the complex history. that is something the historical profession has a leap begun to do in the last 20 or 30 years and so it is a group of younger historians who are starting to look at this in critical ways. trying to understand how culture plays a role in dispossessing people from the land. ..

>> essentially, what he was arguing was, you know, that it was really sad that the miami had to leave. and what was interesting to me was that there's documentation that miami community members were standing there in the crowd listening to this guy lament the fact that they were no long they are. um, and so it's that iron that i found and kept finding over and over again that made me want to investigate it further. >> for more information on this and oh cities on the local content vehicles' tour, go to c-span.org/localcontent. >> and now, ross doutha, this, contends that christianity in america has deinvolved from from a once traditional practice to a shadow of its former self. this is about an hour and 40 minutes. >> good evening.

i'm pete peterson, executive director of the davenport institute at pepperdine's school of public policy, and i bring you greets from the planet -- greetings from the planet malibu. [laughter] i come in peace. [laughter] i mean you no harm. we're very happy to co-sponsor tonight's evening conversation with the trinity forum. as it appears tonight, we disproved one axiom, but it's my hope that one of tonight's benefits is that we will disprove a second. variously attributed to james carville is the rather crude remark that washington, d.c. is hollywood for ugly people. [laughter] and judging by tonight's turnout, i think that we have put that one to rest. unless you've all been bussed in from north carolina or something. but as someone who grew up in the northeast and actually went

to undergrad school here in the district, i know there is a second, unspoken phrase that is the first near inverse. put directly, hollywood -- or more directly, southern california -- is washington, d.c. for stupid people. [laughter] the school of public policy is a unique graduate program, pushing students to know both the promise and limitations of policy making. the only program of its kind based on a great book's curriculum, pepperdine carries forward the intention of its founders including the late james q. wilson who knew woven into all politics and policy is a certain moral sense. that's why we're so excited to partner with the trinity forum, an stiewption that seeks to --

institution that seeks to push questions deeper to politics and business. i trust that we are all in for a thought-provoking evening, and be i will now turn it over to cherie. thank you. [applause] >> thanks, pete. good evening to you all and welcome to trinity forum and pepperdine university's evening conversation on the new book, "bad religion: how we became a nation of heretics." i'm cherie harder, and we're delighted that all of you came in, and we're delighted to partner with you, pete, and with pepperdine. for those of you who aren't familiar, since our found anything 1991 -- and i'm delighted to note that one of our founders is here and has joined us for the evening -- we've sought to provide a space

and resources for leaders to engage life's greatest questions in the context of faith. we do this by providing readings and publications which draw upon classic works of literature and sponsoring programs such as this one tonight to connect leading thinkers with thinking leaders in engaging life's biggest questions and to better come to know the author of the answers. certainly, many of the greatest questions in life surround religion. what we believe to be true about spiritual and physical reality and in whom we place our faith, align our thinking and order our love. as such, our understanding and practice of faith necessarily has extraordinarily public consequences. cultures grow around a shared set of blows, and when the nature of those beliefs change, so will society.

a fact which has fueled many of the cultural battles around the practice of faith in the public square. but while many of the culture wars have been cast as battles between the faithful and the faithless or between those who want to impose their religion on everybody else and those who want to strip the practice of faith from the public square entirely, a new book by ross douthat argues that the most corrosive factor has not been either excessive religiousty or expansive secularism, but rather, bad religion. the erosion and distortion of orthodox christianity in a manner that has engendered the base rise of the faith that, in his own words, indulge our follies and encourage our worst impulses. with disastrous political, civic, economic and relational consequences. moreover, he argues that such distortions -- once considered

polluted streams off the river of orthodoxy -- have now flooded the banks, while the river itself has largely dried up and receded, leaving behind a very different religious and cultural environment. it is a provocative argument to make, and there are few who more enjoy or are more skilled at making thoughtful provocation than ross douthat. he is a columnist for "the new york times"es and a staggeringly prolific blogger. before joining the times in 2009, he was senior editor for the atlantic magazine as well as film critic for the national review. when he departed the atlantic for the grey lady of "the new york times," his former editor paid tribute the him in print as a young, quote, public intellectual with a sensibility of a 60-year-old -- [inaudible] the range of a hitchens, the

conscious of a anemicker and the intellectual honesty of his frequent sparring partner, andrew sullivan. so when he is not channeling those, he has authored several books including "privilege" and "grand new party: how republicans can win the working class and save the american dream." his latest book, "bad religion," is being published today by the free press and has already generated no small amount of controversy. and a great deal of discussion which we hope to further this evening. responding to ross will be two thoughtful analysts, barbara bradley haggerty is the religion correspondent for npr where she reports on the intersection of faith and politics, law, science and culture. her coverage has earned her, among many other awards, the

american women in radio and it's award, the headliners' award, and the religion news writer association award for reporting. she previously served as npr's chief justice correspondent, covering such happy topics as the impeachment proceedings against president clinton, the presidential election dispute of 2000, terrorism, crime, espionage, wrongful convictions and the occasional serial killer. [laughter] she eventually turned from covering crime and killers to god. she's also the author of "the new york times" best-selling book "fingerprints of god: the search for the science of spirituality," published by penguin books in 2009. michael gershwin is a syndicated columnist, you probably saw his most recent one, and the author of "heroic conservativism," and co-author of "city of man:

religion and politics in a new era." he also certains as senior adviser at one, dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases and a fellow at the denny hastert center for economics, governments and public policy at wheaton as well as the co-chair of the poverty forum. he priestly served as a senior fellow for the council on foreign relations as well as a top adviser for president george w. bush. in policy and strategic planning as well as his chief speech writer and previously served as a senior editor covering politics at "u.s. news & world report". so tonight we'll have an opportunity to hear from ross on how, exactly, we became a nation of heretics. followed by responses from barb and mike, and then an opportunity for your questions. ross, welcome. [applause]

>> well, thank you so much, cherie. that's a quite wonderful introduction made only slightly less wonderful by the fact that i paid my atlantic colleague about $5,000 to write that to me when i departed, but it was worth every penny. [laughter] thank you guys all so much for being here, i was telling cherie i was going to do two extremely risky things in this discussion, the first was to speak without a prepared test which will be a high-wire act which all of you can enjoy, and the second is to provide a kind of overview of the book we're discussing here tonight which is an extremely risky thing for an author to do because it raises the possibility that having heard the overview, some of you might not actually buy it.

