IT'S A 60-40 NATION:

Religion News Service caught up with French to ask his unblinking perspective on the dangers of Christian nationalism, so prominent in the Capitol attack, and how the nation might begin to heal. The Q&A was edited for length and clarity.

You're an evangelical Christian. When did you begin to depart from the mainstream in your perspective?

I haven't changed my perspective on things like being pro-life or believing in strong religious freedom protections. But I stopped being a Republican after (Donald) Trump's victory in the 2016 primary.

In 2007, much to my embarrassment today, I was speaking to a very conservative convention and someone asked why I was volunteering to go to Iraq and I said the two greatest threats to America were far-left radicals at home and jihadists abroad.

Then I went to Iraq and I saw the difference between an opponent and an enemy. I had lived in deep blue places in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Ithaca, New York, with people on the far left of the political aisle, and I had a good life in both of those places. I could not have had a good life in Iraq under the control of the Islamic State. And I thought, "We are superheating our political rhetoric at home out of proportion to the stakes of our political controversies. And that's dangerous."

What do you see as the country's greatest threats today?

Today, the greatest threat we have is polarization itself --this commitment we have to view fellow citizens as enemies and the incredible animosity existing across American communities that would lead people to feel so desperate about the state of the Union they would literally storm the Capitol to stop the democratic process.

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