We wouldnt be here today. Tonight we are excited to have with this tara burton. She is the release of her new book. The contributing editor at the american interests in a columnist at religious news services. She is written on religion and secularism with the National Geographic the New York Times and more and holds doctorate in theology from oxford. Ross is a columnist for the New York Times oped page. He is the author of to change a church bad religion and prayer just privilege. He was a Senior Editor for the atlantic he is the film critic for the national review. He lives in new haven with his wife and three children. Without further ado please join me in welcoming cara and russ. Thank you so much for all of you. For joining us here in the exciting virtual experience in the disembodied way of talking about a book. Thank you for letting me interrogate you about the future of religion in the United States and beyond. I just want to make two comments before we start the first is that in our era of covid19 ive now done enough as the events that sometimes people are more hesitant to ask questions when they are typing in questions than they would be at a real event when you can stand up and tell the author why she is wrong about everything in the world. You have to just let me ask questions for the entire hour. The second one which i will reiterate for the edge. This is a challenging time for everybody. Authors are among the least challenged. Putting out a book at a moment in a moment like this. Is a difficult thing. I just want to encourage you if you are listening. Dont just buy the book. Encourage your friends to buy the book. Lets start in with a big dumb question. This is a book about new religions for a godless world. That is a subtitle. Is our world really godless. What religions are filling that void. Spoiler alert. We dont live in a godless world. Thats basically the argument i make. When we talk about a secular age. A World Without religion. What are we really talking about. A couple of background statistics. About 23 or 24 of americans say they are an affiliate with any religion. They believe in some sort of a higher power. Were not necessarily talking about people who are atheists. About 6 of the population. We are talking about people who for whatever reason are alienated by institutional lives in who feel like it has nothing to offer them. Who may be in the case of the people that believe in that traditional judeochristian god. They are unwilling to identify with or anticipate as a religion in and of itself. Were also talking about a broader category and in my book i call it the religious remix. After people who do identify with a particular religious tradition but whose personal practices or Belief Systems are more aesthetic. About 30 of self identified christians say they believe in reincarnation. We are living in an age i would argue where religious life and the component meaning purpose and community and ritual they are related to them in a different way mixing and matching. There is a sense in which we are all the endplate of this. These can include not just elements of the traditional tradition. But while this culture fandom. Political activism. Neopaganism and wicca are among the fastestgrowing. One initial response that someone wellversed in American History may have as how new is all of this. After all there is nothing more american than being entrepreneurial in setting up a church of one and every kid in High School English class was assigned the collective works of wealth dash mike ralph waldo emerson. The larger history of 19th Century American spirituality is rife what rifle but you and the book call institutional. What is the same, what is different. What we head in common with 19th Century America and what has changed in the last 30 or 40 years. These are kind of reductive terms. Your external forces we have seen quite a history of the pendulum swinging back and forth. The outcropping intuitional faith in approaches. Your tent revival but also the birth of Movement Like new thought it was huge about the 1860s moving onward. If you think about it hard enough it will happen. It became hugely influential. And then it led to a halt publishing industry. There is spiritual wisdom there is also i argue those in jellico revivals. Christina 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. Something more intense and intimate. In the culture of the 1960s. It is just the pendulum swings back and forth. Where think something as distinct and new about this great awakening is the internet given that we are trying to gather in this way at this time. I like to say what the protestant reformation was for the creation of the model in many ways intimate and and would. We have the direct connection to the text to internalize in such a way and one may well draw the connection to the protestant egos overall. We are seen these new religions being the internet religions. We are all not just consumers of content or readers about we are also inclined to culturally think about creators people that want to head ownership in stories. With the added part of the internet itself i think the hunger to create and be involved to head ownership in our stories has made up although more resistant to have orthodox ways of experiencing and receiving doctrine. I think as well our particular capitalist moments in the era of personal branding made us cognizant of the identities based so heavily on her choices. What we post what we tweet. It creates this publicprivate part of identity. There isnt odd strain of what app in my using to meditate. My going to a i think while this culture is the biggest most obvious example of this. The way in which our consumption is seen to define us especially in the age of the algorithm where our recommendation is are getting narrower and narrower can contribute to this kind of and mice. I want to press you a little bit on the point you made at the end. One of the interesting things about the book is that as a core you are talking about practices and experiments they fit some kind of definition of religious or spiritual rights. The court book. But then your definition of new religion spreads outward. Consumer culture and personalized aspects. Everything kind of holistic and personalized convict me as someone who may be is a little bit inclined to skepticism