[laughter] but i see that some of you have it already, so i'm reassured that i won't cost myself too many sales. um, but the first question that any author gets when they set out on this grueling book tour experience is where did you get the idea for this book, and the idea for the book came, i think, from two experiences. one sort of personal and familial, and the other sort of intellectual and more recently located in my life. um, the personal experience is that i grew up in a family of mainline protestants, basically. i was baptized episcopalian, we attended episcopal churches in southern connecticut which is as pretty much mainline protestant as you can get. but then for various reasons having something to do with my mother's health and something to do with sort of a general sort

of spiritual and religious curiosity, my parents set out during my childhood on a kind of tour of american christianity. so from out of the episcopal church, it began by we attended faith-healing services which took place in high school auditoriums across southern connecticut, western connecticut that were run by a woman named grace james who had a healing ministry, and, you know, there was people going out in the spirit, people speaking in tongues, um, and everything especially that is associated with charismatic christianity. and that became our entree into sort of the wider both sort of charismatic and pentacostalist and, also, evangelical world where i'd say my family sort of spent the better part of my childhood sort of migrating from church to church, sometimes from

revival to revival. we made the, you know, 17-and-a-half hour drive -- it's slightly shorter than that -- from new haven to toronto, canada, during what some of you may know the toronto blessing, the outpouring of the holy spirit that took place at a vineyard church near the toronto airport. and so in the same period we were also still sort of, you know, normal, upper middle class, southern connecticuters. so i had a sort of normal life as a kid who went to a sort of liberal itch private school outside -- liberallish private school outside new haven and another life as someone who watched my parents speak in tongues on weekends. [laughter] and then from -- and then, again, sort of mostly guided by my mother, we ended up converting first her and then our entire family to catholicism when i was 16 years old.

or, no, she converted when i was 16, and i converted when i was 17. so i'm in the position of being neither a cradle catholic, nor an momentum convert. -- adult convert. i was mostly just greatly relieved to become catholic because i lived in terror in the moment when charismatic services where the preacher would approach me and ask me to testify in any way, shape or form to anything. [laughter] and so the things that people complain about ca catholicism my 17-year-old self recognized as a true blessing from heaven. no one's going to ask me to speak extemporaneously. [laughter] so that is a very short, necessarily distilled summary of my -- i think, in a way, unusual religious upbringing certainly by the standards of some people in washington, d.c., some of my colleagues in the national press corp. -- corps and so on.

but also in an increasingly representative upbringing in the sense that more and more americans in more and more different ways are following those kind of, those kind of sometimes fascinating, sometimes destructive spiritual trajectories, sort of pinballing from church to church, communion to communion, um, and are less and less likely to remain with the denomination or the church that they were born into. and, you know, you look at a case like marco rubio, right? who is a, you know, the rising star of the republican party, who, um, is sort of known to those who don't know very much about him as a catholic, known to those who know a bit more about him as a catholic who sometimes attends an evangelical church and now as a catholic who sometimes attends a van evangelical church whose family converted to mormonism as a child.

so i have a kinship with marco rubio -- [laughter] we have distinctly american stories in our religious past. so carrying that sort of personal childhood experience with me, i found myself sort of coming of age as young journalist really the second term of george w. bush's presidency. when the debate over -- and cherie alluded to this in her introduction -- but i would say the debate over religion and politics and really religion in general both in america and the west as a whole was dominated by a kind of binary where you had sort of conservative christians on the one hand and either secular liberals or, more militantly, the new atheists on the other hand. and we lived through a period where there was sort of secular liberal panic over the looming specter of theocracy that michael grisham personally was going to impose on all of us --

[laughter] from his bad eminence at the bush white house. and at the same time you had religious believers throwing themselves into the fray against christopher hitchens and richard dawkins and daniel denett and all the others, the voices of the new atheism. and in spite of my exhaustion with the theocracy debate, obviously, the broader debate about is there a god or not is a hugely, hugely important one. but it struck me as i both followed and participated in these debates that that kind of binary was missing a huge part of the story of religion in the united states. and that the real story of american christianity and american religion writ large is not a story of sort of pope men dick 16th -- benedict locked in the soul of america. there's an image to take with you tonight. [laughter] it's a story of a country that,

on the one hand, is no longer as traditionally christian as it once was, and a country whose christian institutions both protestant and cat are weaker -- catholic are weaker in the many ways than they were in previous generations to the american story. but on the other hand, it isn't a country that i think can be meaningfully described as post-christian, as pagan as some of my more pessimistic co-believers sometimes do, and certainly not as secular in any but, you know, any but the most expansive definition of the term. and, in fact, if you look at public opinion data on sort of spiritual experience and whether americans report having had a direct encounter with god and whether they believe in sort of prayer and the supernatural and so on and all sorts of nonspecific markers of religious belief, america is as religious as ever. i think you could argue in

