Community of authors book lovers and friends. We would not be here today. Tonight we are excited to have with this, the developer, celebrating the release of our new book strange rights. Tara is a contributing editor at the american interests, and columnist. In the former staff recorder. Shes written on religion and secular is him, to national geographic, washington post. New york times more and holds a doctorate in theology from oxford. Shes also the author of the novel social creature. Joining tar, roth is a columnist for the New York Times. Is the author of to change the church. That religion and privilege. Before joining the New York Times leaves a Senior Editor for the atlantic pretty is a critic for National Review and kisses New York Times weekly podcast argument. He lives in new haven with his wife intent and three children. So without further i do, please welcomwelcome tar and was prett. Thank you so much for joining us here in this exciting virtual experience. It is slightly disembodied way about talking about a book but maybe appropriate matter. Tara thank you for letting me talk about the future of religion and beyond pretty. Will thank you so much for being here. Just another thursday night in the market pretty so just want to make two comments before we start. The first is that in our era of covid19, have now been enough zoom events to know the sometimes people are more hesitant to ask questions. Theyre typing in questions and they would bit be at a really meant when you can stand up until the author why she is wrong about everything in the world. Youll just have to listen to me as questions for the entire hour. And hopefully will get 15 or 20 minutes of your questions at the end. I swear reiterate that this is a challenging time for everybody. And authors are obviously among the least a challenge in many ways. But putting out a book in a moment like this is a difficult thing. At about come out i was lucky enough to squeeze in a couple of weeks of promotion for all of the bookstores closed. But i just want to encourage you that if youre listening, watching, dont just buy the book. It dont just buy the book from the strand obviously. Encourage your friends to buy the book. And make it the best read that it deserves to be. Without further ado, but starting with the big question. This is a book about new religions for a godless world. Thats a subtitle. Is our world really godless. And if not or if so, what religions are filling that void. Spoiler alert. No we dont live in a godless world. This the argument to make. So i want to draw a distinction sort of when we talk about secular age the World Without religion. What are we really talking about predict in a couple of background statistics. About 24 percent of americans said there are unrelated to religion. In about 36 percent of the born in american after 1985, so huge increase for religions. 72 percent say they believe in some sort of a higher power. 20 percent say they believe in the god of the bible. So were not necessarily talking about people who are atheist although about 60 percent, for whatever reason these people are alienated by institutional religion, organized religion who feel that has nothing to offer them. You may indicate to the people who believe in the tradition christian god, actually still have some form pharma for good or am willing to identify with the participate as a unit of itself. So we are talking about spiritual but not religious. But a broader character. It includes not just the spirituals but not religious which i think is the most visible. But also people who kick the boxes that were the particular tradition but his personal practices play systems are more expected. In a statistic that i like to bring up is to give you but about 30 percent of identified christians say they believe in reincarnation which is not to say, something one would associate with christian orkin orthodoxy. So were living in an age where i would argue where religious life, components meeting purpose, community ritual, were relating to them in a different way. Were mixing and matching. Theres a sense in which where all sort of it these employee, theyre all making up their own religion. These can include not just moments of the traditional religion but some things like cultures. Political activism. A vast array of cultism. Wicca is one of the Fastest Growing in america. And so on and so forth. Taraross i think one sort of initial response of the your description of your thesis, someone wellversed in history, i know is this. Because after all, certainly nothing more american than being entrepreneurial and setting up a church of one. Start of every kid in High School English class, leaseback when i wouldnt die school was assigned the collective works of ralph brady get a certain kind of individualized religion there. And then the largest history of spirituality. Its what you call intuition or tuition religion. What is the theme and what is the difference. What is the same and what is different. What we have been common with 19th century mark and what has changed in the last 30 or 40 years. Tara i call intuitional is him in the book is sort of a catchall term for religious practices and we expect to focus inward on them. God, feelings versus institutionalism. The church. Your external forces. Weve seen quite a history going back and forth in american religious life. The outcroppings of intuitional protest of faith. The various beliefs. Your bibles created but also the birds of movements which was huge from about the 1860s onward prayed it was like the secret help movement so basically if you think about it hard enough, it will happen. Which became hugely influential. It led to a whole public things about selfhelp books. Spiritualisms. Ouija boards and contacting the dead. Really on the east coast. But also i would argue, within the christian tradition where the narrative was often Something Like the church has become one christianity has become dedicated nobody believes that anymore. They just go through the motions. 