Transcripts For CSPAN2 Tara Burton Strange Rites 20240712

Survivor. We want to thank you all for supporting our community of authors, book lovers and friends. Tonight we are excited to have with us tara burton who is celebrating the release of her new book, strange rites. Tara is contributing ed editor at the american interest, a columnist at Religion News service and the former Staff Reporter at fox. Com. He has written on religion and secularism for national geographic, the washington post, the New York Times and more and holds a doctorate in theology from oxford. Shes also the author of the novel social creature. Joining tara to discuss her new book is ross douthat, coauthor of grand new party. Before joining the New York Times, he was a Senior Editor for the atlantic. He is the film critic for national review, and he cohosts the New York Times weekly oped e podcast, the argument. He lives in new haven with his wife and three children. So without further ado, please join me in welcoming tara and ross. Thank you so much. Thanks to all of you for joining us here in this, you know, exciting virtual experience, this slightly disembodied way of talking about a book that a may be appropriate to the subject matter. And, tara, thanks for letting me interrogate you about the future of religion in the United States and beyond. Physical therapy night. Thank you so much for being here. Just another thursday night in america. I just want to make two comments before we start. The first is that in our era of covid, ive now done enough zoom events to know that sometimes people are more hesitant to ask questions when theyre typing in questions than they would be at a real event when you can, you know, stand up and tell the author why shes wrong with about everything in the world. [laughter] [audio difficulty] youll just have to listen to me ask questions for the entire hour and, hopefully, well get about 15 or 20 minutes of your questions in at the end. So so thats the first point, and the second one which is one ill reiterate at the end which is this is a challenging time for everybody, and authors are obviously, you know, among the least challenged in many ways, but putting out a book at a moment like this is a difficult thing. I had a book come out, and i was lucky enough to squeeze in a couple of weeks of promotion before all the bookstores closed. But i just want to encourage you if you find, if youre listening, watching, enjoying this, dont just buy the book, dont just buy the book from the strand, obviously, encourage your friends to buy the book and, you know, make it the bestseller that it deserves to be. So without further ado, lets start in with a big, dumb question. This is a book about new religions for a godless world, right . Thats the subtitle. So is our world really godless, and if not or if so, what religions are filling that void . So, spoiler alert are, no, we dont live in a godless world. Thats roughly the argument i make. So i want to draw a distinction sort of when we talk about a secular age as we are often wont to do or a world about religion, what are we really talking about. And just a couple of sort of background statistics. About 23, 24 of americans say theyre religiously unaffiliated with also often referred to as the religious [inaudible] about 36 of people born in america after 198ing 5 identify as no religion, but of these none affiliated, 72 say they believe in some sort of a higher power. And 20 actually say they believe in the god of survival, as i believe [inaudible] so were not necessarily talking about people who are atheists, although e about 6 of the population although its true that atheists tend to under selfreport, but were talking about people who, for whatever reason, are alienated by institutional religion are, organized religion who feel that it has nothing to offer them, who may as is the case in the people who believe the traditional judeochristian god actually have some form of faith, but who are unwilling to identify with, participate in it as a, as a religion in and of itself. So were talking about the spiritual but not reliberties. But were also religious. But were also talking about a broader category, and in my book i called it are the call it the religiously remixed. People who do identify, check the box, as it were, with a particular religious tradition but whose personal practices, Belief Systems are more i eclectic. And a statistic that i like to bring up here to give a sense of how widespread this is is about 30 of selfidentified christians say they believe in reincarnation which is not, shall we say, something one would association with christian orthodoxy. So we are living in an age, id argue, where religious life, the components of religious life meaning, purpose, community, ritual are relating to them in a different way. Were mixing and matching. Were unbundling, to use a term that harvard scholars use in their work. And theres a sense in which we are all sort of the endpoint of this is we are all making our own religions culturally. These can include not just elementses of traditional religion, but things like wellness culture, fandom, political activism, the sort of vast array of modern occultism, witchcraft and neopaganism and wicca are among the Fastest Growing religions in america and so on and so forth. So i think one sort of initial response to a description of your thesis that someone well versed in American History might have is how new is all this, right . Because, after all, you know, there is in certain ways nothing more american than being entrepreneurial and sort of setting up