certain ways it might be more religious than ever before. so what kind of country are we if we are not a secular nation and not a traditionally christian nation? well, um, as i argue in the, you know, somewhat provocatively title and subtitle of this book, i think we're a nation of heretics. and i mean the term critically, obviously, because i am sort of coming both from a sort of specifically catholic standpoint, but also from what you might call a sort of small o orthodox view of what christianity is and should be. but i also just sort of mean it diagnose knostically. i think heretic is actually the right word for a nation that is, on the one hand, not as christian as it used to be, but on the other hand is still so deeply and pervasively influenced by christianity in almost all of its religious expressions, that it isn't really correct to say, you know, well, we're post-christian. you know, we're not in spite of,

you know, the appeal of buddhism and hinduism and the interest in jewish mysticism and so on, christianity in some form is still the controlling influence, i think, on the largest swath of religious life in the united states. and so i think heretic is the right word for what we've become and, perhaps, where we're going. and i should offer a couple of qualifiers. when i say we are a nation, we have become a nation of heretics, i don't actually mean to say that sort of rampant heresy in all of its various forms that i try and talk about in the book is such a completely new thing in american life. i think if you take any of the figures that i talk about in the section of the book that talks about contemporary american religion, you can trace their antecedents, you know, going back into the 19th century and the 18th century and so on. you know, the liberal christian

tradition runs back to thomas jefferson and unitarianism and deism and so on. the prosperity gospel tradition is as old as, you know, alexis de tocqueville and as new as the trinity broadcasting network. the sort of gospel of self-help and therapeutic religion and so on. i mean, i think in many ways emerson is sort of one of the crucial forefathers of elizabeth gilbert and "eat, pray, love," which is one of the books i talk about at length. so what's new is not these heresies, really. what's new is the weakness of the institutional, um, small o orthodox, historically-rooted christian response. it isn't so much that, you know, that we didn't have heretics in the american life before. we've always been a nation of heretics, but they haven't had the field to themselves, i think, as completely as they have over the last, increasingly over the last four or five

decades. so the first half of the book tries to tell the story of how this came to pass, and it begins because, you know, every book needs to begin in some lost arcadia that, you know, will be summoned up as a standard against our current era, judged and found wanting. it begins with the postwar revival, the period after world war ii when american churches were fuller, when christian intellectual life in the united states was more row was and -- robust and vigorous, when i think christian artistic life was flourishing in certain ways as never before and in certain ways as never since. you know, figures as diverse as flannery o'connor and thomas merten and, you know, it wasn't, obviously, only americans, but a figure like c.s. lewis who is at the peak of his powers now and exerts such a profound influence down to the present day over american christians. so it begins with that world,

and it talks about how that world came to be. and it argues that the strength of american christianity in that era was a strength that had been rebuilt rather than simply inherited. and one of the points i would emphasize is when i talk about sort of the loss of strong institutional christianity in the u.s., i don't mean there was this monolithic institutional christianity that was equally vigorous in 1840 and so on. obviously, the strength of the institutional churches, first protestant and then increasingly catholic as well, has waxed and waned, and there have been previous periods of crisis for sort of the institutional churches. but the postwar revival was borne out of one such period of crisis and borne out of the 1920s and 1930 when, you know, you had an era when protestant america was splitting up, and the modernist fundamentalist

wars, when catholic america was still largely confined to an immigrant ghetto and hadn't entered the mainstream of the culture as a whole, and when there was a sense that the coming theme was some sort of secular ideology, some totallyizing -- totalizing ideology, fascism, naziism and so on. and that period ended with the depression and the second world war, and it ended with sort of people becoming aware of the horrors that those kinds of totalitarian ideology could lead to. and that experience, i think, led to a real and sustained reassessment of sort of a more orthodox christianity as a guide to, as a faith that could be relevant for modern life. and i argue in the chapter on that postwar revival that what era was really characterized by was a kind of christian convergence where you had american catholicism moving into

the mainstream of american life as never before and american catholic intellectuals doing an enormously important labor to sort of move their own church towards a more, um, a more serious engagement with the benefits of liberal democracy and moving catholicism out of it sort of 19th century reactionary crouch on issues of religious liberty, democracy and so on. so you have catholicism moving into the american mainstream in that way, you have america's evangelical churches emerging from their fundamentalist wilderness years, and you have a figure like billy graham sort of embodying an evangelicalism which, in many ways, was dock tribeally -- doctrineally conservative but whose motivation with the world was completely different; confident, open-handed, optimistic and so on. and then in the main line you had the high noon of what we

think of now as neoorthodoxy which is the particularly intellectual and theological movement embodies by figures like ryan hold nieber that sort of pulled the mainline back towards historic christianity and be away from some of, you know, what the modernist era's overoptimism about, you know, sort of building the kingdom of god on earth, in effect. so you have that sort of evangelical mainline catholic convergence, and then you have the experience of the black church which was such a marginal player in the life of american christianity as a whole for so many years, but suddenly emerges under the leadership of figures like martin luther king and ralph abernathy and so on as, you know, it sort of rushes to the center of american religious life and american political life as well and becomes the vehicle, um, for this era of political

reform that's deeply influenced by christian principle and deeply influenced in a way that, i think, contrasts with our own era to the extent in which his transcended partisanship and party and transcended denominational divides as well. so you ended up, you know, there is, obviously, immense variation in the way christians react to the civil rights movement, but there was also some real commonalities between the way billy graham and catholic archbishops and mainline intellectuals all in different ways were stirred by the message of king and others and sort of found a kind of ecumenical brotherhood in the cause of civil rights. so that's sort of, that's sort of the rough, a rough sketch of where my story begins. and then it leaps ahead to the 1960s and '70s and to a period which for mainline protestantism was characterized