of that that it makes sense to fit the world of brands in that kind of self cultivation under the umbrella of religious practice. There is an implicit theology that is shared by so many of these. That is the implicit theology that is a moral or spiritual demand to improve in a certain way the collapse of the distinction between the effort you put on the bike. The way that your skin looks. The way in which these things are sold and talked about is so loaded with this language. And selfcare not just as a nice thing to do although historically it does come from a much more political place. Its been the wellness paradigm. There is a sense if we are not taking care of ourselves if we are not putting in the effort to be the best in a certain way which is of course also happens to make us prettier and more fit there is a purity that we are reaching in so doing. I would argue that there is an element of that. There are efforts that are taken from the prosperity gospel definition. The idea that more broadly your job as a human being is to be the truest self the best self to be the most authentic self to release yourself from repression and the way that the society has acted upon you. Is that quoted as the moral or spiritual good. The language of energy is really popular. Its popular in various fear much more political and outward looking. The capitalist version of it. It does tend to equate personal fulfillment with the kind of vibration in a way that i find incredibly interesting. In a way that i find incredibly interesting. Is a brand from which we buy things. And doesnt have the Community Aspect from the way. I think that soul cycle is an even better example. It combines a lot of the metaphysic and the kind of a sense of purpose with the community and ritual that let you experience that in the moment. I went through a few classes the signs that if you go in. A community all of the signs say things like your energy except affects your neighbors energy. In a way that is again using this kind of bag nebulous spiritual language to lend to what just could be an uncomfortable fit this class to burn some calories with an aura of spiritual attainment. It is good for you in the universe. One thing that has struck me that i think fits with your argument about the difference between the early 21st century in the 19th century and its gurus is an absence of institutionalization. The United States has a lot of the same kind of spiritual entrepreneurs and would be gurus that we head in the victorian area. They dont seem as likely to sound like something we would call a church. I think she is a pre internet figure. She is an updated new thought kind of figure. I feel like in the 19th century there be a Church Founded by her. It would it be huge there would be chapels around the country and that doesnt seem to happen to anything with the same extent. If a little stuff in the 70s and 80s especially lately. How much of that is the internet. Why doesnt Gwyneth Paltrow i guess kanye west has sunday services. See mike im not sure that it would be successful at least initially. I think the label of church or making something at church is as you said would be met with the degree of suspicion i think as will the facet there is such a willingness to ask and match. We millenials so much of the contemporary landscape is about that kind of precise in the village solicitation. We cant necessarily get away from that endpoint. In our civic ones and political ones. I think that suspicion doesnt lend itself to such a focus on self. There is it easy narrative. These kids are so narcissistic. I think it is attempting way that one can go about reading. I actually think that what we are seeing isnt necessarily a story of self is him or narcissism its an institutional failure. If your institutions have failed you. If you dont think you can trust the media and the scientific establishment makes perfect sense. The instincts and desires in authority. You might have slightly more trust that you are aware of yourself and other people. To push on that point a tiny bit is this sustainable. It is a book about our whole court jury. It is focus on people younger than me. I just turned 40. So millenials and generation z. These are people who are conducting experiments in religion and a time in a time that they are conducting experiments i think you can tell a plausible story where these are the children of baby boomers who have their own rebellion and often sort of hung onto an institutional affiliation and obviously you talk a little bit about this kind of thing. Generational turnover where they took one step out. Their kids have it for the most part gone through the 50 to 60 years of life that awaits after your 20s. In which not necessarily the doctrine of religion. Its not even clear what they provide in a roll. This is more in the prophecy line. What is a slick like in 25 years conducting these experiments now. The more inward looking. Those are the things i think our understandable. I think we will see a hunger for this. That we kind of the selfinterested versions of these cannot offer. I think that what we will see and im interested in particular for example social justice as a movement in part because of what it does offer is an ideology of community and solidarity which there is a real hunger for. Im interested more broadly. On the free love as a continuation human perfection in the 19th century. But the ways in which the term has long been used. Where people who who are marginalized by it. For whatever reason are alienated. His family of origin might not be in touch with them the same way. They might be able to find one another. As a result of the kind of trivialization that you find on the internet they can find likeminded individuals. There are options for solidarity for coming together for the creation of ritual in a way that may not look like organized religion but nevertheless offer that sense of community. I always remember there was a woman i interviewed before the start of the book. They lost their husband unexpectedly. And with his friends he wanted to celebrate and commemorate his life in a way that was specific to him the friends got together and they played music from his favorite videogame. It was not arranged around that. Who this person was and what his life was like. He wanted to play a secret videogame he