a church of one. This is sort of, you know, every, every kid in High School English class are thiess back when i went to high school was assigned the collective works of ralph waldo emmer orson, and you get emerson, and you get a certain kind of individualized religion there. And then, you know, the larger history of 19th century american spirituality is rife with what you in the book call sort of intuitional religion. So can you talk a little bit about what is the same and what is different. Like, what is, what is what do we have in common with 19th century america, and whats changed in the last 30 or 40 years . Sure. So what i call intuitionalism in the book, a catchall term for religious practices and beliefs that sort of focus inward on the gut, the individual, the feelings versus institutionalism. Again, these are kind of productive terms. But your church, your dogma, your exeternal forces. Weve seen quite a history of the pendulum swinging back and forth in american religious life and these sort of outcroppings of intuitional faith, intuitional approaches, the various great awakenings, your tent revivals but also the burst of movements like new thought which was huge from about the 860s onward 1860s onward which was the sort of secret selfhelp movement where, basically, if you think about it hard enough, it will happen. Which became hugely influential and led to a whole industry of selfhelp looks. Theres spiritualism and the rise of ouija boards, but theres also, id argue, an evangelical revival as well within the christian tradition where the narrative was often Something Like the church has become or christianity has become desiccated, nobody really believes anymore, you just go to church on sunday, and it doesnt really matter. We need to look for a personal relationship with god. We need to look for something more intense, more inti may mate. And, of course, the sort of various countercultural religions of the 1960s. So that is absolutely not new. If anything, id argue its just a pendulum swing back and forth forever however many hundred years. But where i think something is distinct and new about this great awakening is the internet, fitting given that we are trying to gather in this way at this time. I like to i say that the, what the protestant what the printing press, rather, was the protestant reformation. Sort of the creation of a model of consuming information that was in many ways intimate and inward. You were reading a book, you had your sort of direct connection to the text, to sort of internalize in such a way. And one may well sort of draw that connection to the protestant ethos overall. I i e remember seeing kind of these null religions being the religions new religions being the religion of the internet where we are not just consumers of content, we are not just readers, but we are also inclined to culturally think of ourselves as can creators, then think of ourselves as people who have or want to have ownership over stories to, in some ways, of course, this hearkens back to various oral traditions as well but with the added sort of dizzying disembodiment of the internet itself where i think that this hunger to create, to be involved, to have ownership in our stories has made us all the more reis the us about the to perhaps orthodox ways or traditionally orthodox ways of experiencing, receiving dogma and doctrine. I think as well our particular capitalist moment is so in the area of personal branding, made us cognizant of a model of our destiny based so heavily on our choices. What we, what news we consume, what papers with we read, what music we listen to, what movies we watch, what we post, what we tweet all create this odd mix Public Private synthesis. And theres this odd consumer strain of what app am i using to meditate, what purchase am i new york stock making, am i going to a soul cycle class. I think wellness culture is perhaps the biggest, most obvious example of this. But i think that the way in which our conspicuous and perhaps less conspicuous consumption is seen to define us especially in the age of the algorithm where our recommendations are getting narrower and narrower contributes to this kind of hyperatomized individualization. So i want to press you a little bit on the point you made at the end, right . Because i think this is one of the interesting things about the book, is that it sort of at the core youre talking about practices and sort of experiments that [audio difficulty] fit some kind of definition of religious or spiritual right. I mean, i think the core of the book is about, in certain ways, the revival of pagan, pantheist, occultist practices in various forms in American Life. But then your definition of sort of new religion spreads outward and encompasses, as you were just saying, sort of consumer culture, sort of personalized aspects of consumer culture, sort of zone, everything sort of holistic and perm personalized wellness culture and so on. So convince me, as someone may be a little inclined to skepticism of that, that it makes sense to fit the world of brands and sort of that kind of selfcultivation under the umbrella of religion or religious practice. Sure. So id argue that theres a sort of i implicit theology thats shared by so many, particularly something, the effort you put on a soul cycle bike, the purity you get from having the right green juice with the minimum amount of toxins, the sort of way that your skin looks after your 10step beauty routine. The way in which these things are sold and talked about is so loaded with this language of selfcare not just as a kind of a nice thing