pretty much by straightforward collapse. and it's a story that's pretty well known, but it's still shocking to look at the raw numbers and how swiftly these, you know, what seemed like very potent and influential mainline denominations lost memberships, money, morale, prestige and sort of went from being the mainline drifting -- think richard john knew usa said to the sidelines of american life. and then, obviously, it was a period of crisis for the catholic church as well. and there the sort of dropoff and membership in church attendance was not nearly as steep, but the collapse of catholicism's institutional culture in the aftermath of that, the collapse in priestly vocations, the rate at which nuns and priests essentially exited their vocations across the '60s and '70s is, i think, again, still a story with the capacity to surprise and

even shock. so there was the collapse of the mainline, the weakening and sort of internal divisions within catholicism, and, obviously, over the same period in many ways some of this, some of this decline added to the benefit of evangelical churches which were often the places where believers from both the mainline denominations and the catholic church ended up finding a kind of refuge and which were the portions of american christianity that remained robust and resilient and, you know, even growing. but the argument i make in the book is that if you look at sort of both just at sort of the raw numbers, if you look at, you know, overall public opinion polls on sort of religious and theological issues, and then if you just look at the influence of christianity on the culture as a whole, the resilience and even growing strength of evangelicalism was not sufficient by any stretch to

fill the void that was left by the collapse of the mainline and the weakening of the catholic church. and because all books must have a, you know, bullet-pointed list of four factors that led to this transformation -- i have a bullet-pointed list of four factors that led to this transformation. and, obviously, there are presumably many, many more as well, but i try to boil christianity's crisis down to four big shifts. um, and the first is just the influence of sort of partisanship and polarization on american religion. and, um, the sort of shift from the model that i think was fairly successfully pursued in the civil rights era when you had a kind of a christian movement of reform that sort of pushed politicians rather than becoming captive to them in a way, gave way to an era where first on the religious left in the '60s and '70s and then increasingly in the '80s, '90s and 2000s on the

religious right, an increasing number of americans felt like religious believers were sort of captive to partisan causes rather than the other way around. um, and the example i'd like to use is the difference between, um, the style of political engagement of a billy graham and a martin luther king in the mid century err and two men who in certain ways were potential heirs. pat robertson and jesse jackson in the 1980s and 1990s. graham and, certainly, king were obviously deeply engaged in political debates and political issues and so on. but they were engaged in a manner, for the most part and, you know, less so later in the king's career and less so for graham during the nixon presidency, but overall they were engaged in a way that did not feel sort of partisan and sort of narrowly ideological whereas their potential successors weren't just sort of engaged in a more partisan way, they actually ran for president of their respective parties, the sort of, you know, the mission of the preacher suddenly seemed

to be to become the democratic nominee for president and the republican nominee for president. and i think that shift has been playing itself out across the last few decades, and it explains a lot of why the mainline churches lost membership in the '60s and '70s, because there was a feeling they had sort of transformed themselves in an effort to remain relevant into a vehicle for liberal politics. and unless you're interesting in liberal politics, why would you get up early on sunday morning and go to church? you could just vote for a democratic politician or volunteer for a political cause. and then i think something less destructive but somewhat similar happened with religious conservativism which is a cause that i personally feel a strong identification with, but which in different ways and in different times and places from the '80s to the bush era increasingly gave off a sense -- and mike, who will follow me,

has written about this quite eloquently in a book that cherie mentioned -- but just the sense that to be a christian meant to be a republican. and if you weren't a republican, you probably didn't want to be a christian, and you didn't want to be associated with people who associated with christianity. and you could see this in sort of opinion polls start anything the 1990s, the rise of americans who were, i think, functionally religious but who didn't want to identify as, certainly, as christian or religious was they felt like to do so was to identify with a partisan conservativism. so that's, i think, the first factor in the weakening of institutional christianity. the second factor's one that everybody talks about, and rightly so, and that's the sexual revolution and the challenge that the birth control pill and then the sort of sexual norms more generally, the challenge that it posed to traditional christian sexual ethics. that challenge, again, continues working its out to the present day. in the '60s, you know, it was

divorce. the divorce revolution that posed the challenge. today it's the gay rights revolution and the issues that are tearing apart many american churches are focused around how should christians react to a post-closet age, how should they think about home sexuality in skipture and the rest of it. i won't stay more about that issue because i think it's well-trod terrain except to say that it's a place where, you know, i don't think there's been a complete sort of, complete discovery of a totally effective christian response to this new culture that is, on the one hand, faithful to scripture and tradition, but on the other hand is sort of engaged with, you know, social realities as they actually exist. the third factor is, um, what i call the opening of a more global perspective in american life and that, you know, globalization is, obviously, something that's been happening for decades or centuries and so

on. but i think there was a kind of tipping point in the 1960s, the combination of decolonization, the war in vietnam, something -- things like the peace corps and then the sort of television revolution where scenes from around the world could be beamed into people's homes, and i think more than almost any other factor, that perspective helps explain why relativism, a sort of moral and theological moralism became so much more persuasive to many americans and americans who sort of identified as christian and as religious but who looked at sort of the teeming diversity of the world suddenly being beamed into their living rooms and said, well, you know, given all that, how can i assume that my one religious tradition which is, frankly, associated with a history of western imperialism and chauvinism and so on, how can i assume that's the one true faith? and what's the fascinating irony is, of course, over the same period the people who were

moving out from under the western colonial and imperial yoke were finding traditional christianity more persuasive than they had before, so there was this odd divergence where the experience for the colonizers, this era created a kind of, a kind of christian crisis. and for the colonized it made christianity seem more appealing than it had seemed before. and then the final factor is in the weakening of institutional christianity is mass affluence. and it's, i think this is an issue that religious conservatives in particular maybe don't pay quite enough attention to because they're more likely to be sort of generally supportive of capitalism and the free market and so on than some more liberal believers. but i think it's -- christianity is, ultimately, a religious that, you know, if you read the new testament, it's very hard to escape the critique of wealth and the temptations associated with great wealth and the importance of not letting your

