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Governors Shapiro And Cox On How Faith Drives Them; 250 Years Later, A Sentence That's Stood The Test Of Time; Rev. Russell Levenson On The Message Of Christmas. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 25, 2025 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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GOV. SPENCER COX (R), UTAH: -- your neighbor if you don't know who they are. And so whatever that looks like, if it's in a congregation, getting to know people who are different than you, if it's in a service organization in your neighborhood, figuring out a way to give back and strengthen your --

GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Yes.

COX: -- community will solve all that's broken. It'll fix the political violence, the dangerous rhetoric. It'll get us back to getting things done, and it'll make us less crazy. I mean, literally, the anxiety that we feel, the lack of power that we've given up as we watch the world spinning out of control around us, it gives you a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, and a sense of unity. And that's what people need now more than ever.

SHAPIRO: And that sense of citizen participation, you don't have to come at that through your faith or through a teaching --

COX: Right.

SHAPIRO: -- from God. That is the American story. You know, I'm privileged to serve as the 48th governor of Pennsylvania. And when I sit behind my desk in my office, there are portraits of those who came before me, including Ben Franklin, who famously said, after leaving Independence Hall at the birth of this new nation, when a woman stopped him on the cobblestone streets of Philadelphia and said, Mr. Franklin, what do we have here, a monarchy or a republic? And Franklin looked at her and said, a republic, if you can keep it.

Our founders understood that the work was going to continue. Our founders understood that it was going to be citizens needing to do this work to advance the causes over generations. And so, whether you're finding that drive for civic engagement and helping your neighbor, your neighborhoods, as Spencer said, from a Bible or from the founding of this country, find it and exercise that power that each and every American has because we need it now more than ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP) DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up, my next guest says one sentence tops all others ever written. We'll tell you what it is after a quick break.

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BASH: It is a sentence that has stood the test of time nearly 250 years. Quote, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Those 35 words from the declaration of independence are the subject of Walter Isaacson's latest book titled, "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written." I spoke to the biographer extraordinaire and former editor of Time Magazine as well as the former CEO here at CNN, Walter Isaacson.

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BASH: Thank you so much for being here.

WALTER ISAACSON, AUTHOR, "THE GREATEST SENTENCE EVER WRITTEN": Dana, glad to be with you.

BASH: I mean, I have to say, it's nice to pick up one -- or it's interesting, not nice, it's interesting to pick up one of your books and not have it be a workout.

ISAACSON: Right, right. Well, this one is supposed to be like Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlet.

BASH: That's what I was thinking.

ISAACSON: We're going to rally around our birthday, the 250th, and so this is like a 50 or 60 page book that just looks at our shared values.

BASH: OK, so Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, just to name a few, what is it about this sentence? I mean, you wrote extraordinary biographies of all those people. This is a sentence that you are writing about and exploring. We know how important the sentence is, but what made you say, oh, I'm going to dig in on this?

ISAACSON: Well, first of all, I wanted to make sure that in this time of turmoil and divisiveness, we remember we do have a common mission statement that we all pretty much agree to and maybe we could have a good 250th birthday if we'd all go back to appreciating that sentence. But to put it into the context of the people you mentioned, I've always been interested in innovation.

And you want to say what's the most important innovation maybe in the past half millennium? It's a notion of a nation where rights come from the consent of the governed rather than divine right of kings. And individual rights are respected, but we also come together to have a common ground. That was a new type of nation, a democracy based on individual rights, and boy, that's probably the most important political innovation you can think of.

BASH: It really is something that we take for granted now. And it's something that is so basic, but it didn't exist in the way -- anywhere near the way that it does in this country or other countries until that sentence was written and the war came after that.

I do want to ask about the word men and the fact that it's men and this sentence deliberately excludes women, slaves, indigenous people. How do you reconcile this greatest sentence with the fact that it just said men?

ISAACSON: Well, it's an aspirational sentence that was definitely not true about the time they wrote it. And sometimes you may think, well, all men, that just means all humankind or whatever. No, they pretty specifically. When Abigail Adams wrote her husband John and said, remember the ladies don't deprive of us -- us of our rights, he said, no, no, we're not going to give up our masculine powers.

And so they did not include slaves, indigenous people, and women. But if you read Jefferson's original draft, which is in my book, even though he owned slaves, even though he enslaved 400 people, including somebody who was in that room, Robert Hemmings, his young valet, whose younger sister would become Jefferson's mistress in this most complicated of things.

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And Jefferson knew that slavery was abhorrent, but we create a country in which it's up to the rest of us for 250 years to try to live up to that mission statement, not say we've achieved it. And four score and seven years after they wrote that sentence is when Lincoln stands at the Gettysburg Cemetery and invokes a sentence saying a new type of nation conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition of all men are created equal.

