Western Civilization, Christianity, and 21st century American Public Life
On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher convened, as he often does, an unlikely panel: sitting Texas state representative—and 2026 U.S. Senate hopeful—James Talarico (D-Tex.) and congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). At Maher’s prompting, their discussion of the week’s news evolved into a discussion about Western civilization, its Christian heritage, and the relationship between Christianity, public life, and political authority in 21st century America.
The spark for the conversation came from remarks by Marco Rubio at the February 2026 Munich Security Conference. In Munich Rubio described the United States and Europe as part of a shared Western civilization rooted in common history, common culture, and the Christian faith. Maher objected.
While defending the importance of Western civilization against juvenile, progressive voices like those of Billie Eilish and Chappell Roan—who dismiss the West as irredeemably oppressive—Maher flatly rejected Rubio’s contention that Christianity belongs among Western civilization’s defining features. Though Maher concedes that the West gave the world many objective goods, they belong, on Maher’s telling, to the Enlightenment, not Christianity.
Maher paused before inviting his guests, both of whom self-identify as Christian, to reply, conceding they were going to “line up against him” despite their divergent views on religion’s role in public life.
Boebert entered the fray first. She began by invoking the familiar claim that America was founded on “Judeo-Christian values.” She also refused to disassociate with a line she has used elsewhere: that “the church is supposed to direct the government.” The much-invoked “separation of church and state,” which she rightly identified as “not in the Constitution,” she suggested, is simply junk.
Maher then asked Talarico: “where do you stand on all that?”
Talarico offered a contrasting view. Christianity, he argued, consists of two basic commandments: love God and love neighbor—and that “there is no exception to that second commandment. . . . Forcing my religion down their throats is not love.” Talarico went on to say that America is not a Christian nation, that the promise of America is E pluribus unum, and that the public promotion of religion threatens not only democracy but the independent, “prophetic voice of the church.
Charitably, each of the three gets something right. Yet each also made significant errors that both reflect and perpetuate our shared confusion over Western civilization, Christianity, and 21st century American public life and politics. In short, Maher errs historically, Boebert misunderstands the concept of jurisdiction, and Talarico makes for a poor theologian.
Maher’s Historical Error
Maher is no saint, but he deserves credit for rejecting Hollywood’s fashionable reduction of Western civilization to an oppressor–oppressed narrative. He is also right to remind his viewers that the West has indeed produced objective, societal goods and achieved much that is worthy of defense.
But Maher misunderstands where this came from. His argument assumes that Christianity was merely a historical backdrop, a repository, for Western civilization. A simple milieu in which the more important Enlightenment “ideas” and “values” eventually emerged. In this telling, Christianity is incidental to the institutions and moral imagination Maher admires.
The historical record suggests the opposite. As historian Tom Holland argues in Dominion, concepts such as the belief in the dignity of every individual, concern for the weak, and a commitment to free consciences are not self-evident features of human civilization. Rather, they are distinctive inheritances of a particularly Christian moral ecology.
Glen Scrivener echoes Holland in The Air We Breathe. There Scrivener explains that the moral instincts of modern secular societies—concern for equality, compassion, and human rights—continue to rely upon Christian categories even when their theological origins are denied or seemingly dead. Simply put, the “goods” Maher praises are not Enlightenment creations ex nihilo. They’re the fruit of a civilization shaped for centuries by Christianity.
Boebert’s Political Error
Whereas Maher errs historically, Boebert errs politically. Boebert’s opening salvo—that Christianity was not merely present at the American founding but is the American polito-cultural bedrock—is well taken. Whatever one makes of Talarico’s tired rejoinder about the influence of our (few) deist founders, there is at least a sense in which America is, or was, a Christian nation. But even that doesn’t mean, as Boebert contends, that “the church is supposed to direct the government.”
To make this claim—that the church is supposed to direct the government—is to ignore the question of jurisdiction. For most Americans, the question of jurisdiction is a question of law. And so it is. But it is also a question of political theology.
While it is worth the time and effort to read through (at minimum) the 16th and 17th century Protestant political tradition, there is much to glean from the 1550 Madgeburg Confession as well as Chapter 23 of the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF). Although drafted in different centuries in response to different states of affairs, these Confessions carefully distinguish the authority of the church from that of the civil magistrate, or state.
Both are ordained by God. However, each is ordained for a different task and entrusted with a different kind of power. As the Scottish theologian James Bannerman explains, civil government arises from God’s rule over creation and exists to preserve outward order and justice in human society. Cf. WCF 23. The church, by contrast, arises from Christ’s mediatorial rule and exists to advance the spiritual good of his people through the ministry of the Word and sacraments. Cf. WCF 25.
Because their purposes and ends differ, so too do their powers. The magistrate bears the sword, and its authority is civil and coercive (Rom. 13:1-4). The church, by contrast, bears the keys. Her authority is spiritual and ministerial (Matt. 16:19).
Confusing these jurisdictions—whether by subjecting the church to the state (e.g., Erastianism) or by placing the state under ecclesiastical direction—has historically produced both tyranny and corruption. The medieval papacy’s claims to rule kings and “dispose of the temporal affairs of all Christians” are one example of this confusion. It’s nothing if not ironic that folks like Boebert, a self-identified “born-again” Christian, have started to sound like they would have been perfectly at home under the rule and reign of Innocent III.
A better vision, reflected in the Magisterial Reformation, recognizes the church and the civil magistrate as distinct yet cooperative authorities under God. The church does not wield the sword, nor does the magistrate administer the sacraments. Rather, each serves God within its proper sphere, or jurisdiction.
Yet neither operates in a moral vacuum. Magistrates remain accountable to divine law and are obligated to defend the conditions under which true religion may flourish, perhaps even to assist their societies in aspiring to the gates of eternal salvation, as Franciscus Junius puts it.
Put differently, it is possible that Christianity may shape the moral imagination of a people and their rulers without collapsing church and state into a single institution. Unlike Boebert, the Magisterial Reformers understood this well: the church must not direct the government, but neither may the government pretend neutrality toward the moral order that ultimately sustains it.
Talarico’s Theological Error
If theology is thinking God’s thoughts after him or applying the laws of nature and Scripture to every area of life, then Talarico is a poor theologian.
Throughout their discussion, Talarico framed Christianity largely in terms of neighbor-love and social inclusion. These themes are part and parcel of individual Christian ethics, and the command to love one’s neighbor is near the heart of Jesus and Christianity’s moral vision.
But Christianity cannot be reduced to moral exhortation. The triune God is always the preeminent referent. Talarico also suggested that Christianity must remain separate from political authority to preserve its integrity. When the church becomes entangled with state power, he argued, it loses its “prophetic voice.”
There is a measure of truth in this concern. The church bears the keys, not the sword. Yet Talarico’s broader argument reflects a distinctly modern and liberal assumption, namely: that religion must remain confined to the private sphere while public life proceeds according to allegedly neutral principles.
Here Talarico and the Magisterial Reformers further diverge. In the Protestant political tradition, Christianity was not thought to be a private devotion but public good. Christianity, as 20th century missiologist Lesslie Newbigin argued, is a comprehensive “account of things that have happened.” Christianity or, more accurately, the gospel, is public truth and, as such, is “not a proposition in metaphysics or a program for ethics and politics, though it has implications in both these spheres.”
Talarico’s position may sound friendly and tolerant, but his articulation of the Christian faith is wildly reductionistic and pietistic. Unlike Talarico, Christians read in the Protestant political tradition can get comfortable with affirming the public promotion of religion without telling themselves the must be closet theocrats. Christianity is public truth and must bear upon public life.
Read, Remember, Recover
Like the blind men and the elephant, Maher, Boebert, and Talarico each capture a fragment of the truth while missing the larger picture. Maher rightly celebrates the achievements of Western civilization but refuses to acknowledge the Christian soil from which those achievements grew. Boebert understands that Christianity helped shape America’s moral foundations but misunderstands the question of jurisdiction between church and state. Talarico preaches reductionistic “love” and “tolerance” but empties Christianity of its theological substance and would happily see it restrained to the private sphere.
While Maher, no respecter of religion, should be applauded for hosting these debates and sparking these kinds of conversations, this debate—conducted largely in slogans and soundbites, from “Enlightenment values” to “Christian nation” to “separation of church and state”—ended in disappointment.
Unless we “do the reading” and wade into the deeper waters that have shaped our society, I’m afraid too many 21st century Americans will continue to assume that Christianity must either direct our politics or be relegated to the ashheap of history.
Rather than settle for slogans, we need to read, remember, and recover the Protestant political tradition. It may prove to be the only way to move beyond the errors—historical, political, and theological—that still shape our debates, including in Maher’s studio.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
