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 th