played together. She wish that they played this game in his memory. It was hugely important to her. I think it is such a toning example of how this desire can survive the reshaping even as i think the pure selfish inwardness the inwardness of a certain kind of wellness culture. I think it is unsustainable. Lets drill down on the question of belief. And were talking about immunity the core of what we think of as religion has always been fully. There is a lot of sociological debate of how the poor important those things actually are. I think there is truth to that. The major World Religions had been structured around meadow physical claims. I always ask you this question. I think it radiates through a lot of the more to soup you logical oriented experiences that you are writing about. How much do they actually believe in what theyre doing. It talks about that pre christian or nonchristian traditions. Theyre doing witchcraft. Some of it seems like play some of it seems to have real belief. How do you see the question of belief playing out there. Belief is very difficult to quantify. To disentangled from any of these other practices. There are as many definitions of religion. It doesnt matter at all. Theres ones that say are the true claims yes or not. Is something a little bit more complicated. If you had found something to be true and you act as if it was true. And the values that you create. You reaffirm the truth of that within the community. There is a social reality that is something more complex and i would argue a model where everyone is doing something and no one believes it. I think it is the strawman version of what community would look like. I think that ritual and community can indeed be a precursor to faith or a spiritual awareness rather than simply being to take that. They are feeding back into political life. One of the more interesting aspects of the neopagan thing and at what has happened in that culture. You have chapters in the book that follow what we might call peg in a thread. Do you want to talk a little bit about that. The most prominent example conceived broadly. There are people who identify but not belong to that. The rough umbrella of progressive witchcraft i think it is a hugely significant phenomenon. They identified about a million self identified witches in the country. The Fastest Growing religious tradition. That was before 2016. I would argue that that all changed. In the wake of the donald trump election in the womens merge in particular and the feminist movement around that. There is a real interest in particularly young women. They found within the imagery of witchcraft the difficult which the woman who is in charge of her own sexuality found these images liberating in part because they were so much in opposition of the white g and evangelical trump. As these kind of symbolic but also spiritually real outpourings of anger of grief. I think would be fair to say it was a single set in a language that were people were able to use to prop up their anger and their hope for a different world. Rather than emptying a convenience symbol. If were going completely across the political spectrum and there is the rise of what i call a certain site of activism. The desire with members of members rights group. This watereddown typed up each and is him the good old days when the hybrid of ancient greece was seen through the journeys in the 1950s. The good old days when men were mad and women were women. We have this obsession with physical strength in the primary truth of the blood and this implicit blood and soil that i will just let hang in the air. I think this reactionary atavism it goes itself echoes itself as a response to the desiccated modern world and the civilization which these cultures have destroyed. Its kind of a desire to reclaim a primal past. A strong interest what nature says. I would call it a kind of nature worship. Its a different form of paganism that takes very Different Things from our pagan past. Just in listening to you describe it and the figures that you reference it seems to me in part that you can see that as a gender polarization. Obviously there are male witches and pagans on the pagan left. And there are alt right neopagan women but there does seem to be a sense in which the larger polarization of the sexism in our culture seems to play out a little bit in this religious landscape. Opera winfrey are the jewel or scene are the american center. They are bronze age perverts supporting donald trump. And certainly this is a kind of religious failure in the sense that you would expect this community to socialize men and women together in certain ways which maybe is not happening what you think about that. When i look at the wide range of these groups i dont think there exactly comfortable. I have a lot more condemnation for the at a best than i do for the witches. I think that what we are seeing so many of the subjects other than what they are explaining it is the same. Horrible pc. Feminists the horrible brook age. Or are they patriotic all these are in both the charges that are leveled against institutions more broadly. I think whatever else we want to say. Is that they have failed us more broadly. Speaking more broadly i think there is a sense in which not the center but the institutions that make up our lives have lost our trust. And however we may understand or give voice to those feelings. I would argue Something Interesting to me and how widespread the distress distrust is of the institutional targets. I would like to thank everyone who has followed my instructions and actually ask some questions. We head about 15 or 20 minutes now. Im gonna take some questions out of the queue. Maybe adapt to them slightly using the moderators prerogative. But we will start with a question he cites. The catholic philosopher charles taylor. The canadian offer author of a sexual or age. He says. That taylor suggests that some version of what youre describing is an affable if we get the history of the last 500 years of right. It has been decoupled from the state. In the north atlantic help society. They are on a quest to find fullness and meaning that can only be understood in religious terms. Taylor calls this kind of a nova effect. An explosion of religious options. He defends this pluralism against the charges. The individualistic or to quartet