their grandkids go to college.” And there’s a lot of concern about what college does. And they said, “What’s your advice?” And I said, “I have two-word advice. Fear not. Fear not.” A lot of what people think about is college is a corrupting influence. It’s just wrong. It’s interesting, church attendance actually correlates with education in a pretty interesting way. The more educated you are, the more likely you are to go to church.
And so a lot of people think of college as deconstructing people. No, no, no, no. That’s not what the numbers tell us. But what I have seen is that when young people go to college and come back “different”, often it’s because before they went to college, it’s not that they weren’t equipped, it’s that they were badly equipped in the sense that they learned a story of American history that was ridiculously one-sided or they were taught a theory of how you’re to interact with other people in college that was deeply harmful and destructive.
Mark Labberton:
Yes, yes.
David French:
So one of the things that I worry about is we teach young people to act as if they’re engaging in battle when they go to college. And here’s an interesting thing that does to some Christian young people. They’re like … Do you remember the old show, The A-Team, Mark?
Mark Labberton:
Sure.
David French:
Do you remember how every show had the same rhythm like small town sheriff and small town sheriff oppressing the town, bring in former special forces, and they clean it up. And there’s always this one moment, there’s a montage when The A-Team is arming up, They’re putting the clip … I mean, they’re putting the magazines and the AR-15s, they’re fastening grenades and they’re doing all of this arming up. And I feel like it’s what we’re telling our students to do. Get ready. You’re arming up. And so they’re coming ready for a fight. And the first non-Christian they meet is like, “Hey, I’m Brian. What’s your name? Nice to meet you. Welcome.” And it’s like, “Wait, I thought you were my enemy.” And they find out that a lot of these folks that they were taught were going to be their enemies are actually just super kind, normal folks. And I have talked to a number of young Christians in secular universities, it has a disillusioning effect.
Mark Labberton:
Yes, yes.
David French:
Like, “Wait, I was taught this whole time that these people are threats, that they’re terrible, that they’re horrible, that they’re going to hate me.”
Mark Labberton:
Yes, yes.
David French:
And so a lot of ways we quote equip people, if they quote equip people, they’re equipping them for the wrong thing.
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
They’re equipping them to fight, not to love their neighbor. Fight their neighbor, not love their neighbor. And that creates a real tension.
Mark Labberton:
And that certainly is part of why the lead up to this election and even the anxieties that I know exist, the fears that I know exist for people about post-election are as bright and vigorous as they are in some places. What handles would you give people in living in a fear-dominated moment in American history?
David French:
That’s a great question. I will say this. Let me just begin and say, when I figure it out completely, you’ll be the first to know.
Mark Labberton:
We’re ready.
David French:
Because I’m just doing the best I can. And so there’s a couple of things that I’ve learned. And then one … Here’s one. In receiving anger and fear, do not try to build up a bulletproof, thick skin. Don’t. Why is that? Because you’re tempted to because sometimes all of that anger hurts.
Mark Labberton:
Sure.
David French:
It did not feel great when the PCA canceled me, for example. That did not feel great.
Mark Labberton:
That’s the Presbyterian Church of America, right?
David French:
Yeah. When they wouldn’t let me speak at General Assembly after inviting me because some quite vicious voices rose. Again, that hurt. I freely admit that that hurt. But I’ll tell you … And so you have this temptation to say, “What can I do to make it not hurt again?”
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
Well, that’s very dangerous because some of the worst people I know in life are people who’ve been criticized a lot and have developed this bulletproof armor. Because you know what that does? It often walls you off from legitimate criticism.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
It makes you think too highly of yourself.
Mark Labberton:
Yes.
David French:
And so when somebody says, “Well, here’s one way I know I’m over the target because I’m taking flak,” that means that all criticism becomes validation.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
No, sometimes you’re taking flak because you’re a jerk, not because you’re right. And so the way I’ve put it is I’ve tried to receive incoming in this way. I try to keep a thick skin and a soft heart. So not everything penetrates or I would be in the fetal position all the time, but some stuff has to or I’ll become awful. And so thick skin, soft heart. And then the other thing is, how do you deal with other people’s fear? How do you ease other people’s fear? And that, Mark, is one of the hardest things of all. And one of the things that I figured out is that, and it’s not just me, this is not just my insight, but enormous amount of fear is rooted in a feeling of nonbelonging and loneliness. Isolation and loneliness. If you’re isolated and lonely, it is a very natural thing to be more fearful because you have less support, you have less love, you have less comfort. And so you feel more alone, you feel more vulnerable, and you’re drawn to, what we’ve seen as people are more isolated and alone, are drawn to these authoritarian movements, the protector figure, for example, or the community created by the cause of these movements.