great wealth master you and, you know, you cannot serve both god and man and all the rest of it. and that is a, i think, was and remains a harder message in the society that america became amid the atmosphere sort of postwar abundance than it had been for the society that came of age amid the hardships of the great depression. and i think it plays out across the board, but the one example that i particularly focus on is in certain ways a small one, but i think a very important one, and that is the impact of mass affluence on, um, the catholic clergy and the protestant ministry. if you go back to 1955 and look at the relative salaries available to a cleric versus a sort of secular professional whether a lawyer or a doctor or something along those lines, there's, you know, there's a difference, right? becoming a minister in 1955

meant that you, you know, there was going to be a ceiling on sort of your wealth and prosperity and so on compared to the lawyer or the doctor next door. but the divergence, i think, has grown exponentially since then. and it isn't surprising, i think, you know, everyone focuses on the impact of sort of sex and celibacy and so on in the decline of catholic vocations, and i think that's part of the story for catholicism, but i think if you look at protestant as well as catholic, there's been a general decline in the number and caliber of people going into the ministry full time, and i think a lot of that is driven just by the fact that there is so much wealth and abundance available to people who enter a different, a different profession. that the, you know, i mean, in the end we're all only human, and, you know -- but that has made a big difference in turn in

the strength of the institutional churches. if people who used to become priests and ministers become doctors and lawyers instead, you end up inevitably with institutions that don't have the kind of, you know, manpower and human capital necessary, you know, to be sort of economically deterministic about it, to compete, you know, in the marketplace overall. so those are the four overall factors that i talk about, and i think that they map in different ways onto the sort of big, big heresies that i discuss in the second half of the book. so mass affluence maps onto the prosperity gospel which i spend a chapter talking about. and, you know, which i think is -- one of the things i try and do in this book, again, obviously, it's very critical of the heresies that i'm writing about, but it's also trying to take them, i think, more seriously as theologies than people often do. i think it's very easy to look at joel os steven, right? or beyond os seen, the more sort

of garish and ridiculous-seeming prosperity speakers and that's really all there is to be said about that. and the argument i make in that chapter is that, actually, no, prosperity theology in its various forms is in many ways a sort of subtle and interesting and sort of intuitivety-appealing answer, pewtively-appealing refashioning, one, of christianity for an major of mass affluence and, two, refashioning of christianity that sort of answers some of the dilemmas that more orthodox christianity sometimes leaves unresolved. so the message is that if you aren't rich, it's your own fault, right? that you haven't, you haven't figured out how to get god to honor his which the chul obligations to you. you have not prayed hard enough, you have not, you know, thought in the supernatural as you should. in this way it seems like a cruel and harsh message, right? sort of blaming people suffering

financially for their own situation. but it's also in many ways a more comforting message than the sort of starkness of jesus' admonition, take up your cross and follow me. because it says to people who are suffering that, no, you don't have to suffer, you just have to pray a little harder, right? suffering isn't a cross to bear, it's just a sign that you don't have god's favor, and you can get god's favor. so just get out there and start praying harder and do something about it. and i think the same is true in many ways of the theology that i think, the heresy that i think is sort of the answer to, in many ways, the sexual revolution and the broader revolution in our personal lives. and that's what i call the heresy of the god within, right? the idea that, um, that sort of the prommings of your -- promptings of your inher most spirit -- inner most spirit are necessarily identical to the promptings of god himself.

and this theology, i think, similarly helps resolve the problem of evil and suffering by sort of suggesting that, you know, not suggesting that there's something to be mastered and overcome, but suggesting that there's something to be transcended that, you know, once you truly get in touch with your true self, then you won't experience suffer anything the same way. but it's also a message, i think, that helps people justify, you know, lifestyles and life choices that traditional christianity passes judgment on and calls immoral. and so i build that chapter around elizabeth gilbert's "eat, pray, love" which i think is an absolutely fascinating book and a much more religiously-fascinating book than people give it credit for. in part because gilbert's religious fervor is so genuine, her search for supernatural experience is so, i think, genuinely authentic. but it's a search for supernatural experience in which those experiences are placed in

the service of life choices, the life choices that gilbert wanted to make anyway, namely, you know, leaving her husband of five years and sort of, you know, abandoning the life they'd set out, they'd set out and promised to lead together and ending up falling into the arms of a handsome brazilian divorcee in bali. but i think it's a fascinating case of how theology can serve, you know, can serve as a sort of, as a form of comfort, right? and as a way of sort of justifying behavior and also sort of calming the unease that people feel, you know, about the disjunction between the christianity of maybe their childhood faith and the lives that they lead today. and then, obviously, the sort of political and sort of side of things, the impact of polarization, i think, maps onto what is my final chapter where i talk about what i call the twin

heresies of american nationalism. which these twin temptations, one of which i think is more characteristically liberal which is this messianic temptation, the ideas that americans can actually build the new jerusalem on earth if we just, you know, have enough, let's say, hope and change. elect the right president to pass the right bills and so on, and then there's the apocalyptic temptation which says, no, we had the new jerusalem on earth. it was called the founding -- [laughter] and we blew it, and god is punishing it. and that, of course, is not associated with hope and change. it's associated with one of hope and change's most strident cable television critics, glenn beck. so, but i think that both of those, the appeal of both sort of the messianic style which i think tempts conservatives as well as liberals and the apocalyptic style which tempts liberals as well as conservatives reflect in part the impact of partisanship on

