[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> good evening, folks. we are going to ahead and get started. if you haven't gotten a copy of the book outside, please do so. first of all, welcome to the open society foundation in new york city. it's our pleasure to host you for what promises to be a terrific event for the boldly titled book, "the end of white christian america". it's my honor to introduce tonight's events. i grew up in the way to sit in the united states committed beautiful state of maine and the united church of christ of this conversation hits close to home for me and professionally. i'd like to thank robert jones was known for robbie for several years and sam tanenhaus for joining us that i'd like to think elizabeth berg newcomer nathan mckie and the society team for putting the event together. in addition to the foundation, tonight's event is cosponsored by the carnegie corporation of new york, ford foundation and the new world foundation. i'm a longtime fan of robert jones and his organization formerly known as the public religion research institute and found a pri.org. a nonprofit nonpartisan organization dedicated to conducting high-quality public opinion research. research explores and eliminates the changing cultural religious and political landscape and its stated mission is to help journalists, scholars, pundits, clergy and the general public to understand public policy issues in the important cultural and religious dynamics reshaped american politics. the annual american values survey as a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand how americans from across the political bactrim interpreting developed opinions based on today. the essential work helps us better understand the complicated, messy, polarizing contestant nation in which we lead and we are of course a nation that contains amazing diversity, people ,-com,-com ma communities and many possibilities to truly be exceptional and transcend all that divides us or hold that forward progress. we often don't live up to our ideals and our deeds do not always follow or create. the end of white christian america could do some so michael book written by another he sees demographic shifts in the united states and europe output at framing. it is much more thoughtfully within a broader context that is acutely sensitive to race and racial justice near the open society foundation suite long been interested in the conundrum of the painting justice and structural inequality in the united states. the time in which we live now is of course one of great possibility that the continued rise of diversity in every possible way imbibers social movement effectively to multiracial and more just society and as we very much know a time of great turbulence by xenophobia and race baiting in the election and immigrants for political gain and killings of unarmed black men and women to name a few challenges. we have worked in the past with robert jones and prri to explore how white people to race, what their thoughts are about structural inequality and whether they see growing diversity is a thing of beauty and asked at a reflection decline and threat. let me now introduce tonight's guests. the founding ceo of prri and commentator on religion and politics. the author of the end of white christian america which we know very well this evening and numerous articles on religion and public policy. jones writes a column for the atlantic on politics and culture and appears regularly on interfaith voices, the nation's leading religious newsmagazine on public radio. he certainly featured in major national media such as msnbc, cnn, npr, new york times, "washington post" and others and serves as cochair of the national steering committee for religion and politics section and is a member of the editorial board for the american academy and politics and religion and association. robert appalled the phd and a masters of divinity from southwestern baptist theological seminary. our second guest is dan tanenhaus, from editor-in-chief for "the new york times" book review and author the death of conservatism and whittaker chambers, a biography which won "the los angeles times" book prize and was a finalist for the national book award for nonfiction in pulitzer prize for biography. tanenhaus is or cannot biography of of william f. buckley junior and on june 20th as you know from the copies outside in the table published a review of the season's political books for "the new york times" book review where he noted the end of white christian america was quite possibly the most illuminating text for this year. we would not hear findings from the end of white christian america from its author and have a response and conversation between the two of them. we'll have a session facilitated by simon greer in the audience. they will be a book signing and books for sale for your friends and family out at this room. thanks a lot for joining us. please take it away. [applause] >> thank you so much. let me make sure i'm on here. thank you so much for all being here. many could maybe tune into the democratic national convention as we speak, but happy you are here instead joining us for this conversation. my own thank you to the cohost, particularly the open society foundation for hosting us tonight, carnegie corporation of new york, ford foundation, henry luce foundation and new world foundation. they support the work that went into the book here. you will share later from simon greer come a pri board member and help us organize the event tonight so we are indebted to him as well. and of course sam tanenhaus who wrote this fantastic essay on why populism now which has been one of the burning questions of this election cycle. villa give you an idea of what we will do this evening. i want to spend a few minutes giving you a little bit in the taste of the data behind the book. i want to say this is data-driven but not a data dominated the peer for the city whose eyes glaze over at statistics, hopefully will tell the story uses numbers to tell a story. we will do a little bit more story telling us we are talking together. i do want to lay out the empirical basis for the argument in the story that i tell in the book. i will start with this picture here you can see more clearly on the side you this picture may evoke some other kind of imagery for some of you. it looks remarkably like norman rockwell's reason for not painting, which enough voted the only difference is that god the matriarch leaning over with this enormous turkey. this photo was sent to me in an e-mail in 2012 just weeks after coming days after barack obama was reelected in 2012. the top of the nail from the christian coalition of america and i was struck right at the time because it came right on the heels between the election and thanksgiving and it had this caption underneath it. instead family in prayer, pennsylvania in 1942. the black-and-white photo is a white family thing race before a meal and then add this line of text further explaining to transition from the photo to the message. they said this. they said we will soon be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first thanksgiving and god has still not without his blessing upon this nation. although we now richly deserve such condemnation. we have a lot to give thanks far, but we also need to pray to her heavenly father and ask him to protect us from those enemies outside and within who want to see america d. street. that