Mark Labberton:
Right.
David French:
And so one of the things that I think to deal with fear is actually engage in connection, connect with people. I have a good friend whose mom just really, really, really has dived into all of the online stuff. And after, for a while, a long time, he engaged in this rear-guard action, trying to play whack-a-mole with all of the conspiracies. And then he realised she was just … There’s just an element here that there is fear and loneliness. And so instead of whack-a-mole and conspiracies, double the amount of times you have her over for dinner.
Mark Labberton:
Yes, yes.
David French:
Right? Ease the loneliness, build the connection. And I have seen with more than one person that leaning into relationship and presence is the thing that is going to get us through this.
Mark Labberton:
Right. That’s great advice. I know there’s a lot of concern about how people judge each other’s votes. And as we come to the election and imagine whatever post-election dynamics there are going to be, what are your observations? What are you hearing? And what encouragement or help would you give to us?
David French:
Yeah. Several weeks ago, I rejoined Twitter for at least for the rest of the election season. Through November 5th, see how it goes, I’d been off for a while because it’s just way too hateful and so not good for your mental health. So what I did when I came back, because I wrote a short tweet that I said … Well, all tweets are short. But it said, “Good people will vote for Harris. Good people will vote for Trump. Good people will vote for a third party. And our character’s not defined by our vote but how we treat others.” And you would’ve thought, Mark, that I had desecrated a Bible because it was interesting. Partisans on the left were saying, “There is not a single good person that will vote for Donald Trump,” and partisans for Trump were like, “Everyone who’s voting for Harris is going to hell.” And it was just stunning to me that against all evidence of scripture that Christians were consigning people to eternal damnation over a vote in a presidential election when the reality is we’ve got, what, 150 million people will vote if it’s anything like 2020. And they’re coming at it with all different kinds of knowledge sets, all different kinds of understandings of the facts.
Look, there are friends and folks that I know here in deep-red America that if I had their news diet, that if I had the information flow that they had, I would be sprinting to vote for Trump, because for them to get out of that world, they have to completely shift a lot about their lives from where they get their news from, where they attend church, all of these things. And so I love this term called Miles’s Law. Miles’s Law is a term that actually was used to describe behavior and bureaucracies but that, really, it relates to human nature very well. And that is where we stand is based on where we sit. So our beliefs and our views are very much dependent on our community, on our history, on our family.
So, for example, rural America will go about 80% for Trump. Urban America will go about 80% for Harris. You don’t get numbers like that when all of these folks are operating from the exact same set of experiences, exact same set of information, but just different moral worldviews. No, no, no. It’s so much more complicated. That’s what … But at the same time, that’s not to say we’re draining morality from voting or engaging in politics, the how we engage. Vote for Trump or Harris, but if I’m treating people with kindness, if I’m treating people with humility, if I’m open to hearing from other people, if I’m not living a fear-based angry life, then in those circumstances, that defines us far more than that single vote.
And so one of the things that we’re doing is we’re taking to people who exhibit the fruit of the spirit, who love Jesus, who are kind to their neighbors, and then writing them off because they cast the wrong vote. And then we’re taking people who exhibit no fruit of the spirit, who are absolutely consumed by the works of the flesh, but they vote for a candidate. And you’re like, “Welcome, brother.” No, no, no, no, no. I like to refer to my small group from church. And my small group from church goes from someone who voted for Bernie in the primary to people who are going to vote for Trump for the third time and happily do so. And we love each other. We love each other. We’ve been together for years. And politics has not disrupted that. And why is that? Why is that? Well, because if you’re in a community where the fruit of the spirit dominate, you can withstand a lot of disagreement, a lot of disagreement. If you’re in a community where there’s no fruit of the spirit, you cannot tolerate any disagreement at all. And so that’s one of the things that I think can turn down the temperature is stop presuming the motives of your opponents, especially simply by their vote.
Now, we can presume their motives when they tell us their motives. What’s that old saying? When someone tells you who they are, believe them. And there are bad people out there in their political discourse, but we just can’t write off tens of millions of people because in their context and their understanding, and in their conscience, they thought they were making the right call.
Mark Labberton:
Right, right.
David French:
Now, if people are actively cruel and vicious and lying, well, we can make different assessments, but not based on just a vote.
Mark Labberton:
Those are great words to take us out today, David. And I just want to say again how thankful I am for your work, how much I learned from you, and how grateful I am for the way that your combination of skills and gifts are used by God to speak into a very, very complicated time and to do so in the way that you do. So thank you for taking time today to be with us.
David French:
Oh, thanks so much for having me. It’s a real treat.