religion and the extent to which in an age of weakened religious institutions where people still have all this religious energy and religious zeal and where partisanship is so much stronger, it becomes much easier for people to invest religious energy in what are, essentially, political crusades. and i think, again, this has been true throughout american history. you know, glenn beck's bete noire is the embodiesment of the -- embodiment of the -- one reason beck hates wilson so much is i feel he sort of recognizes him as his sort of cracked mirror twin in a way. [laughter] you know, they sort of represent opposite, opposite poles of the heresy of nationalism. but anyway, so that's sort of the chapter on political heresy. and then i finish and, you know, it's a tour of the book, so i'll

finish where i finish, i finish with the prospects for the future, and i don't -- i have a four-point explanation for christianity's decline, but i don't have a five-point plan or, god help us, a five-year plan for institutional christianity's revival. but i do sort of return at the end to where i started, and the model, i think the model of the postwar revival is helpful for us in thinking through the challenges facing christianity today. and it is a fairly pessimistic book, and i do think that institutional christianity is weaker today than it was in the 1920s and '30s, and so this decline will be harder to come back from. um, but i do think that sort of the lessons of that era should provide a kind of north star for christians today, and the lessons include be political without being partisan which is, obviously, an incredibly difficult thing to do. but the line i like to use is that, look, you know, if you're christian, you're interested in

politics, you're called to engage with it, you're going to enend up affiliating with one party or another, and i suspect most of the people in this room would affiliate with the republican party for, obvious, and i think completely reasonable reasons. but in making that act of partisan commitment, you need to always keep in mind that the odds are extremely slim that the platform of any particular political party of any time ask and place is going to map up perfectly with god's intentions for human beings. and so as you affiliate with and engage with and engage as a partisan, you always need to look for the places where you think your party is wrong. and the examples that i invoke, and i invoke them not because i agree with them necessarily, but because i think they provide interesting models are two figures from the '60s and '70s. one is sergeant shriver. basically, the last really prominent pro-life catholic democrat and mark hatfield. actually, one of the first sort of prominent evangelical

politicians in that era who was a republican but who was noted for his anti-war views in particular and also some liberal views on other issues. and i think in those two examples, in the, you know, sort of partisan democrat who could see his party was going in the wrong direction on abortion, and in the partisan republican who had real doubts about the vietnam war, you can see, i think, models for what should be the christian difference in the way we engage with politics. if there's a christian politician, he should look a little different and be a little less partisan maybe than, you know, his less religious, sort of co-partisans in a sense. so, you know, political without being partisan, sort of moralistic but in a holistic sense, so a large part of the story of american christianity over the last 30, 40 years is people facing this challenge, these various challenges, sexual revolution, mass affluence and so on, saying we're just going

to jettison the hardest issues. particularly on sexual issues, where people say, well f the traditional teaching on marriage is a stumbling block to preaching the gospel, then the gospel's more important, and that traditional teaching has to go. and i think the record of liberal christianity in the united states which is, i think, an overall record of greater institutional failure suggests that that theologically, right or wrong, it just doesn't practically work. but at the same time, it's important to be comprehensive in your, you know, in your commitment. if you want, if you're going to talk about sex and you're going to talk about lust, then you should talk about gluttony too. if you are, you know, if you're a sort of conservative-leaning christian, then you need to be all the more willing to make critiques of rich people when their great wealth leads them

astray, especially if you think it's not the government's business to sort of cut their fortunes down to size. that makes the moral critique all the more important. and part of what i try and do in the book is sort of tease out at least what i think is a little bit more of a holistic christian critique of american culture than the sort of culture war debates we often have. and the final point i make, and it goes back to what i was saying about mid century artists and intellectuals, but especially artists is just, you know, the witness of christianity is a witness to truth, but it's a witness to beauty, and it's a witness to the link between beauty and truth and so on. and this is something alan jacobs, english professor at wheaton and a great critic who some of you may be familiar with his writing, he pointed out to me it is actually remarkable the extent to which christianity today, intellectual christianity in america is sustained less often by theologians, less by

institutions than by, you know, t.s. elliot's four quartets and the chronicles of narnia. and i think that there's a lesson for us sort of thinking about what christianity means today, that there is as much virtue in building a beautiful church or making a artistically-successful christian movie. not just a christian movie, an artistically-successful christian movie -- [laughter] than in all the polemics and theological broadsides that we engage in. so that's sort of close to where, to where i end the book. but i think i'll, you know, again, as i said, it's a somewhat pessimistic account, but i'll end on an optimistic note with one of the lines that i'm, you know, proudest of in the book. it's a little bit cutie, but i say that, you know, christians are obliged to be hopeful about the future because our faith has always depended on unexpected resurrections. so on that note, thank you all so very much. [applause]

>> well, i stand in bonder and admiration -- wonder and admiration. i don't think i ever have in my life spoking extemporaneously. i think my conversations with my mother every morning are scripted so my -- [laughter] my hat goes off to to you, truly. no, that was terrific. i just have a couple of points and one question about ross' excellent book. the first thing that struck me about this book is just how spot on the research is. as a journalist, i know that it's really, really easy to get the little details wrong, and when you do that, you can undermine your whole story or your whole book, the whole credibility. but ross analyzes a few things

that i know a whole lot about, a couple of things i know a lot about, and what struck me is he always hit a bull's eye. he was terrific. so one thing i know a lot about is christian science. those are the folks, as you know, who believe that prayer is more effective in, than medicine in physical and mental healing and that kind of thing. well, i was raised a christian scientist, and i know that people get the religion wrong a lot more than they get it right, and so imagine how delighted i was when i read ross' analysis of christian science and realized that he had really done the research, and he treated it with great respect which is unusual, and he also placed it historically in the new thought movement. and so this actually gave me something to think about that i hadn't thought about before. he gave me insights about christian science, um, about the origins and also the flaws. and one thing that he suggests, and this is a theme throughout the book, is that when you try to simplify jesus' confoundingly