is the message that comes attached to this image right after the reelection of president barack obama in 2012. at the time i wasn't working on the book why can't they immediately saved it because it seemed to me an artifact in a symbol and the visceral reaction to the reelection of barack obama in 2012. part of the book is unpacking what is that about when we see these reactions in this throwback imagery to a previous time, a mythical golden era behind that sense of nostalgia and loss and grief. the book is called "the end of white christian america." to prevent some confusion, what i mean by white christian america is a metaphor for the whole cultural institutional edifice built not exclusively but primarily by white protestant christians in this country that set the tone for natural conversations and shaped a lot of american ideals. it wouldn't be hard. many of you may have walked here, to walk far without tripping over an institution started by white christian america, white protestants, ymca, ywca, voice guys. it would not be hard to find these things. and these institutions in the world that they were part of has passed from the american scene. that is what the book is about. you can see it in architecture. i will focus on the demographics to set up conversation here. if i can show you one charge, it would be this one. this really shows us the real changes that have been just over the last eight years. shaded in this light gray, a period of barack obama's presidency, this is all white christians together, percentage that all white christians, out of sync, catholic, orthodox comprised of the american population. 2004, 59% of the country. two dozen a barack obama was running two election cycles ago. the number was 54%. today the number is 45%. and in the next year and latest data shows 45%. just during the last two election cycles, during barack obama's presidency, we have crossed this amazing threshold. we have moved from being a majority white christian country to a minority white christian country in just a short amount of time. even if people don't know the stats bowwow, many white christians, particularly white conservative christians feel the shift in their bones and this is part of some of the reactivity we are seen. just above my ones embolic issue across the same time period, support for gay marriage over the same period of time. go back to 2008. what you see is only foreign 10 americans supported gay marriage was brought obama was running for president. the number today is 53%. similarly we've gone from a country where foreign 10 supports same-sex marriage. that is a major cultural shift i'm a pretty big bellwether issue in a short amount of time. part of the book is telling us about unpacking the reactions and the grief and anxiety around these kinds of demographic and cultural change that we've seen in the last decade of our nations life. just to give you a pie chart here are the kind of country we live in. this is 2014 data to 47% of the country, white christians. the other piece of the story is this big orange slice, the religiously unaffiliated. part of how we got here was to basic forces. one was demographics. immigration patterns, lower birth rates. those affected the way population relative to the rest of the country but the other piece is more internal was religious disaffiliation among young people over the last few decades. if they go back a few decades in the 1990s, less than one in 10 americans claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. today the number is nearly a quarter of americans claim no religious affiliation at all and if disproportionately affect the neon. as you can see in the slide, think about this site is an archaeological dig down through generational strata. 18 to 29-year-olds at the top, 29% identify as white. cushing. two thirds of seniors identify as white in christians. that is a huge shift in the generation alive today and not as part of the seismic changes we are singing. the book into this are the numbers of americans claiming no religious affiliation. you can be seniors claiming no religious affiliation that the millennial generation, more than a third claiming no religious affiliation. just to let behind this is that, what does this look like in the longer scope? this is lucky not% of population by race and affiliation here with just enough product in. if you look here, you will see up until 1993, we were still a majority white and protestant country. the little blip in the middle because the side after 19 and three is the last of the country was white and protestant. the decline of protestant in the country is entirely due to white protestant decline. the screen area here are african-american protestants which have maintained their share of the population over time and you will see these orange tones are latino islander protestant and contribute to the decline exclusively over this time. part of the mythology around white protestant decline has been the more liberal episcopalians united church of christ. those denominations have been declining and their decline started earlier in the 70s, 80s and 90s. that has been the majors already a white protestant decline. if you plot it, you can see it. that is true. what is new on the scene is the other branch of the protestant family tree, white evangelical protestants have actually begun to decline over the last decade as well. we now have measurable decline among white evangelical product and and that means the white evangelicals in the south and they say you guys are declining for all your ideology and we are holding the line and yet we are growing. we see declines in both sides. desire the external numbers. you can see it if you look inside denominations themselves. the largest nomination are seven.days. desire growth rates from the 1950s to the present. you can see really into the last decade has slipped into negative growth rate, losing members of nine straight years of demographic loss over time. but if this mean for the lack trip? two national parties have been their conventions and we are headed towards a break for august. we will grab a and ernest will be nothing but i'll election all the time. what does this mean for the election cycle? one striking thing is you can see the exact same pattern. so this is data from the national exit polls. if you go back to 1992, white christians made it three quarters of the electorate. 