to do although, of course, historically the word selfcare comes from a more political place in this wellness paradigm in which its now found itself. We want to this is a sense of which we are not taking care of ourselves, if we are not putting in the effort to be the best in this certain way which is, of course, also rooted in happens to make us prettier, os tense prettier ostensibly prettier, have a dewy complexion or what have you, theres a kind of purity were reaching in so doing. And id argue there are elements of that that are taken from from prosperity gospel tradition which is sort of adjacent to that. But i think that the idea that more broadly also to release yourself from repression, from ways society is acting upon you you much more in solidarity. But the sort of capitalist version of it, the branded version of it does tend to equate personal fulfillment with a kind of vibration if on the right frequency of the right energy in a way that i find incredibly interesting and quite, quite revealing. So is goop a church . Yes, i would say so. That said, what it does, what goop doesnt have and its because its a brand from which we buy things and doesnt have the i do all my shopping at goop, i should [laughter] well [inaudible] sorry, go on, tara. Oh, no [laughter] just that i think soul cycle is an even better example because it combines, i think, a a lot of the goopesque metaphysic and the aesthetic and the sense of purpose with a community and ritual that let you experience that in the moment. I remember i went through a few soul cycle classes, i wish i could say they were all for research, they were not. But theres these signs, first of all, were a community, were a soul, were a tribe, were a pack, we are a cult it says it right there and then all of the signs say things like your energy affects your neighbors energy so please dont do this, that or the other thing in a way that is, again, using this kind of vague, somewhat nebulous spiritualized language to talk about or to lend to what could just be, like, an uncomfortable fitness class to burn some calories into something with an aura of spiritual attainment. What youre doing isnt just good for you, its good for the universe and your role in it. So one thing that has struck me that i think fits with your argument about the difference between the early 21st century and its gurus expect 9th century and the 19th century and its gurus, its an absence of institutionalization, right . You know, that the United States has a lot of the same kind of spiritual entrepreneurs and wouldbe gurus that we had in the victorian err or rah or the early 19th century, but they dont or at least they dont seem as likely to found things that we call churches, right. Shes a preinternet figure originally, she rises to prominence in the 980s, but she sort of has updated new thought kind of figure. And i feel ooh like in the 19th century there would be a Church Founded by marianne williamson, right . It wouldnt be huge, but it would, like, 200,000, and itd be sort of chapels around the country. And that doesnt seem to happen to anything like the same extent, especially over the last generations. You have a little stuff in the 70s and 80s, but especially lately. And do you think thats how much of that is the internet, how much of that is just sort of an ambient kept such of institutions . You know skepticism of institutions . Why doesnt Gwyneth Paltrow why isnt there a sunday service for goop . I mean, im not sure that it would not be successful at least initially. I think that, i think the label of church or the label of kind of making something a church is, i think as you say, would be met with a degree of suspicion. I think as well the sort of fact that there is such a willingness to mix and match that we we millennials, the broader we you. Me personally, yes. Im are so, so much of contemporary religious landscape, id argue, is about that kind of precise individualization so that in the end, we cant necessarily get away from the endpoint being that we are all the high priest beings of our own church and that we dont have trust not only in our religious institutions, but in our civic ones, in our political ones, journalistic and media institutions as well, unfortunately. Or fortunately, dont know. But i think no comment. I think that that is suspicion does just lend itself to such a focus on the self. And i want to be careful here, because i think theres an easy narrative that we could go to that says, oh, kids these days with their selfies, theyre so narcissistic, all being priests in their own religion. And i think thats a tempting way that one could go about reading the situation. But i actually think that what were seeing isnt necessarily a story of narcissism, but of institutional failure. I think that it is perfectly reasonable and, in fact, completely understandable that if your institutions have failed you, if you dont think you can trust the media, the scientific establishment, the political system, the academic system, so on and so forth, it makes perfect sense to turn inward, to rely on yourself, to rely on your own gut instincts and desires and affinities and feelings as authoritative because at least you know that youre not well, you might be lying to yourself in a sort of broader theological way, but at least you might have slightly more trust that youre aware of yourself than you are of other people. So i guess to push on that point a tiny bit, this sustainable, right . Because it this is, you know, ts is a book about our whole culture, but it is obviously focused on i guess you could say people