narcissistic and so on. And so. I think that dovetails with what some of what you meant sane. Same. I want to take it though and link it to some we briefly mentioned. The social Justice Movement. And black lives matters and the protest politics that are dominating discussion right now. One thing that has struck me. About those protests is that it seems like there is the nova effect and the desire for individualism. But also still a desire for a religious unity. It is striking to see in some of the corporate bullshit. We want to live in a society where every institution high and low corporate and detrimental. It seems almost to push against the nova effect and the idea that it is all that to be individualism. There is some desire to have a unified church of social justice. I think thats one of the reasons the social Justice Movement works so well. That is in part on the one hand its current version is a version of our times. It also offers that vision of the solidarity and unity. In a common good that should be shared. There is something vital in there is a hunger for something vital that i see more broadly which is a sense. That our institutions should just work in this sort of functional way. They should be for something good. I think its often the case that when i have registered with social justice culture that is a religion. Its basically using that its a cult. Or so on and so forth. I think a better way of framing that. It works because it is a religion. It can harness a real sense of meaning and purpose of community. And ritual that actually points beyond the self. It gives us an eschatology. That other iterations of more purely interesting less. On self focus. In the religion phenomena dont. I do want to draw a distinction here between the social Justice Movement as an organic phenomenon. And its sort of corporatization. That has indeed pretty much everything that one could think of. Yet assumed by corporation to sell products. I think i am drawing the distinction between a movement in and of itself. And the way in which it gets fed through the shutter. And now certain brands are can gonna say the right thing at the right time. The black lives matter pepsi ad in 2017. Isnt that sort of how a religion wins. If you go back the fourth century roman world. You have a sort of developed the christian in the. And then you have the roman aristocrats with the equivalent of brands today. Who didnt really care one way or another about the doctrine of the trinity but decided im going to endow a church over here. Im getting act the christian part it seems to me that that kind of corporate virtue signaling is inseparable from the ascent and triumph of a new world view. I think that is one path to victory. Is through the corporatization i cant help but wonder. Whether another path may actually be through politics. I like many others was a rather excited about the burdick sanders campaign. I do wonder whether these religious progressive nuns they do vote. And i think in 20 states i want to say. There are the single biggest religious demographic. And if you think about for example white evangelicals who are the only black that turned out consistently for trouble. The statistic now to be offended about. About 13 or 14 of the population. Their turnout is always great. But their 13 of the population is declining. Its a bigger group than social justice. There is a lot of crossover. Were talking about 23 percent of americans. 36 of young americans. 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. I would certainly be curious. This was actually one of our questions. Asking how do you think these new religions will affect our current two parties. Let me suggest the darker scenario which is to the extent that one of our Political Coalitions becomes defined by some version of the new religions. In our other Political Coalition is defined by whatever remains that creates as much bigger religious and political divide than america has in the past. Our civil war was essentially an inter christian theological conflict with people having huge arguments but they were still arguing about the interpretation of the same bible. The vision that you just set up doesnt seem to set up a version of the culture war that could be even more profound or devices than the one weve have for the last 30 or 40 years. As christianity has slowly retreated. I think we could see a danger. But another way to look at it is we are in a vacuum moment. Something you got up earlier. And i wanted to reenter ready. This is a poorly new phenomenon. We talked about the boomers with 1 foot out the door in terms of a dissolution that would have religious with organized religion. Just a sidebar here. I think most people who leave religious traditions actually do so with the biggest predictors in indicators is how much religion as is spoken over the home. They are doing so in part having witnessed a certain apathy. I think this is a potential bleakness to this vacuum. Its been a large long time coming. It drills down on what you are just talking about. Did you find that there was anything really specific patterns in the religious background of people who were involved in these new movements be on just their religion in the home tended to be more attenuated. Were they mainline versus evangelical. The moon lines churches had emptied faster than evangelical churches. This is a side note. Historically black churches and white churches are a particularly polling data. At the same time at this point they come from come from everywhere at this point. There arent actually. They are relatively reflective of the United States as a whole. A little bit whiter but not by much. Theres only one very big predictor. 