2012 than a 57% in a few projects the linear decline out, all these trends continue, 2024 will be the first year we have any electorate that is majority nonwhite christian in the electorate. what happens if you fill in the midterm to, you get a holdover of fact every midterm election because white christians turn out at higher rates than nonwhite christians and affiliated americans do as well. you kind of see the stair stepping of fact week at a holdover from the midterm basically where you were the last year and a job off with the next presidential election year. you see the same pattern delay to bed. we asked the question how reliant of the parties than nonwhite christian voters of her time what might that mean for the coming election cycles. so basically this is reliant among democratic candidates on white christian voters over time. in 1992, candidate bill clinton 60% reliant on white christian voters, but if you look at where iraq obama was in 2012, only 37% reliant on white christian voters. the democratic party has been following this decline in population over time with less and less reliant on white christian voters. check out the republican line. it looks pretty flat. about eight in 10 republican candidate both in the 90s and today rely nonwhite christian voters for their coalition. one interesting thing i did for the last election has put up the chart were a look back at the generational strata in plotted obama's coalition and ran his coalition into this generational strata. you kind of look at racial and religious composition of their coalition that the obama coalition about blake 30-year-old america in terms of its racial and religious upbringing. the romney coalition will do without like 7-year-old america in terms of race and religious composition. this tells you why the republican party units on autopsy report in 2013 made the plays to widen the appeal of to a voter base because essentially remaining as reliant on the shrinking demographic and voter pool as they have been in decades past. the one thing close with his starter which will make him a string that should into maybe talking about what does this mean for the contemporary scene. one more interesting survey we asked is this kind of basic question about how you evaluate the 1950s. they got to the beginning of the presentation. is that a warm and fuzzy feeling or does not invoke negative and worrisome feelings for you. it turned out the country is evenly divided about whether american culture is changed for the better or the worse. here's the basic breakdown. all the americans saying it's change for the better. you can see a pattern here. if you look on the left is unaffiliated. african-americans, and democrat, african-american protestant and hispanics overall saying is change for the better since the 1950s. on the other side of the divide as you look in places from all different americans. it is republican, tape ready and went evangelical protestant on the left. seven in 10 say in american culture has changed for the worse since the 1950s. here's the other side of that so you can be a good this is one of the dividing line in the election we are facing. two very different visions of america, a kind of waspy cultural center that helps sway in the 1950s and then where are we going today. with that i will bring up salmon will have a conversation. [applause] >> there's a lot to admire about robby jones. [inaudible] congratulations for making me look bad. first of all, i do have to say if somebody who's written books, edited a book review and rate the lot but i have to say this is when you really want to read because in the mouse server io of elections, and makes them that the book that would eliminate it as isn't really just about politics. this isn't an election is just about politics or we wouldn't be at the place we are just now. it's about a kind of cultural protests. it is about america being divided against itself in just the way robbie has taught about. i want to just pick up on a few things you said and just have you eliminate him a little bit. first of all, i will ask the audience to do a bit of a sonics pyramid that i came up with a number of years ago. if you remember, a big figure in our politics, our culture was led back. in 2009 and 2010, he was one of the most visible and vocal people in america appeared on the cover of "time" magazine and his big fox show back in the days when fox seemed to be important. and he was one of many extremely conservative critics of president obama is reaction to his first election was not unlike what was described in that e-mail you got from the christian coalition. i'd like to say to people just imagine you turn on the television at night and here by max tell you that barack obama is an alien of some kind. he's not really an american and is hijacked this country and is either a socialist or fascist, you choose. imagine this. if you're a white person born in 1940 and let's change it to 1942. you are 12 years old but the brown decision. round one, brown two came the next year for the supreme court. so you have an active memory of unofficially segregated america. you are 17 years old when hawaii became the 50th state. so in your mind, who cares whether he's born in kenya were someplace else. we know he's not going to remember the one other candidate on the ticket in 2008 was not drunk, as you called it, the lower 48 with sarah palin. she came from the new white state and he came from the new nonwhite state. you would have been 18 years old who actually minded just turn the team when they revered american president accepted by almost everyone, either party now is the hero and martyr, john f. kennedy said we are in a twilight struggle again the forces of evil in the soviet union. the sandbag on television and tells you the new black guy from hawaii is on the other side. it doesn't sound so strange to you. what is great about robby's book is that takes you inside the world. it's not to say this is the enemy. these are fellow citizen and some may be here this evening. so that elaborate preamble. my question to you from the very first image you showed, who are the enemies of the christian coalition? who specifically do they mean? do we know? >> what is striking about it is this is coming out of left field a little bit, but the chaos versus order. i do not pay fees that the enemies are the people who pare down the order. the order in clue i think for many, a world where racial minorities knew their place, where women are their place. there is a world where people asserted that in certain places in the breaking down of those kinds of social expectations and limitations that feels -- i saw a documentary, but it talks about all in the family and those were the days. you can hear the high note in your head right now. and you knew who you were then. girls were girls and men were men. that is the line that really stick out. the sense that a woman can be president or an african-american candidate, what does that name for this world? >> let's get to one of the really brilliant things robbie does in the book. he does it in an understated way. don't worry you're not reading the book the solid numbers. he's taking the numbers that they did here in telling you a story based on the chapter on racial attitudes in the south, including among evangelicals. i've been doing a lot of them down was actually a southerner. they know that it came from this family and it was not an old family. it is a new family from this. it's about an hour away from columbia. a lot of the attitude he had been the conservatives associate with national review were identical with the old views of race. but rodriguez in this book i want to ask you about without pushing the point too much, you make the readers see a parallel in his own attitude often about conservatives to same-sex marriage. what is the parallel? >> i had a conversation and he asked me what is one thing? i think it is the enduring power of racial divide that stayed with me. i think that her take you literally the question that is really divided the message was between police and african-americans. is the problem this telling of unarmed african-americans by the police arrest the problem they ambushing and murderous police? they are obviously both problems that the question is where is it good and what can't be said where? we asked the question about this to try and sort out this question. the question is do you think the killing of african american men but police is isolated and then or do you think