younger e than me. I just turned 40. So millennials and generation z, and these are people who are sort of conducting experiments in religion at a time that theyre conducting experiment ifs, you know, in relationships and professional experiments and so on. And you can, i think you can tell a plausible story where, you know, these are the children of baby boomers who had their own rebel if onand often sort of rebellion and often sort of hung on to an institutional affiliation. [audio difficulty] generational turnover where [audio difficulty] took one step out the door of their institutions but kept one foot in the door, and then their kids have taken the other step. But their kids havent, for the most part, gone through the, you know, 5060 years of life that awaits after your 20s, right . In which the form is not necessarily the dogma or doctrine of religion, but the sort of communal forms of religion are. The, you know, the sort of solidarity of a religious institution or community thats not clear that goop or even soul cycle provides, you know, the role that a bar mitzvah or first communion mace and so on. Plays and so on. So, obviously, this is more in like the above city line, but prophesy line, but what does this look like in 25 years for the people conducting these experiments now . So i think youre absolutely right that the more, id say, inward looking, the sort of nihilism of soul cycle that is not just selffocused, but present, those are the things that i think are unsustainable. I think that we will see a hunger for collectivity, a hunger for solidarity that the kind of pure sort of selfinterested versions of these new religion ares, the wellness cultures of the world cant offer. I think that what we will see, and im sort of interested in particular in, for example, sort of social justice as a movement in part because what it does offer is an ideology of community, an ideology of solidarity which i think there is a real hunger for. And the way that i sort of im interested, too, more broadly, and i talk about this in a chapter on kind of the free love as a continuation of the idea that human perfectionism in the 19th century, but ways in which and this is the term sort of thats long been used in the Queer Community but chosen family. Where people or who are marginalized by or experience marginalization from traditional religious institutions, people who for whatever reason are ail cent nateed alienated whose family of origin might not, they might not be in touch with in the same way might be able to find one another. I think that theres a hopefulness in the idea that, you know, as a result of the kind of triballization you find on the internet where people can find likeminded people, where people can find communities, there are options for solidarity, for coming together, for the creation of ritual in a way that may not look like organized religion as traditionally practiced, but nevertheless, offer that sense of community. I always remember theres a woman i interviewed before starting the book, it was my last piece for bach who lost her husband unexpectedly quite young and didnt or wanted, with his friends, to celebrate and commemorate his life in a way that was specific to him. And so the friends got together and they played music from his favorite video game, there was a sort of service that was very much designed not around religious lines or traditional religious lines, but rather who this person was, what his life was like. And she ended up hed wanted to play a sequel to a video game they played together, he wasnt able to do that, and she kind of, with people that she met online through this game, played this game sort of in his memory, and this was, she e reported, hugely important to her. And i think thats such a telling example of how, how these communal bonds and our desire for these communal bonds can survive the sort of reshaping even as i think the sort of perhaps pure selfish im being really mean about soul cycle on this call. I hope they dont hate me. But the inwardness of a certain kind of wellness culture, shall we say, i think is aattainable. So lets, you know, then lets drill down on the question of belief, right in were talking about community, but, you know, the core, the core of what we think of as religion has always been belief and that the, you know, theres a lot of sociological debate about, you know, how important are actually creed doe statements and dont people take their religious identity from but its also true that the a major world religion ares have been structured around actual metaphysical claims about the universe. I think it radiates through a lot of the more supernaturallyoriented experiments that youre writing about, which is how much do people really believe in what theyre doing. Specifically when youre talking about knee e gopaganism, the people who are sort of reaching back or reinventing prechristian or nonchristian traditions. Theyre invoking gods, theyre invoking demons, theyre, young, doing witchcraft. Some of it seems like play, some of it seems like experiment, some of it seems to have real belief. How do you see the question of belief plague out there . Playing out there . As you say, belief is very difficult to quantify. I mean, its certainly difficult to disentangle from any of these other practices. I think as you say and as i argue in the book, theres many definitions of religion. There are scholars and certainly definitions, i would say it doesnt matter at all, its just about the community, but i think that the truth is something a little bit more complicated which is that if