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 end of course various countercultural religions. So that is absolutely not new. I would argue that its a pendulum going back and forth how many of her hundreds of years. But where i think something is distinct and new about this great awakening is the internet. Given that we are trying to gather at this time. I like to say that but the Printing Press brother, the reformation, the creation of a model of information that was in many ways intimate in inward pretty you have your direct connection to the text. You can internalize it in such a way that one may well draw that connection to the protestant overall. Im overseeing these new religions of the internet age four were all not just consumers of content rating not just to be there but we are also inclined to culturally think of ourselves as creators than think of ourselves as people who have or want to have ownership over stories. In some ways, it goes back to older traditions as well. The dizzying disembodiment of the internet itself. I think that they creating and to be involved, to have ownership in her stories have made us all the more to perhaps orthodox ways. Of experiencing and receiving doctrine. I think as well, are particular moment, to be the personal era of personal branding made us cognizant of a model of our Identity Center choices. What papers we read. But music we listen to, what movies we watch prayed they all create the sort of audit publicprivate synthesis of identity. I think what is in the culture, this odd strain of what happened might using. What purchase them making. I think wallace cultures perhaps the biggest most obvious example of this. I think the way in which our conspicuous and less conspicuous consumption, is seen to define is especially in the age of algorithms. Brought recommendations for getting out, narrower prayed have contributed to this hyper inability station in the village individualization. Ross the courier sort of talking about practices and sort of experiments that fit some kind of definition of religious or spiritual i think the core of the book is about revival of pagan, cultist practices in various forms in american life. Your definition of the new religion spreads outwards and encompasses as you were just saying, sort of a consumer culture, personalized aspect of consumer culture. Everything sort of holistic and personalized, wellness culture and someone. So convince me as someone who is inclined to skepticism. And make sense to strip the world of brands and that kind of self cultivation under the umbrella of religion or religious practices. I would argue theres a theology that is shared by so many of these particularly something sort of consumer based. And thats the theology i will call best self as him. Moral spiritual demand, to be your best self. To improve in a certain way that i would argue, kind of the collapse of this distinction between the effort you put in the purity that you given having the right ranges with a minimal amount of toxins. Sort of way that your skin looks after you attend that beauty routine. The way these things are sold and talks about is so loaded with this language of selfcare, not just kind of is a nice thing to do although historically, the word selfcare does come from a much more political place but in sort of this wellness paradigm in which it has now found itself, 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 rooted. And maybe it happens to make us prettier or sensibly have a dewy complexion or what have you. That there is a kind of sharing in in so doing. Theres elements of bad for example and elements of bad promote prosperity gospel tradition. In the adjacent that but i think that the idea that more broadly your job is human being on this earth is to be your truest self. Your best self and also be your most authentic self to release yourself from repression, ways of society has acted upon you and kind of figure out who you really are. It is i would argue, coded as a moral virtual good. The language of energy is really popular. Its popular in wellness circles and then certainly in various cults. I think their versions of that. Much more political and outward looking. And much more in solidarity. Theres a branded version of it. That tends to equate personal fulfillment with the kind of vibration on the right frequency of the right energy in a way that i find incredibly interesting. Quite revealing. Ross and the church. Tara i would think so. What they dont have, and i think this as that of a brand which we or does not have the community aspect. Ross i go to google. So two. Ross sorry gone. Tara i just said, i think that third cycles even better example because it combines a lot of this metaphysic and the kind of sense of purpose with the community and a ritual that you experience in the moment. I remember i went to a couple of classes. But you go and in the community where a soul or a tribe or past. We were occult. This there. And sign say things like energy. It affects your neighbors energy. In a way that is again using this kind of spiritual language to talk about or to lend to what could just be an uncomfortable fitness class pretty to burn some calories into something with an aura of spiritual attainment. What youre doing is good for you, good for the universe. Its an absence of institutionalization. That the United States has a lot of the same kind of spiritual entrepreneurs that we have from the Victorian Era for the 19th century. But they dont really say dont seem as likely to sound what we called churches. We just had Marianne Williamson in the president ial campaign. In Marianne Williamson, shes a preinternet feature originally. She was prominent in the 1980s. But has updated new thought kind of figure. I feel like in the 19th century there will be a Church Founded by Marianne Williamson. It wouldnt be huge. But you have like 200,000 peopl people. Thered be sort of chapels around the country. And that doesnt seem to happen to anything like that especially of the last couple of generations. You have a little stuff in the 70s and 80s. But especially lately. And i think how much of that is the internet, how much of that is an ambient skepticism of institutions. Why doesnt Gwyneth Paltrow have i guess connie west has sunday services right, a jet wasnt there