they are part of a broader pattern? they are absolutely part of the pattern. whites overall are about half as likely. about four in 10 white overall say that they are part of a broader pattern. when you look at white evangelicals, his is only 29% is part of a pattern or two to one. these are isolated incidents. what it means if it's not just that we on these issues are disagreeing about what to do about a problem. in this case, the cultural world views are so divided that they're not even worrying about what the problem is. one of the real thing as a country that's why we hear on one hand we can only save lives matter and some people say on the blacklist manner and having a conversation about the two of these things together. >> very quickly because this question comes up a lot in the law conversations with the people. what exactly is the difference between evangelical and protestant? >> that's a good question. >> affects what you did that, too. the video space advisors for the class at the dinner table. so what is the difference? >> i talk about these two groups in the country as two branches of the kind of white protestant family tree. as a couple different ways of understanding them. the mainline protestant world i got the mainline from the very idea of this mainline railway and it was heavily concentrated in the northeast are the examples are the episcopalian church, united church of christ. these are the kind of historically more in the north east and more liberal politically. and this during the civil rights and in the christian century the first place to publish they had martin luther king on the editorial board. on the other side of the divide are in fact my people where i come from. i'm from mississippi. went to southern baptist seminary and the start evangelicals who tend to be born again. >> .com and they would think of evangelical. >> they tend to be more in the south and the midwives and the real divide is whether some of self identifies as a born-again evangelical christian or not. >> people don't always know. >> they run the mainland side. so it really is not a difference of doctrine or denomination. >> there are these differences much more on the southern desert evangelical world than there is among the mainline protestant world. >> let me ask you some other basic questions. how do you do the surveys involved and how do you know their actions? do you define the question? how does all that work? >> we were founded in 2009. word nonpartisan independent research organization and so we are a full-service organization. we write our own questions. we supervise surveys and me, you know, do our best to hear on the top shelf standard of opinion polling. the one thing that we have adhered to from the beginning is making sure that we only do random probability samples that can be generalized for the wider population. they typically do large sample sizes. your typical political pull would have a thousand paper "new york times" and "wall street journal" have a thousand people in it. our last survey with the brookings institution had 2500. a little of each. we are following the industry. one of the challenges us with fewer people having land lines, it is traditionally been done a bit challenging. we are currently doing 60% of fund of 40% in mind and our telephone sample and that is really necessary in order to get accurate samples of african-americans, latinos and young people. only through random probability sampling. when we do an online poll, we do that through the university of chicago's national opinion research center. >> let me ask you a question that has come up repeatedly during the election and one of the few kind of attractive or appealing jokes donald trump made in his hunger games speech the other night was when he said the evangelical loves me and i probably don't deserve it. what are they love about him? >> this is in many ways like to have scratcher of the election. so what if i have the values rallied around donald trump in the latest polling we have shows eight in 10 head-to-head with hillary clinton and the protestants will vote for donald trump over hillary clinton. he ran with ted cruz in mississippi in cruz's entire election was based, started with the amount that he made. you may or may not remember. cruz has been around forever. it was true. he was the very first one to declare either party either liberty university and explicitly in march of appeals to value evangelical voters and donald trump's state after state. >> super tuesday was supposed to be ted cruz firewall again donald trump. turned out to be like his complete downfall were trump swept all the southern states. states like south carolina, we come in the gop primaries where talking about seven in 10 gop primary voters are white evangelical protestants. very homogeneous primaries. ted cruz should have done better and he didn't. i read a piece a few weeks ago where i argue based on data from the book. i should say donald trump's name appears nowhere in the book. the book was kind of wrapped before trump's candidacy really took off. it sheds a lot of light on what's going on. what i argue in the book -- not in the book, the op-ed is trump has essentially converted the selfish value voters and value voters into a melancholy nostalgia voters. what became more important and there's a couple of key things that people didn't really pick up on. back in january in iowa, trump gave his speech where he made this claim and sad if i am elected, i will restore power to the christian churches. you don't need anybody else. when i'm president we will see merry christmas in this country. no more happy holidays. i was a very explicit message. again, a harkening back that many white evangelical protestants feel in particular feel has either completely slipped away or is certainly just right at their fingertips about to be lost. i think it is that appeal. you think about ted cruz was talking about these kind of backroom bills. it was cruz doing that. when pencil is in trouble in indiana. at the end of the day, it seems to me a cruise this kind is making an argument that he was going to carve out some exemptions from the new reality. but trump was saying no more -- we are going to change the reality. i think it was that stronger appeal that really did carry it for him. >> i think that's a brilliant point. even though trump isn't in it, you get it. this is what calms everyone we are circling around is the relation that these two different courses, religion and politics and we know they go back to the founding of the country. we had debates about the bill, how religious the country supposed to be. at what point is the relationship between religion and politics, evangelicals more conservative? someone like joey falwell were back in the 1960s he was extremely critical of martin luther king. and the idea for the election of jimmy carter was if you are an evangelical you didn't -- and politics at all. but then it changes into this other thing. when does that happen and how does that happen? >> jerry falwell senior was the pivotal figure here. in the 60s in response to a call for ministers to join the civil rights movement, the famous beach he said we are about saving souls. we are not about the low right. that is the preacher should be preaching about. not about marching in the streets. that's not what preachers should be doing. he then shifted to stand by the time he got into the carter administration. i think one of the