you affirm something to be true and you act as if were true or you act in accordance with the sort of values that you create and espouse, you kind of reaffirm the truth of that within a community such that theres a sort of, a social reality that is something a little bit more complex and i would argue unward where like a model where everyones doing something and no one believes it but theyre pretending to get along. I always think of, you know, acts of faith and the faith will come. I think that ritual and community can, indeed, be a precursor to faith or to a spiritual awareness rather than simply being kind of an either or, or saying a belief has to proceed [inaudible] so, i mean, and then to sort of take that, theres also then the ways that these things sort of feed back into political life, right . I mean, think one of the more interesting aspects of the sort of neopagan theme, the tap into American Culture is it seems to have sort of leftwing and rightwing manifestations, right in so you have chapters in the book that sort of follow what we might call pagan threads to very political and cultural destinations. Do you want to talk a little bit about that . Sure. So the first and perhaps the most prominent example of neopaganism con sued of broadly conceived of broadly, again, the terms are a bit fluid here, but, you know, theres the relugs of wicca itself, people who selfidentify as wick can but not identify with a coffin, the sort coven. Progressive witch culture is, i think, a hugely significant phenomenon. So already in 2014 when alex [inaudible] wrote a book called butches of america, witches of america, she said at the time it was the Fastest Growing religious tradition. That was before 2016 which is, id argue, where it all changed. So i think in the wake of Donald Trumps election, in the wake of the womens march in particular and the sort of feminist movement around that the, there was a real interest in on the part of spiritually interested progressives, young progressives, particularly young women, also qu everything er people queer people who found within the imagery of witchcraft a conscious transgression of the nasty woman, the sort of difficult woman, the woman who is sexually in charge of her own sexuality, found these images to be kind of liberating in part because they were so coded as in opposition to the white evangelical, trump gop alliance. So youd have have sort of witches hexing trump or later witches hexing kavanaugh as these mass cathartic symbolic, buttal id argue spiritually real outpourings of anger, of grief. And when i say spiritually real, i think that theyre it would be fair to say, you know, it was a symbol set that a, a language that people were able to use to process their anger but also their sort of hope for a different world rather than it just being like a convenient symbol set. But then as you say sort of going, going completely across the political spectrum, theres also the rise of what i call a certain kind of [inaudible] and a sort of reactionary desire for, and you find this in fans of joy peterson on on the one hand, the red pill on the other, the altright more generally, this kind of quasiin each january or neo watered down of lets return to the good old days when sort of the hybrid of often comment greece ancient greet and the 1950s as seen through pleasantville. The good old days when men were men, women were women and, you know, we all had our place. And this kind of obsession with physical strength, with the kind of primordial truth of the blood and theres a sort of immissit blood and soil here that ill just let hang in the our. But i think this reactionary which is, codes itself as a response to the desiccated modern world and the corrupt modern world and the civilization which feminism and p. C. Culture have destroyed is a kind of desire to reclaim an imagined primal path x theres often very strong and slightly dubious and what nature says goes. I kind of would call it a kind of nature worship. So thats a very different form of paganism that takes very Different Things from our pagan past, shall we say. So do you, i mean, just in listening to you describe it and, you know, the figures that you reference, it seems to be, you know, in part that you can see that as a kind of sex and gender polarization, right . In religion. Where, obviously, there are male witches and male pagans on the pagan left, and there are, you know, i guess, you know, altright, neopagan women but there does seem to be a sense in the sort of larger polarization of sex in our culture seems to play out a little bit in this religious landscape, right in and you could do it, you know, you could sort of come closer to the center and say its, well, Oprah Winfrey and joel osteen are sort of thein and yang of the the yin and yang of the American Religious Center and the extremes are witches hexing kavanaugh and bronze age converts supporting trump. But this in certain ways reflects the kind of religious failure in the sense that you would expect a successful religious community to sort of socialize men and women together in certain ways. Which maybe is not happening . A what do you think of that . So i think, id say its a much broader failure than just religion. I mean, when i look at sort of the wide range of these groups, i mean, i dont think theyre exactly comparable. I certainly have quite a lot more condemnation for the [inaudible] than i do for the witches. That said, i i think that what were seeing and what i find so fascinating is that so many of the subjects of their ire other than, of course, one another are the same. Certain