A gay, secular Jew and a classical liberal, Jonathan Rauch has found himself increasingly out of step with the American left. He has also changed his thinking dramatically on the proper role of religion in public life, from fearing it to believing religion—and especially traditional Christianity—can play a salutary, and perhaps irreplaceable, role in civic culture. Reviewing Rauch’s new book on this subject, Peter Berkowitz presents his own interpretation:

In his 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessment—composed two years before the Constitutional Convention that he helped to organize and to which he made a decisive contribution—James Madison affirmed that religious liberty is an unalienable right. He maintained, moreover, that government is neither “a competent Judge of Religious Truth” nor authorized to “employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy.” The former, in Madison’s view, “is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world” while the latter is “an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”

In Democracy in America, published in two volumes in 1835 and 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville added the complementary observation that separation of church and state empowers religion and freedom to collaborate to fortify American democracy.

While Berkowitz agrees with much of what Rauch argues, he dissents from his criticism of white, right-leaning evangelicals, writing that he “neglects—indeed, he comes close to denying—democracy’s broken bargain with Christianity.”

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.