little-known but catalyzing events was actually at bob jones university, this prominent role against interracial dating and dennis carter carter administration is that you lose your federal tax exemption if you don't change policies because that's discriminatory. that was quite a rallying point to get active in politics and resisted in this federal intervention is in into local politics. as his defenses, often as to describe it aptly that brought them back to the 70s and 80s. the different than we see now is in the 80s and 90s, the frame that was used with the moral majority, kind of falwell language and there was a colonel of truth to that. where is the country on? it wasn't that far. one-man, one-woman. that's kind of what mainstream america thought at the time. one new thing with where we are today is that white evangelicals are no longer under the illusion that the rest of the country agrees with them. that has really changed. the posture has changed, calculus and is change the level of anxiety and worry among that group. it's not just that the rest of the country is going to, but we are like the law now comes down. >> just to clarify, is that your interpretation of data or you asking to self identify. >> is one that gave database, to kind of think about white evangelicals and who we've been talking about mostly here is this white christian america to the experience has declined in their own membership in an 11. when we asked white evangelical protestants questions about their own, we asked, for example, do you think that this kind of so-called reverse discrimination question is a good weather. is this as big of a problem that can blacks and other minorities, do you agree or disagree? to third agree with that statement. if you has to think discrimination against christians is as big a problem as discrimination against other groups in the country, aided 10 agree with that. the real sense of being outliers and conflict with the rest of the culture in real terms i think is really driving. >> and today identified or can you infer where they are feeling or seeing that discrimination? >> a lot of that is around. we have a whole chapter on how this plays out. i think the reason why ted cruz was so quick to go to indiana and stand on this religious exemptions bill was precisely because it is the way i think i'm trying to kind of win a few battles on a field where you've essentially lost is the kind of kind of carving out continued places. i think it is that then that our values are no longer shared or the wider society. that is a real place of conflict. >> the fact he was damaging when he waffled on the bill in indiana because they are getting in trouble with wal-mart. i suppose that is where they are feeling the culture shift, too. that leads me to a couple points, one i want to ask you about, the pressure is that coming from you that that official soma concert month for smith. it's common to the culture they turn on the television, go to a movie, even interracial, jay sex comments in the music, and the books. you go online and it all over. the sense of cultural and battle meant and how did that get translated seems to be sent and trump is effective that is the political correctness. it is not so much that we are discriminated again. it is that you are not allowed to say what you really think. or if you do, something that's going to talk. "the new york times" editorial board is going to ridicule you if you don't go along with it. >> one of the things that i think has broken down and caused a great deal of anxiety is the conversation on the radio the other day with bob vander plaque, and assertive act to this in iowa. in many ways i have a lot of respect for him, but he kept invoking -- i think three different times in the conversation he said it is just common sense that in many would go off and say something that's on the shared by white even to local protestants. the child should have a mother and a father in the home. it's just common sense that this should be the case. i think one of the real sense of vertigo that path and an wider term political correctness is such an attack is because these assumptions can't just be brought forward without being challenged. if you think about the security that provide for everybody shares the same set of assumptions. you can talk in shorthand. you don't have to feel like you've got your guard up. you can say what you think you know everybody agrees with you. those kind of insular worlds are increasingly not available. were they are getting smaller and you have to check before you can have that conversation. that is about power. that is not a social and cultural world that is to really hold sway in the country and has really moved from the center to the periphery and has to renegotiate now. >> and robbie, you are so sad david brooks has written about this, and acting similarly brilliant interesting work and also because of social media we go into these columns are silos. we find the people who agree with that and then you become embattled and not enclaves. so yes, you can escape that broader confrontation that you're uncomfortable with her son welcoming to you, but then you find a place and has strong been good at creating the feeling or sensation that there's really more of us out there that the liberals might think are democrats making. >> we are no longer using the moral majority. certainly still subclassing them constructs. i think what has happened is you go back to the chart of the republican party particularly. eight in 10 of their coalition are white christians. that is a really homogenous coalition. so when you have that kind of homogeneity, you can tailor a message quite early that appeals pretty deeply. because it is a lot of shared assumptions, shared fears and shared worries about where america is going, for example. i think that is what is happening. the other thing that's maybe masterful as trump has addressed a cultural moment and not a set of policies. you try to set them down on these like nailing jell-o to the wall. it is really tricky. what he said let's make america great again, people have a sense they know what he means. especially when he says explicit things like that means i'm going to restore power for the christian churches by which he does that mean african-american churches in multiethnic parishes. he really does mean white protestant churches at the end of the day. >> one more quick question. you've mentioned young people. we need millennial. valenti lcs say are not churchgoers. talk a little bit about how millennial are demographically and ethnically different from others? >> clearly the most ethnically diverse cohort. >> there's more -- >> a huge title wage kind of crashing on the shore here. when we look at those groups and ask questions about, for example, how important is you raise a child religious. bulimia is a much less likely to say this is important. much less than older americans say they trust these institutions. it is a really different mindset if this is not to say millennial stone has virtual interests. but it is to say the idea of institutional revisionist something that they have had a real problem was growing up. >> and ethnically 43% to 44% identify as nonwhite. >> i think that's about right. >> let's give sam and robbie a big round of applause. [applause] my name is simon greer on the board of prri. i will try to take two or three. tyler p. dems for a friend who are reported and then we'll turn it over. why don't we do one, two, three. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> thank you. gentleman in the back. i am not [inaudible] one-liner. [inaudible] >> three very simple it easy to answer questions. robbie come in the first question was about comparing bill clinton to hillary clinton to white christians. >> remark question. so i'll start with yours. thanks for the question. i'll do a fine-grained comparison of the two, but the bigger question about whether the political party reaching white christians. they're talking about and it's important to remember there are white cat, nondenominational christian, white evangelical christians. if you are thinking pure tactics in the wake evangelicals to vote in the last four election cycles. it intends for republican presidential candidate. if you want to do a deep dive, that would be the way to go. protestants have been leaning republican but not as strongly. same is true for white catholics have been leaning republican but not as strongly. there is a real opportunity in those two groups to sort of think about, you know, those two groups are also in the midwest. like a white working class that barack obama did better was really in the midwest, outside the south and particularly around basic issues like the auto bail out was kind of a big deal for white christians in the south were working class. that's a good opportunity. it's also important to remember that yes there is this decline, but white christians still make up 45% of the country. still nearly half and they are still in the majority of the elect jury. >> if you saw today in the upshot of "the new york times," it's not inconceivable that donald trump to build a majority with conservative white male vote. >> do you think the clinton campaign is under investing to a subset of white christians who could be base voters? >> yeah, that i don't think i have an opinion on. >> is about the business and progressive coalition around names like religious freedom bill. so what was interesting about nathan dio and georgia is yes he got out overtly -- may not have done what he did without the business influence, both false of interesting was what he said about why he did it. in public, when he basically had to see himself as evangelical and he said it's my own christian ap tells me that we don't need this kind of bill in georgia and got a lot of flak for not. i'm having trouble remembering exactly how you parse it, but he did go back to separation of church and state ideas. this is part of his christian faith as well and we didn't meet the law to kind of uphold the separations. i actually ends the book talking about the influence of business and that one of the things that when used the euro at a cultural moment when, for example, the grammy award broadcast in prime time tv the marriage of a number of things that >> couples, came out and did the ceremony in prime time on cbs which is a little behind the curve by having characters on shows and things like that. there is really not that much backlash. this was like presiding over this thing. not more than lewis was taking the church to task for anti-gay teachings. there wasn't that big of a backlash. 10 years ago there were people boycotting cbs for months over some in the days. and then companies like honey maid, cheerios and chevrolet who are now having kind of multiethnic gay couples on their commercials or that is a sign that things have moved. >> the third question was about the grief and fear in the sense of division and decline and the path forward. >> next to the. i don't have. you know, i did try to gesture towards and things. it is hard. i spent some time trying to think about whether the institutions we have that might help us bridge this divide? i couldn't come up with any that would read that helpful. .. about eight in 10 are essentially mono racial churches so there's not a lot of cross-fertilization going on there and i couldn't really come up with a lot of the gains we had from brown that you brought up before desegregating public schools had been lost over the last 10 or 15 years so that's not a place where that is happening at a significant level. here's the challenge if i can put it in, succinctly. i think the challenge we have is these two different, we were joking before and i've heard people joke that if you were an alien from mars and he walked into the republican convention and then watched the democratic convention you would think they were different countries. there is real truth is that i think so the challenge for us is how do we tell a story of a changing america with this kind of lofty center can no longer be assumed but still has a place for those people who used to be in the center? that makes room for the kind of grade versus we have before us but doesn't exclude the people who have been in power and i think that's the real challenge is that for many white evangelical who look atthe country , they don't see themselves and that's part of the bigger problem going forward. >> i want to follow with a question that in the book you do in that subtle humane way of yours you say maybe there is room for, let's just call them progressive americans. to give a little more at this point in the culture battles. i know this is an argument that the battle is lost. nobody it's over, it's finished. >> i sort of devote reconstruction after the civil war, one of the biggest battles that lincoln had to deal with was we got these vanquished foes, what do we do with them? do we punish them, disenfranchise them, what do we do and lincoln's stance was we got to find a way to build the country back on country again but if we go stripping them of voting rights and do all these punitive things, that's going to be hard to do. i'm not sure what the current analogs are but i do think there is some space. i'm not arguing in the book that you can go back to the legal victories or rollback the cultural victories but there's a way in which i think there might be a kind of more openness, less looking down the nose and less derision that i think might help the kind of, those people who find themselves isolated now. in the thing i'm trying to find a place where they see still see themselves as part of something bigger and not just the sort of vanquished faux . >> i seem to remember and result was one of the great pioneers of same-sex marriage debate was much more aesthetic to the religious liberty argument that you would expect because the idea is not that everybody has to agree with you, it's just that you shouldn't discriminate against the others . andrew and others live the way we want but it doesn't mean that has to be uniform or universal. >> to go back to a good question, on two or three? [inaudible] i have a feeling that i'm living in the bottle city of canned door. especially about issues that are, how will this transformational effect affect our foreign policy because having a demagogue in the beginning, that our country was first founded on christian values and you've actually stated that kind of it's for both to say but especially the christians so how does that affect the way we meet the world because until three centuries ago our view has been very much involved in theworld as america . >> thank you. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> ... thank you. [inaudible] in your research did you find askew point whether they tend to be evangelical orchristians or in that , were people going to seminary? seminary as creating so do you view them as progressives or conservatives? >> the first question was about foreign policy and the impact of all of this and america's stancein the world. the first thing to say is i would sharpen up the conception a little bit because i think it's important , the country was founded not as a christian nation but as a nation that had freedom of religion. but that's an easy thing to do when you have a de facto white protestant jury. when you're in a varies culturally secure spot, it's much easier to think and say were going to have freedom of religion but at the same time look at congress, look at the president. you look at the supreme court. are stacked with white positive. we know we can hold this together even though in principle, one thing i think is happening, we are actually for the first time really being tested about what we think about the first amendment, right? and what do we really think about religious liberty and its free exercise and nonestablishment is something we really want as a country. because i think for the first time with this kind of white protestant minority, they still have to stand up for that even when they are no longer the kind of cultural majority so i think that's one of the important moments that we are at in terms of how we understand the place of religion in public life. it's also the case in our most recent survey, just out of the field for the first time ever we recorded white evangelical protestants no longer saying the country is christian. that's new. they're now saying, they used to be a slight majority saying the country was founded as a christian nation, still is a christian nation. now they're saying the second option in the battery is used to be a christian nation but it is no longer and that's where white evangelicals are now. that's new on the scene, it's a recognition of these shifts. on the foreign policy front, it may be more complicated where we are going to go because i think this, when it was communism in russia was a big breath in the 1950s, that by the way is where we get under god in the pledge is when we were differentiating ourselves from the so-called godless communists. where the christian nation, therethe communist nation and we put this in our pledge as a response to that area i don't know that we're going to , that that kind of thing is going to drive foreign policy going forward just because it's not the same way it was in 1950s. >> that's a foreign policy and the point robbie just made about the cold war and religion, that's also a very frost argument even at the height of the cold war. the argument for instance, you go back and look at the coverage of the little rock integration, the argument that some of the most conservative republicans could say was we embarrassed ourselves in front of the world and lose the ideological battle against the soviets, we are not letting small children enter school, then how do we present ourselves in moral opposition to that? do you know what the answer to that was in national review magazine? that's not our problem. who cares? we don't have to improve our domestic relations to please communists or impress people whose hearts and minds are on the other side. that's always been a really fraught argument on the right and the second i had to american exceptionalism, that's the inverse of something that was more dominant in our politics which was unilateralism and before that %% % so if you are one of those rare individuals, if you are a white woman and you are 70, you're very easy to get on the phone right? you might be hard to get off the phone once you get there [laughter] so that person actually at the end of the day might get waited .8 of a response but if you are a 21-year-old latino male, you are very hard to get on the phone. you definitely have a cell phone and that's hard to do. even getting you is hard to do and once we get a completed interview, you might get waited twice and you may have torespondents to make up for that other person . >> they are discriminated against. >> so the sample is rebalanced to match the demographic. that's what all incredible polls do. >> another quick word about, obviously this is how they are engaging. >> it's a fair question but clearly there are different breed in terms of their religion so if you look at the white evangelical question sample, that's conservative wing of protestant world, if you look at seniors, white evangelicals constitute three in 10 seniors, it only constitutes one in 10 millennial's and we have one third of them that are articulated at all so that changes the composition of the group. all the other things like all this cultural, they rub shoulders with people of different races, ethnicities from the moment they are born, most of them. they speak different languages, they know friends from the moment they know what that is. it is. it's become a huge issue, more than three quarters of the millennial generation supports same-sex marriage so one thing i can say about seminary though is the places where seminaries are actually growing are from auburn who track a lot of this stuff, is a couple places. it's multiethnic seminaries, latino, african-american seminaries and there is a new multi-faith that is gaining some traction even in more traditional seminaries. it's also a sign of the times. what they concluded is white millennial males voted for romney over obama >> i think you had that. >> one of the things we have is white working-class males and the millennial generation have been hit pretty hard by the recession so even if the college educated are having trouble getting a job, their economic situation is not that great, a lot had to move back in with their parents and they are under a lot of distress. that's coming out as well even though they are part of this white millennial man working-class half i think just below the surface racial factor is still alive even bigger generations. >>. [inaudible] [inaudible] [laughter] >> my question goes back to the olympics. the mississippi situation. the religion question is a 15th amendment question about people right protection that in light of what youargue , that shift focuses towards what does pluralism look like and freedom of expression sort of equal coverage under the law. >> i'm going to summarize the first one at the end of a lot of things. yeah. i should do the kind of tim lahaye left behind series. inside joke for all you evangelicals in the ground. but the thing i'm thinking about next is what now really because i think the reason why this is important in the way that it may be less important is because this kind of white protestant culture really did hold the center in america for most of our life as a nation. and that's why i think i begin the book with an obituary for a christian america and i ended up with a eulogy trying to find think about what to say over the remains that we are seeing right now.and i think that's what's really important. the next question is it's a big huge question is this question, i certainly won't have the answer but i think the question we are struggling with this what now? right? if we no longer have this on center thing for better or worse and i think it was both , both play in the center and serving as a hub from which other things are connected, what then? how do we talk about being american, how do we talk about being a nation, what is the narrative that we are going to weed out of the mess he remains that are sitting