newspapers, for example, horrible p. C. Feminist bastions of, you know, the horrible woke age or are they this sort of white supremacist, patriarchal papers and im not naming names that should be struck down because they failed in that way. And these are often sort of both charges that are leveled against institutions more broadly. And i think that whatever else we want to say its that our si isic institutions civic institutions have have failed us more broadly. Not any paper in particular, but speaking more broadly, i think that there is a sense in which not the center, but our, the institutions that make up our lives have lost our trust. And however we may understand or give voice to those failings, there is, i would argue, Something Interesting to me in how widespread the distrust is of kind of institutional targets. Finish. So id like to thank everyone who has followed my instructions and actually asked some questions. So weve got about 15 or 20 minute now, and im going to take some questions out of the queue, maybe adapt them slightly using the moderators prerogative. But well start with a question from avi. He cites the catholic philosopher charles taylor, the canadian author of a secular age, the largest book that you can possibly buy and maybe possibly read. And he, avi says that, you know, taylor suggests some version of what youre describing is inevitable if we get the history of the last 500 years right since religion has been decoupled from the state in northatlantic society, but humans are still on a to find fullness and meaning which can only be understood in religious terms. Taylor calls this a kind of nova effect, an explosion of religious options. And he defends against charges that its too individualistic or too narcissistic and so on. And so that, i think that dovetails, the obvious point dovetails with some of what youve been saying. I want to take it and link it, you know, we briefly mentioned the social Justice Movements and black lives matters and protest politics that are sort of dominating discussion right now. One thing that struck me about those protests is it e seems like there is, theres the nova effect and sort of the desire for individualism, but then theres also still a desire for a kind of religious unity, right . Its sort of striking to see some of this corporate bullshit, right, but the sense that we want to live in a society where every institution high and low, corporate and governmental and so on, is onboard with this cause. That seems almost to push against the nova effect and the idea that its all just going to be individualism. But there is some desire to have a sort of unified church of social justice. Absolutely. Do you see that . Yes, absolutely. And if anythiing i think thats one of the reasons that and, again, speaking somewhat reduck tiffly, but the social Justice Movement, i think, is so, works is so well, and it is so powerful and is so effective is in part because it sort of on the one hand, you know, insofar as it is, its current version is a version of our times. Of course, it is sort of rooted in a degree of intuitionalism, a degree of inwardness, but it also offers that vision of solidarity, of unity and of a common good that can be shared of a better world. And i think that there is something vital in, you would say theres a hunger for something vital that i see more broadly which is a sense that our, yes, our institutions shouldnt just sort of work in the sort of functional way, they should be for something, for something good. And i think its often the case that when i read sort of the social justice culture as a religion, theres a version of that that i read a lot that is basically using this pejoratively and saying, oh, its a cult, so on and so forth. I think a better way of framing that is, i mean, yes, it works because it is a religion. It works because it can harness a real sense of meaning, of purpose, of community and ritual that actually points me beyond the self. It gives us ans e catology that sort of other iterations of more self purely intuitionalists and selffocused religious phenomenon dont and i do want to draw a distinction between, i suppose, the social Justice Movement as a kind of organic phenomenon and its sort of corporatization as it has, indeed, pretty much everything that one could think of gets sort of assumed by corporations to el products. So i sort of do want to i want to draw the distinction between kind of a movement in and of itself and the way in which it kind of gets fed through the shutter of and now, you know, certain brands are going to say the right thing at the right time and the right instagram. Was it Kendall Jenners black lives matter pep i ad in 2017. Pepsi ad. But isnt that sort of how a religion wins, right . I mean, if you go back to, like, you know, the fourth century roman world, right . You had sort of the zealots of christianity, and then you had the, you know, roman aristocrats, sort of the equivalent of brands i guess today who didnt really care one way or another about the doctrine of the run thety, but can the trinity, but decides, well [audio difficulty] it seems that kind of certainly the ascent and triumph of a new world leader. And i i think that that is certainly one path we take to victory, through this kind of corporatization. I cant help but wonder though whether another path might actually be through politics. I, like many others, was rather excited about the Bernie Sanders campaign. This is probably something i might have wondered about with slightly more [inaudible] a few months ago than now. But i do wonder whether, you