And he's burying more than a thousand people who fought to make that sentence expand. And that's what we've had to try to do in fits and starts as a country.

BASH: Yes. Took about 50 more years, give or take --

ISAACSON: For women.

BASH: -- for women, but --

ISAACSON: Yes.

BASH: -- Benjamin Franklin, again, as I mentioned, he's another one of -- or he is one of the people who you've written a spectacular biography about. You note in your book that he said, quote, "Compromisers may not make great heroes, but they do make great democracies." What a great sentence. ISAACSON: You know, we've lost the art of the compromise. Franklin was a scientist. Jefferson was a scientist. We could actually, unfortunately, I think we have approximately zero scientists, if you don't count medical doctors in governance today.

But what you know when you had studied Newton like they did is how you have contending forces, but you can bring them into equilibrium. You can figure out the balance. Or as Franklin said, when we were trying to make a joint of wood and it didn't quite hold together, you'd take from one side and take from the other until you could have, in this case, a constitution that would hold together.

I think there are many things we've lost that the founders understood, but the most important is that it's not all or nothing. It's not some algorithm that sends you one way or the other down a rabbit hole. It's how do you balance different values.

BASH: I mean, I'm just -- as I'm listening to you talk about them as all science -- or many of them as scientists and innovators, I'm thinking exactly about the algorithm and wondering how they would use their expertise to try to get rid of that or at least change it --

ISAACSON: You know, I think Benjamin Franklin would be able to create an algorithm for social media that didn't immediately say, oh, this person liked something Tucker Carlson said, I'll send them down this rabbit hole --

BASH: Yes.

ISAACSON: -- and this went down that rabbit hole. He would have said, hey, we can invent some form of social media that tries to figure out the consensus based on all --

BASH: Yes.

ISAACSON: -- of our values. Because as he said, when they signed that declaration, John Hancock wrote, you know, his big handwriting and said with the forces seeking to divide us, we must hang together. And Franklin said, yes, assuredly, we must hang together. Otherwise, we're going to all hang separately.

BASH: Yes. I think that the innovators right now know how to do it. They just don't want to. But that's a whole other -- go ahead. Real quick.

ISAACSON: Yes, I guess the business model's not --

BASH: Exactly.

ISAACSON: -- exactly geared to it, but we should be geared to it.

BASH: Amen to that.

Walter, it is always good to see you.

ISAACSON: Thank you (ph). BASH: Congratulations on this book, "The Greatest Sentence Ever Written." Thanks, Walter.

ISAACSON: Thank you, Dana.

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BASH: Coming up right now, you may be surrounded by sparkly trees, presents, stockings, some form of brunch. Who knows what you're doing right now, but we're going to refocus you just for a bit on the message intended on Christmas. Our Have A Little Faith segment is next.

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BASH: Now on this Christmas, we're going to take a little break from news and politics to talk about the importance of faith.

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Joining me now is Father Russell Levenson, the author of "Witness to Belief: Conversations on Faith and Meaning" and he joins us for today's edition of Have a Little Faith series, which is very appropriate for today. Father Levenson, since it is Christmas day, what is the message of Christmas?

RUSSELL LEVENSON, RETIRED RECTOR, ST. MARTIN'S EPISCOPAL CHURCH: Well, here we sit on a day when a lot of people are probably surrounded by bows and boxes and presents and unopened and open stockings all around them. And it's a day to really be tempted to think that's where we find meaning and purpose, but that's not, of course.

Those of us who are adherents of Christ and Christians believe the real message of Christmas day, Christmas season, is the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ whose other name was love. And so today is a reminder that God loves us, that he came into the world in the person of Christ to remind us that he loves us, to save us from believing that this is the world that matters and this matters alone.

The things that we have in this world are the most important things. It's a call to a deeper meaning and purpose in life, to respond to that love by loving God, but also loving others. And so today really is a day to, certainly we get thanks for all these gifts, but we also need to be reminded that there's a giver behind that.

You know, one of the quotes in the book, you mentioned my book, is we up and up here. It's really -- there's some great conversations in the book, but several quotes stand out to me. One of those was with Amy Grant, a singer, songwriter.

Amy said to me, you know, I'm certainly grateful for all the things that I'm able to provide for my family, that she and her husband, Vince, are able to provide, she said, but they don't last. She said, they last about as long as the dopamine hit you get from a thumbs up on your social media page. And they're about that meaningful.

That's a pretty good quote. And I --

BASH: Yes.

LEVENSON: Actually, when she said that, I said, did you just come up with that? She said, yes, I did. I said, well, that goes in the book.