before us. >> robbie, how much of this is not being the sort of median institutions? you were involved in the church of god, you're a washington think tank guy involved with ethics and public policy, who also edits a magazine nationally up there, there's a book i'm going to be writing about called the fractured republic and his argument is the cost between individualism on the one hand and extreme rights, i get to do whatever i want to generalize on the huge slice of the cake and there's nothing in between and what you suggested is those in between institutions are that strong anymore. maybe they're not, really. >> i think that's one of the problems because i think they are helping us on sort our problems in these kind of silos so i think that's the biggest challenge is trying to figure out where these points of intersection might be and we need institutions to do that.it's also going to mean that probably conservatives path to think more about individual rights and liberals need to think more about character in these mediating institutions. i think hopefully some of that happens. >> last question about specific religious freedom correlation area. >> so the city, my home state followed that pretty well. the mississippi law is a little bizarre because it was so broad and it is really, it went beyond what most of religious freedom laws meant and spelled-out for example if you disagree with a single parent raising a child on his own, you could actually be terminated under mississippi's law, that's how probably it was written so wasn't just about domiciles, it was really about a man, a woman as the nuclear family and anything outside of that actually felt under protection of this rolloff that you could discriminate so it was a little bizarre because of that but i agree with you that the conversation we are going to have really is about and we were saying like how much space is there to present, what does this look like for the losers in particular of these cultural and legal as what is okay, what flies in the face of the law and what is really a kind of accommodation that is respectful of a group that disagrees so we have some agreement already on hand, for example liberals and conservatives both agree generally that speaking from the pulpit people are going to be brought up on charges of a speech or preachers believe in their church, that's the first amendment already protected , many evangelicals think that's not protected and i think that's part of the challenge but i think one place for people who believe in civil liberties to reinforce you know, absolutely, we are for protecting this right. now we wait when we get to hiring people that different landscape but i think getting that out is going to be a decade-long process. >> i saw the book when you came in, when you published the book, there are more books and what you can do is you can figure out how to get a book to a friend. robbie is going to be outside signing books for folks who want to do that and before we give them both around of applause i want to say what is obviously a scholarship, it's extremely terrific but i think in this highly polarized time you don't fit in with the people you are writing about area you do this identification and you invite us to thinkabout what the world looks like from their perspective so we might find bridges . so thank you. [applause] >> thank you. here's a look at the finalists for this year's national book award for nonfiction. retired army colonel andrew base of his identifies the events he believed led to america's increased presence in the middle east over the last few decades in america's war for the greatest middle east. and the firebrand and the first lady patricia bell scott recalled the friendship between activists pauline murray and first lady eleanor roosevelt. african-american history professor in candy provides a history of racist in america in stand from the beginning and "time magazine" senior writer adam: looks at the eugenics movement of the early 20th century in in the cells. other finalists for this year's national book award in nonfiction include arley russell hartfield for a report on the alienation felt by many on the political right in strangers in their own ran. nothing ever dies, being on when lays on on the can the vietnam war and kathy o'neill's weapons of mass destruction argues that big data and computer models can be used to discriminate against people. i look at these visitors finalists for the national book award continues with andres resendez and a look at the enslavement of native americans in the other slavery. american history professor diminishes sent documents the influence of the haitian revolution on abolition in the slaves cost. finally heather and thompson reports on 19th-century uprising at new york's correctional facility in blood in the water. watch the announcement of the national book awards live on c-span two on november 16. many of these authors have appeared or will be appearing on book tv, you can watch them on our website, booktv.org. >> it's worth considering that as things stand right now on the prevailing relationship between state and federal government, federal funding provides one to five years depending on the program and federal funding is by no means guaranteed to cover 100 percent of the actual cost much less all the people working with overhead burdens so schools already experienced uncertainty by relying on federal funding . what's more, roughly every decade or so a successful administration assumes office in washington dc, student schools teachers and taxpayers are subjected to new nationwide education agendas and mandates that require expensive replacements of the previous administrations programs with ones from the current administration. what makes strategic dismantling different is that once control over education programs and funding is returned to the states, lawmakers, taxpayers and educators can work more closely together at the local level to better ensure clear education policy priorities, customize meeting the specific needs of students in communities across the state without all that chaos and upheaval of the previous several decades of federal leadership in education. now is the time to end the department of education once and for all. unlike six years ago, today we have thriving examples in the state that education programs and services that are working for students, their familiesand taxpayers , there are 61 school choice programs in 30 states in the district of columbia. there are 26 about her programs, 26 voucher programs, on tax credit scholarship programs, nine individual tax credit and deduction programs and there are five esa or educational savings account programs and together, these programs are helping more than 1 million school children and families, plus not to mention the millions more students attending public district, chartered, home and online schools all of their parents choice. dc didn't build any of those programs. citizens in the state did. and these programs are improving student achievement and introducing competitions for students all at a fraction of what we are told we should be spending. more than 30 years after the formation of the us department of education, student taxpayers in the country are not better off but we can be. after decades of waiving the constitutional barrier to a federal goal in education under the guise of partnering

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