complex message by narrowing jesus down to one thing, you err, you have a big problem. so in the case of christian science, jesus wasn't the son of god, he wasn't an advocate for the homeless and the poor and the helpless, but he was a physical healer, he was a doctor. now, i've also covered the prosperity gospel, and i too eyewitnessed the tenth anniversary of the toronto blessing where people barked like dogs and clucked like chickensens and were slain in te spirit. and, i mean, this just, this is an eye-opening talk for me because i had no idea you were a child of the toronto blessing. laugh and it's not an obvious fit when you look at ross, i think. [laughter] but once again, ross placed this in historical context, and it turns out -- i was delighted to see this -- it turns out that christian science and the prosperity gospel are actually in the same family tree. you know, it's great to think

about this, these intensely restrained christian scientists from new england are remitted to, say, kenneth copeland and joel's steven. but once again what ross has done by when you know a summit and you know someone gets it spot on, what that does is it gives you confidence that the rest of the book is accurate as well, so that's what he did. so i could go on for some time about ross' analysis, which we have just heard, but let me move on to a second reason that i really, really liked this book. it's a joy to read. it's really a fun read. um, ross has an elegant and delightfully acerbic style. just listen to this passage. this is his account of the search for the historical jesus which turns out to be, essentially, a frontal assault on the traditional narrative about jesus. and here's what he writes on page 162. quote: like a liz beith than buzz in search of the real -- turn out to be masters of detection and geniuses at code

breaking capable of seeing through every cover-up and unpacking every con. is there a dearth of evidence for alternative christianities in the earliest history of the church? why, then, that very absence is itself evidence that these christianities existed and then were cruelly suppressed. be ouch. i love it. isn't that great? the entire book is, essentially, a primer for straight fard, elegant and often devastating writing. but, you know, even elegant writing wouldn't succeed if message weren't so powerful and insightful. and when raz examines the dis-- when raz examines christianity, i think he's really at his best. he does this when, by looking both at the past and the present. i mean, excuse me, the past and the future. now, when he considers the decline of mainline protestant christianity, he traces, he traces that in part to the search for the historical jesus which i just mentioned. of course, it's true that

scholars have to take into account new sources as they're discovered like the knostic gospels. but in ross' analysis, mainline christianity has become so enamored of the writers and ideas that have been rejected that it has carved out, basically, the core of orthodox christianity. for example, scholars in the jesus seminar have thrown out virtually, you know, all but a handful of sayings of jesus. and jesus, it turns out, is not just kind of the strong, silent type, he's basically mute according to the jesus seminar. [laughter] he's a proponent of social justice, he's not a healer, he's not the son of god, we don't think, and this kind of stick figure jesus has, in my reporting experience, invaded the mainline church. now i want to, you know, it's true that there are a lot of great mainline churches. i've been to a number of them. but ross has really put his finger on something that i've witnessed in my recording, and i -- reporting, and i really

appreciated it. ross then looks ahead in his chapter on the voice within, or the god within, and here again the writing in is engaging, and he buzzes happily from "eat, pray, love" and the da vinci code to augustin, and what he finds comports completely with my reporting on america's spirituality. this is something i've studied a little bit -- or a lot, actually, in my book on american spirituality -- and it turns out that just over half of americans say they've had a transformative spiritual experience that actually changed their lives. and that's great, but increasingly these events are personal experiences which are untethered from any kind of rigorous faith. and i wouldn't discount experience. i mean, an end counter -- encounter with god is basically the foundation for every religion, but experience can be flabby, it can lead to self-centeredness and, as ross pointed out, it can wander from

traditional morality. so i love how he puts it here. he goes, the promptings of one's inner self aren't necessarily identical to the promptings of the holy spirit. sometimes the god within isn't god at all, but just the ego or thely bid doe using spirituality as a convenient clause for its own desires and impulses. i'm intensely jealous of his ability to write, i just think it's really great. [laughter] flsh. ..

how he said, you know, speculation, like no one died and came back with video footage. young christians are skeptical of traditional docket rain, they frequent, most young even gel calls support gay marriage. their for a more likely to believe the bible has errors. they are for aless likely to go to church. they question church. the hottest youtube video earlier this year was a rap poem. i pet some of you have seen it. it was by a young man named jon thank, and why i hate religion but love jesus. it was a scathing critique of the l church. it received 18 million hurts. i'm not saying his critique of the church is completely wrong. you see outer intox christianity

pray agent the edge. ross is a great analyst and a great writer. and i have a question for you, ross, obviously you can't answer it now. i hope maybe you can answer it a little bit later during the q and a. i kept wondering about it. i'm going to ask you this. what does orthodox nonher receipt call christiany look like for women. one of the people you quoted was a pastor named doug wilson, quote, wives must be lead request a firm hand. a husband should be instructing and teaching his wife. he has a lot of stuff like that throughout the book. what i'm wondering is i'm quite sure that you don't subscribe to those views. but a lot of orthodox christians do, and i think a lot of young women would chafe at being told when submit, their more likely to men to have a college degree

or jobs. should they give up their jobs on the capitol hill or the executive suite or national public radio? many women including me are kind of leery because of orthodox christianity, in the past it hasn't been all that friendly to women. i know, you didn't set out to write a how to book. seven secrets to an orthodox christian life. now i've got you here, how do you sell orthodox christianity to women. thank you. [applause] i oppose speaking without a tell prompter. not having one, i'll say a few words. it's a tremendous pleasure to offer a few thoughts on the