46 of their people. That is one of the only kind of really big notable and perhaps expected. With institutions. That is kind of the big one. Is there any big gender breakdowns. There is slightly more women are unaffiliated over all slightly more men are likely to say that their full on atheist or an agnostic. We head about six minutes left let me try to squeeze in a couple more questions. One question someone brings up when i mentioned religious comingofage ceremony. The idea that colleges in College Admissions and graduations can you fill that role. One thing we havent talked about is the harry potter phenomenon. Maybe this a be a chance to talk about the peculiar role that the school the school plays in a certain kind of religion. In that idea talk for three minutes about harry potter. I think it is true. That is a remnant of civil institutions that we have a cultural cachet. Lets say they have alienated. A pretty big set of the fan base. I found it that he has been a canary in the coal mine for so many of these shifts. In the first book was published at Home Internet in america increased 200 million. A 500 increase. And that dovetailed and the version of phantom in the way in which fanned culture developed around it of tailed so completely with the rise of a very particular internet culture whether it was a fan fanfiction or creation. The means the idea that you could have ownership your text. And the things that you love. It was not a model someone that came down on high. Where they have the final word on what a property was. We certainly see that in our relationship to media now. And the amount of shows that are for fee and service. They are having a much bigger back and forth between creators of information. And i think it just reaches a fascinating point in that jk rowling is exiled from her creation is is not seen as hers is seen as everyones. The response to lets never read it again. Hogwarts is bigger than she is. We can still write fiction in these communities. I think that tendency kind of written in large can tell us so much about the wider questions of institutionalism and weirdness. And in the individualist civilization that we are stayed large in the book. Last question. Lets do a post covid19 world question. Do you think in the post covid19 world when people will be looking to find meaning and purpose in community. That the newer stranger faiths will be fast tracked. And do you think a sense in which they could be more likely to form actually had communities. Or even cults which is a word we have a havent use that much. In the way. One way to put it as were seen as a 1968 moment. And politics right now. The 1970s where the high tide of weird communal experience experiments. What you first see after covid19 and maybe after donald trump. The combination of our increased ability to gather remotely. With an increased awareness of our reliance on one another. Our need for social bonds. In the loneliness. The quarantine experience. Is simultaneously both. We are in our own houses. If we are privileged enough to be able to be. And that kind of loneliness. Is it self. Mainland to an increased hunger. Absolutely i think we will see people gathering digitally and perhaps not. I think people will be much more interested in forming Intentional Community especially if we get to the point of thinking about our bubbles who are faithful chosen in a family. I wonder if that tendency will lend itself out towards a form of Intentional Community and maybe even a disembodied form of immunity. This has been a fantastic its really not the same as during a panel in the flesh. Could there be an anti internet relisted religion a back lash. In a desire for an Flash Community or communes with large vegetable gardens. I would like a vegetable garden right about now. That is certainly possible. I think that it may be that even the communities that do come about in the flesh ultimately in may as will be that we are using the internet to get there. 40 of americans find their partner in real life. It has not ended up that way. The Digital Space and the promise of that will be a launching pad for people to find and seek out and find communities that may minutes best themselves. It is 8 00. So i want to apologize for everyone in the ask questions that we didnt get to. You are terrific. And there are many more wonderful questions down the queue. Thank you all for joining us. Again to repeat at the outset. I hope if you found that eliminating an interesting experience that you will find this book. Support your local bookstore. And as my final word since i didnt say anything in my capacity as a practitioner of one of the incident institutional phase. While your dabbling and that strange new rights. Stay safe out there. Thank you all so much for joining us. Journalist Janice Kaplan highlighted some women geniuses who have gone unrecognized by society. She discusses lee meitner who discovered nuclear vision. An amazing woman and in the 1930s who discovered nuclear vision. The first person to understand that when you split the nuclears of an adam. It was a big explosion of energy. That of course led to nuclear energy. It led to Nuclear Weapons which she was not willing to have any part of. But it was also something and that that turned physics on its head. It was really important. In a one of the nobel prize. I think it won the nobel prize because she did not win the nobel prize. From what ive read he was a very nice man and a very good chemist and maybe he even deserved the nobel prize for Something Else but he sure did use it for nuclear vision. He didnt even really understand nuclear vision. The men and that Nobel Committee just could not wrap cannot wrap their heads around the idea that it couldve been a woman responsible for this in arms rake through. They fell back into what we are talking about before that confirmation bias. It must be that woman behind the man. They gave the nobel prize to the man. Many years later the preceding of those communities were released. A certain number of releases. A group of physicists looked at that and called it the most egregious oversight ever. For egregious and indefensible oversight there is a lot of competition. But what kelly was referring to was that many physicists have since had tried to make it up. There are statues of her all over berlin where she did her work. And my favorite the periodic table. To watch the rest of the talk please visit our website book tv. Org. Type in her name or the title of the book. The genius of women. Book tv is television for serious readers. All weekend every weekend join us again next saturday beginning at 8 00 a. M. Eastern for the best in nonfiction books. And Public Policy events. You can watch all of cspans Public Affairs programming on television, online or listen on our free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily Washington Journal Program or through our social media feed. Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider