459. Former Senator Jack Danforth Explains How Religious Congregations Can Heal America’s Political Divide
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Who is former Senator Jack Danforth and what are his credentials?
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Welcome, I'm your host, Dan Hesse, and I'm with former US Senator Jack Danforth. Jack is a partner at Dowd-Bennett and serves on the National Advisory Board of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. An ordained Episcopal priest, Jack is the author of three books, Resurrection, faith in politics, how the moral values debate divides America and how to move forward together, and his most recent work, The Relevance of Religion, How Faithful People Can Change Politics, which will be the focus of our conversation today. Following Jack's three terms in the U.S. Senate, Jack held appointments in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and he served as U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Jack served eight years as Attorney General for the state of Missouri. So as a Missourian, Senator Danforth, it's a real privilege to welcome you to the Mentors Radio. Great. Thanks, Dan. Good to be with you. So I had a previous guest, by the way, whose middle name is Danforth, and he sends his best regards. Do you know who that could be?
Sure. Yeah. No kin. He was named after a good friend of his father. You're talking about Dan Quayle, of course. I am talking about Dan Quayle. But as far as I know, there's no blood relationship. But hey, who knows?
It's a great name. Well, I'm just a plain old Daniel. I like Danforth. It's kind of a cooler name. So you went to the Yale Divinity School with the intention of becoming a minister, but you changed your mind and chose a different vocation, politics.
Why? I have... great respect for people who are in the parish clergy. I think they have real gifts and they do an excellent job, at least the ones I've been privileged to know. But I just didn't have that, I guess, personality or temperament for the parish clergy. Um, the idea of me being a kind of a counselor or a pastor, it just wasn't a good fit for me. And then the other option would have been teaching religion. And I didn't have that sort of, I guess, theological mind to do it. So I reverted to something that I thought I could do, which was going to law school and being a lawyer and then being in politics.
I just finished watching a Ken Burns documentary on television, The American Revolution, which really kind of brought back how this country was founded, what it took to put together the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. And what I had forgotten was how much compromise was required to put all those documents together and get this country together, which was basically 13 separate colonies.
How can religious congregations help heal America's political divide?
Some were big colonies, some small, some agricultural, some industrial, some maritime. Residents of the colonies who came from different countries, spoke different languages. So it wasn't only compromise, but then the founding fathers who were also people of faith, but those like Madison and Jefferson and others really warned against intertwining or entangling religion and politics. Can you describe, as someone of faith who served in politics, what is the realm of politics and what's the realm of religion and how and why are they different?
Well, in short, religion is not politics and politics isn't religion. I mean, they're just different realms. That doesn't mean that they're not relevant to each other, but they're different realms.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Who is former Senator Jack Danforth and what are his credentials?
0:07–4:05
2
How can religious congregations help heal America's political divide?
4:05–11:39
3
What is the role of compromise in politics according to Senator Danforth?
11:39–27:32
4
How does Senator Danforth differentiate between religion and politics?
27:32–41:48
Speakers
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