know, these religion, they do vote. In 20 states i want to say theyre the single biggest religious demographic. There are, what, 13, 14 of the population . Their turnouts always great, but theyre 13 of the population, and its declining. We talk about the religious nuns, sort of social justice progressives more broadly. Of course, theres a lot of crossover. Were talking about 23 of americans. Were talking about 36 of young americans. And so i do wonder if one way in which this might kind of make its way into the culture is through the ballot box, whether we might at some point see a political experiment that takes these values and puts them into practice and sees how they work. So this, this was actually one of our questions from avi asking how do you think these new religions will sort our two parties. Let me suggest to the sort of darker scenarios, right, which is to the extent that one of our political coalitions becomes sort of defined by and dominated by some version of these new religions, and our other political bigs defined by, dominated by whatever remains of traditional christianty. That creates a much bigger religious political divide than america as had in the past. I mean, even, you know, our civil war was essentially a intrachristian theological conflict with people having huge arguments, but they were still arguing about the interpretation of the same bible, right . So this, i mean, the vision youve just set up does seem to set up a version of the culture war that would in certain ways could be even more profound and divisive, you know, than the one weve had for the last 30 or 40 years as christianity has slowly retreated. I mean, i think thats right. Thats certainly one could say a danger, but another way to look at it is we were in a kind of vacuum moment. Smug you brought up earlier and and i want to reiterate it, much of this is sort of the tail end of a mull the city generational phenomenon multigenerational. As you said, the groomers with one foot out the door, a kind of disillusionment with certain in this case religious, organized religion, but also more broadly a is serb way of doing things. Most people who leave, one of the biggest indicators is how much religion is spoken at home. So your nuns who are leaving the faith are doing so in part kind of having witnessed a certain apathy in their own parents. And so, yes, i think that there is a sort of bleakness to or potential bleakness to this coming vacuum, but id also argue its been a long time coming. So this is we have a question from maxine that sort of drills down on what you were just talking about which is did you find that there was anything, any really specific patterns in the reare liberties background of people who are were they more likely to be lapsed evangelicals, lapsed catholics, main line versus evangelical, is so on . Yeah. So the main lines have, the churches have emptied faster than evangelical churches, particularly white evangelical churches. And just as a sort of side note, historically black churches and white evangelical churches are usually [inaudible] which is why im making that distinction. So but at the same time at this point, the nuns come from, come from everywhere at this point. There arent actually, theyre relatively reflective of the United States as a whole. A little whiter but not by much. Theres only one actually very big predicter, and that is that 46 of queer people rather than 24 of the National Average are religiously unaffiliated. So thats one of the only kind of really big, notable and perhaps expected given how queer people have been marginalized, thats kind of the big one. Is there any gender . Like, is in any big gender breakdown . I want to say slightly more women are unafailuatedded overall affiliated overall, slightly more men are likely to say theyre fullon atheists or ago agnostic. And they wear fedoras. [laughter] weve got about suggestion minutes left, so let me try and squeeze in a couple more questions. One question someone brings up, i guess when id had mentioned religious coming of age ceremonies, the idea that colleges and College Admissions and graduations fill that role. And one thing we havent talked about is the harry potter phenomenon, and maybe this would be a chance to talk about the sort of peculiar role that the school played in a certain kind of quasireligious event, like the idea of sort of anyway, talk for three minute about harry potter. Go. All right. I think there are civil institutions that still have a kind of cultural cache, but harry potter specifically, especially over the past week as j. K. Rowling has alienated quite a big percentage of her fan base, i find it so fascinating that harry potter has been a canary e in the coal mine. Internet, athome internet in america inebb creased from 19 million house tolds to 1 households to 100 million. That that sort of version of fand work m expect way in which fan culture [inaudible] you could have ownership the things that you loved. The powers that be as show runners have the final word on what, what a property was. We earnly see that in our relationship to media now, the amount of funs that are sort of fan service or designed for the fans and are being a much bigger back and forth between a Consumer Base of information and creators of information. And i think its reached this sort of fascinating [inaudible] expect idea that j. K. Rowling is, you know, exiled from her creation because its not seen as hers, its seen as everyones. Theres often the response to rowling has not been lets never read harry potter again. Its, well hogwarts still bigger than