Excerpts:

In America’s ruthless culture war, there are few victories more cherished than a defection. On the rare occasion an actor, singer, author or sports star pops up on the other side of the fence, they are paraded like Stalin’s daughter in New York or Kim Philby in Moscow. Republicans have long struggled for street cred, falling back on ageing actors for celebrity endorsements, so the arrival of a black hip-hop superstar on their side of the argument was welcomed with a glee matched only by the other side’s outrage.

For all its religious force and popular success, West’s message makes for an awkward fit with the media world that created him. Interviewers are stumped by the radicalism of his message and the earnestness with which he delivers it. In a two-hour conversation with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, a former Radio One DJ whose default setting is obsequiousness towards whichever megastar he happens to be talking to, West revealed a conservative worldview that includes everything from a critique of hypersexualised pop culture to a plan for bringing his shoe company’s factories back to the US and a desire for a more humane kind of city planning that is centred on churches and schools.

In the National Review, the theologian Andrew T. Walker summarised the interview as follows: “West has the anthropology of C.S. Lewis, the economics of Wilhelm Röpke, the cultural mood of Wendell Berry, and the defiance of Francis Schaeffer.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lowe had no idea what to make of it.