a Sundays Service . Host i am not sure it be successful lease initially. I think the label of church or making something a church as you would say would be met with a degree of suspicion. I think as well the fact that there is such a willingness to mix and match, that we, we will let the broader we hear, that me personally. Host you. Guest so much of the contemporary religious is about that precise individualization. So in the end we cant necessarily get away from the end point being that we are all the our own church. That we dont have and i think its broadly, trust in her religious institution, or civic ones, are journalistic and media institutions as well, fortunate or unfortunately i dont know. But i think there is i think that suspicion doesnt lend itself to such a focus on self right i want to be careful here. I think there is an easy narrative that we could go to that says oh kids these days with their selfies are so narcissistic. I think that is a tempting way one could go about reading the situation. But i actually think what were seeing isnt necessarily a story of false is him or narcissism but of an institutional failure. I think it is perfectly reasonable in fact completely understandable that if you are institutions have failed you. If you dont think you can trust the media, the scientific establishment. The political system, the academic system so on and so forth. It makes perfect sense to turn inward to rely on yourself. To rely on your gut instinct. In desires and affinities as authoritative. At least you know you might be lying to yourself but the broader theological way. You might have slightly more trust youre aware of yourself than other people. Gas to push on that tiny bit is is it sustainable right . This is a book about our whole culture but its obviously focused on a guess could say people younger than me. I just turned 40. So millennials in generations the. These are people conducting experiments in religion at the time theyre conducting experiments in relationships and professional experiments and so on. And, i think you can tell a plausible story where these are the children of baby boomers who had their own rebellion and often sort of hung onto a affiliation pretty talk about this. [inaudible] the generational turnover where you took one step out the door of your institution had 1 foot in the door. Their kid is taken the other step. But their kids havent, for the most part, gone through the 50 to 60 years of life that awaits after your 20s, right . Which the forms not necessarily the dogmatic doctrine of religion but the communal forms of religion. The solidarity of a religious institution or community thats not clear the role that a bar mitzvah or first communion plays and so on. So obviously, this is more in the prophecy line. What does this look like in 25 years for the people conducting these experiments now . Guest i think youre absolutely right. The more, lets say inward looking of the cycle this not just self focus but present. Those are the things i think are at the table. I think we will see a hunger for collectivity, hunger for solidarity. That did kind of pure selfinterested version of these new religions for the wellness culture of the world cannot offer. I think that what we will see. I am interested for example of social justice as a movement. Because in part what it does offer is an ideology of community. An ideology of solidarity or real hunger for. I talk about this in a chapter on polyamory free love from human perfectionism in the 19th century. But ways in which the term sort of long been used in the queer community. It shows the family. And people who are marginalized or experienced marginalization from traditional religious institutions. Who, people from whatever reason are alienated whose family of origin might not be in touch with in the same way. Might be able to find one another. I think there is a hopefulness to find likeminded people, recombine communities, there are options for solidarity for coming together of the creation of ritual in a way that may not look like organized religion as traditionally practiced. But never the less offer that sense of community. I always are member there is a woman i interviewed before starting the book, my last peace who lost her husband unexpectedly quite young. And wanted his friends to celebrate and commemorate his life in a way that was specific to him. So the friends got together. And they played music from his favorite videogame. There was a service that was very much designed not around religious lines are traditional lines but rather along who this person was. What his life was like. Hed wanted to play a videogame that they played together pretty was not able to do that. And so she, with some people she met online through this game played this game sorted in his memory. And as she reported usually important to her. I think that is such a timing example, desires for these can survive a sort of reshaping. Even as i think perhaps, im bill being really mean about this on the call hope they dont hate me. The inwardness of a certain kind of wellness culture always say. So lets drill down and on belief. But the core of what we think of as religion has been belief. The actual statements and dont people really take the religious identity from community other than the creeds. Major World Religions will be structured around actual metaphysical claims of the universe. And one question, weve had these conversations before. I will ask it again. I think it sort of radiates through a lot of the more supernaturally oriented experiments that you are writing about. Which is how much do people really believe in what they are doing . Specifically when youre trying met neopaganism, these people who are reaching back or reinventing prechristian or nonchristian traditions invoking gods, their invoking demons, doing witchcraft. Some of it seems like play some of it seems like experiments. Some seems to have real belief. How do you see the question of belief playing out there . I think as you say, very difficult to quantify. Certainly difficult to disentangle from any of these other practices. I think as we say and as i argue in the book. As many