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But, you know, James Baker, a good friend of mine, a wonderful man, former secretary of state, member of my church in Houston when I was serving there, Secretary Baker said to me, you know, Russ, we're not -- we don't know when we come into this world. We're not having that choice.

And, you know, for most of us, we don't choose when we leave this world. But what we do with the time in between is very, very important. And for that, I look to God again and again. That's James Baker's quote. And that's true for all of us.

Today's the day to look to God. How are we to live our lives? How are we to live with one another? And charity and kindness and mercy and grace. It's a great reminder of those kinds of things.

BASH: Yes.

LEVENSON: And that's what I try to draw out of these people in the book.

BASH: Yes, no, it sure is. And, you know, we're trying to talk more about faith on this program in part because it's not just about God, but also community and the lack of real life community that leads to the crisis of loneliness and a lot of problems in society. Can you talk about that as a faith leader?

LEVENSON: Yes, I mean, there are a lot of people who are lonely. And if we study -- if surveys are to be believed, and a lot of them are, we know that there are growing numbers of people who feel a sense of loneliness and disconnectedness from one another, particularly young people, because they evidently increasingly so, you know, spend their time with something that they hold in their hands.

And it's not in somebody else's hand, it's their phone. And I could be as guilty of that as anyone, but we need to really -- I mean, again, this is a -- this today and this season is an opportunity to reconnect with people. This should be the job of churches and synagogues and faith communities.

And that is to reach out to other people and welcome them within their doors in a loving embrace, reminding them, and with all apologies to your particular show. But the most important things in life are not politics or who's in office or the things we own, the things that we control. These are all kind of traveling companions along life's journey. And if we are -- if we believe what we proclaim, then this is a journey to be living with meaning, purpose, and making, again, a difference in other's lives. In anticipation of the fact that this journey never ends, as Jane Goodall so wonderfully said in our conversation, this is not the last great adventure. There's a next great adventure that awaits those of us who live in faith, meaning, purpose, and love with one another.

BASH: Can you give an example, either something that you learned from one of the 12 people you talked to in the book, or just from your years as an Episcopal priest that affirmed your faith, something that you experienced or shared, somebody shared with you that seems almost unbelievable, maybe even miraculous?

LEVENSON: Yes, Dana, I'm just shy of 64. I was ordained ministry for over 30 years. So you kind of begin to think I've got life figured out. I will tell you in the year and a half that I had these 12 conversations, I left every single one of them changed, challenged, reminded, and eager to know and explore my faith more.

The youngest person was Nikki Haley at the age of 53. The eldest was Secretary Baker, age of 95. Sam Waterston, who just turned 85 a few months ago. Sam -- again, Sam says, you know, my way doesn't have to be everyone's way. But he said, to me, to say that God is alive is just to admit the truth.

And he's come to experience that, but he continues to grow in his faith, as do I. And I really was stunned by the fact that how much time, for instance, some of these people devote to spiritual discipline. Jim Nantz, sportscaster, prays every time the national anthem is being sung in a sporting event.

Secretary Rice, now at the Hoover Institute, prays every morning and has a lengthy season of prayer on her knees every night. It's the first thing she does when she comes in from work. Sam Waterston meditates for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening.

Denzel Washington, who I admittedly was a little starstruck by, I've admired his work forever. But when we talked, first of all, on the phone, and then actually sat down, it was funny because I walked in and sat down and I did what a writer does, or interviewer does, I get it, get all my things together.

And he looks at me and says, first of all, call me Denzel. Secondly, give me a hug. And thirdly, he goes, shouldn't we pray before we begin? I mean, this is him making a suggestion to the pastor, which we did, and we've prayed since.

And, you know, I think we live in a time when these are 12 voices, admittedly, that have a lot that the world has to offer. But at the same time, give us a reminder that, you know, again, you know, there are no luggage racks on hearses, is what we say in my business.

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And I've never been next to someone's deathbed who cried out for more money, more fame, more power, more influence. No, those who I know and have encountered who die in peace, as we would say in my business, are those who've come to understand that this life is an incredible gift, is to be fully enriched and deeply.

It comes from someone who wants us to have this life, and I believe that to be God. And God keeps --

BASH: Right.

LEVENSON: -- sending us those reminders, and we need those reminders. And today's an important day to remember that.

BASH: It sure is.

Father Russell Levenson, thank you. Again, the book is "Witness to Belief," and we hope that you have a wonderful holiday season. Thank you so much for being here. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and learn from you.

LEVENSON: Thank you very much.

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BASH: Thank you for joining Inside Politics. All of us here at CNN wish you a very Merry Christmas. CNN continues after a quick break.