she is. We can still love these characters, they belong to us. And i think that kind of hesitancy kind of writ large can tell us so many questions about inwardness and individualization that were seeing writ large in the book. The last question. Lets do a postcovid world question, right in part one, one person says do you think in a postcovid world where people will be looking to find meaning, purpose and community that the sort of newer, stranger faith will be fast tracked, and do you think that this is a sense in which they could be more likely to reform actual communities or even cults, which is a word we havent used that much in the way like, this is one way to put pit is were seeing this as sort of a 19 of 8 moment 1968 moment in politics right now. The 970s were sort of the high tide of weird communal experiments, you know, strange religious cults. What do you foresee after covid and and maybe after donald trump . Well, i think the combination of our increased ability to and awareness of the ability to gather remotely with a kind of increased awareness of our reliance on one another, of our need for social bonds and the lope hiness of pure oislation. Were able to interact online, and yet we are in our own houses if we are privileged enough to be able to be. And that kind of honeliness is itself, i think loneliness [inaudible] so absolutely i think that we will see people gathering digitally and perhaps when were able to not, but i think people will be much more interested in forming intentional communities especially if we get to the point of thinking about who are our bubbles, who are our safe chosen family . I wonder if that tendency will sort of lend itself out toward a form of Intentional Community and maybe even a disembodied im curious what that might hook like. But do you think its also possible that, look, i mean, this has been fantastic, but its really not the same as doing a panel in the flesh, right . And that goes double and triple, i think, for a lot of religious practices. So could there be a sort of antireligion backlash that manifests itself [inaudible] or communes with large vegetable gardens and weird living arapingments. I mean, some of those g i think thats certainly possible. However, i think it may be even if these communities do come about in the flesh ultimately, it may well be that we will use the internet to get there. We will find one another online the same way, you know, 40 of americans find their partner online. It doesnt mean they dont meet in real life, but it hasnt ended up that way. I think the Digital Space and the promise of that will be a sort of launching pad for people to find, seek out is and find community that may then manifest themselves [inaudible] all right. Tara, its 8 00. I want to apologize to everyone who asked questions that we didnt get to. You were terrific, and there are many even more wonderful questions further down the queue. And thank you all for joining us. Again, to repeat what i said at the outset, i hope that if you found this illuminating and interesting experience, that you will buy taras book, buy many other books, support the strand, support your local week store. And as my local bookstore, and as my final word, as a roman catholic, while youre dabbling in the strange new rites that tara describes, stay safe out there. So with that, thank you all so much for joining us. Finish. Thank you. Here are some of the current best selling nonfiction books according to washington, d. C. s politics and prose bookstore. Topping the lust is president trumps niece, mary trumps, critical look at the president and the trump family. Too much and never enough. After that its time Magazines National Political Correspondent molly balls biography of House Speaker nancy pelosi. And then in how to be an antiracist, ibram kendi argues america must work towards building a much equitable society. Thats followed by former Obama Administration chief of protocols look at the importance of tip lomatic protocol and etiquette. And rapping up our wrapping up our look at some of the best selling nonfiction books according to politics prose is the splendid and the vile, eric larsons study of Prime Minister Winston Churchills leadership of london. You can watch many of these authors online at booktv. Org. At the American Enterprise institute in washington, d. C. , michael strain, director of the institutes Economic Policy studies, argued that the majority of americans are better off than our current political debates make it seem. Heres a portion of that event. Im not trying to diminish or to sugar coat or to ignore any of the real problems we face. Instead, im trying to be accurate. Im trying to be accurate about the broad picture of the american experience. How American Life is experienced by tip e call people, by most people in those circumstances. I think that we are focusing so much on these project pockets of real struggle that we are confusing them for the common experience facing people. And i think the American People keep hearing that their experience is the same as the experience of people in places who are really suffering and really struggling. I dont want to deny that suffering, i dont want to deny that struggle. I do want to say that those are a atypical situations, and the common experience is much more positive than the narrative suggests. To watch the rest of this program, visit our web site, booktv. Org. Search for michael strain or the title of his book, the American Dream is not dead, using the search box at the top of the page. We have seen the first at best of which john would cohost in