entertaining, challenging, brilliant book. anybody interested in american politics or american religion should read it. they will be exposed to one of the interesting thinkers in american life and to one of the best people i have the honor of knowing. bad religion has many virtues which are very much the virtues of the author. the book is courageous. there won't be many other books on the "new york times" on the best seller list. the authority of scripture, and the trilogy i or end with at call. ross expresses a deep, sophisticated e christian faith and brings great drought it in the process of the book. the book is aat the present timive. -- attendtive it notices eventeds that others ignore or distort. it talks about even gel calls

and catholics together and other milestones of the rapport but don't get much attention. deal with carol henry and people anyone interested many american religion should know about but often don't. the book is outraged at the right times and at the right things. at the consult with the god within and the request for the supreme self. the fill solsic eggtism is dangerous. ross treats it as serious and dangerous. and the book as brab are a mentioned is witty, any writer considers as a morm virtue. it is a total delight to read. and it makes a tough challenging argument go down smooth. my only criticism of bad religion is this: in a few

places, it lacks one virtue. the virtue of charity. the book lays into the prosperity gospel for the marriage of god and -- and joel olsteen as for a i can tell deserves everything he has coming to him. some of the criticism seems overbroad. the combination of pentecost lymph and prosperity theologies is currently the largest source of christian growth and vitality in the world. and may be the largest source of christian vitality and growth in history. psychologists are spending a lot of time trying to determine the global movement good and bad. peter burger, for example, find a number of hidden virtues. he find the poor, be

discriminating consumers of the prosperity gospel not easily deluded fuels. he thinks the social effects are likely to be positive parallel to the effects of elsewhere. berger strikes me as the kind of elegant mainstream sophisticated religion figure that ross mosted a admires. but after visiting one prosperity church in south africa. berger had this to say. the message from the preacher had go major themes. one, god does not want you to be poor. and two, you can do it. that is you can do something about the circumstances of your life. should one qawl low with this message? i'm inclined to think not. is there a theological want that godments us to be poor anywhere than he wants us to be sick in the prosperity gospel contains no sentimentality.

this is no notion that poverty is ennobling. the process process tearty gospel is closer to the imper call facts and the reminisce and -- the noble savage. such notions, of course, are always held by people who are not poor and do not consider themselves to be savages. the notions are pat nicing. a second era where bad religion lacks some charitity. s religious people in government who come in for a beating. here i have some experience, this makes me completely biased. it also gives me some direct knowledge, particularly, whether it comes to motives. ross accuses president bush, for example, of a public piety. which i never saw him prabt is. he talks of frenzied rhetoric and the language of the holly

war which we studiously avoided. he refers to the intervention in iraq is the result of mess nannic nationalism, this is in my view nonsense. the presidential calculation about a mass murder may have been mistaken but had nothing to do with hair see. these arguments fit the themes of the book. they are a rougherrer response reality. make it takes some time in government to realize how tough it is to govern. the third area where the book lacks clarity is the -- ross argue it is lacks, quote, an impressive literary school. the churches are tacky, the gar rich and nigh veef president culture products are second-rate. the talent deficit. i actually share some of the criticisms. i go back to the midwest and

meet people in the pew and raising good kids and i'm not quite so negative. there are literally americans living lives of intenty. they read larry beer cet. they have church in a high school gym. and they face life and death with goodness and grace. they leave little cultural mark only in the -- and i'm not which one that god values more. every religious tradition has a definition of the elect, in the great tradition ross defends, they are orthodox and they accept poverty and anonessuation and per gracious. they intend a lot of time reading plan i are o corn. they defend hetero chastity.

they are artistically sensitive. very much like that visit that church. [laughter] but i'm not sure it would be a very large congregation. let me close by mentioning one of my favorite short stories, a short story called revelation. main character ruby sees herself as a respectable woman of god. a bearer ever stander president the end of the story she's given a vision, a long procession making the way to heaven. all of the ig rant, the down and outs, the half wits are given the place of precedent before her and her friends in that procession. looking a the are thible people at the end of the parade rue bow, quote, could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtures were being

burned away. it's a good thing, high calling to defend virtue and orthodoxy in the parade toward heaven there may be some unexpected people in the lead. thank you [applause] >> part what we promised was an evening conversation which necessarily involves you. we'd be delighted to take your questions now. we simply ask that you pose all questions in the form of a question. short, pointed, and to the point. if you can raise your hand. we'll call of you and one of my colleagues will be by with a microphone so everybody can hear you. questions for any of our speakers? right there.

>> i'm curious if your book picks up the question of any institutionalism. you specifically talked about jesus railing against wealth, but he rails even more against the constitutions of religion of his time, and in this time, it seems to me, we have a curious movement of any institutionalism in both religion and politics as religion breaks down from large mainline denominations into splitter groups, on denomination clurnlgs -- churches and so on in politics on the right, there is less support for political institutions and parties. there's the growth of the tea party, there's the growth of

other kinds of splitter groups on the left. there's the occupy movement. there seems to be a parallel there, and when you're looking at religion in america, i was curious if your book addresses that, and if so, what position you take on it. >> does it work in -- can everyone hear me? i think you've put your finger on what is one of the trickier questions about weakening institutional christianity. one my book tries to address but doesn't always do so successfully. what extend is it a particularly religious phenomena. to what extent is american christianity simply experiencing the same forces that explained why we have fewer masons and elks club lodges and the bowling

leagues and the two-parent family. from the lie to the low, as you say, there's the broader trend towards the institutional decision and the working out of of individualism in american life. i think that, you know, the pessimism, i think the place where that phenomena comes into the book is implicity in some of my possess schism about our cacht to sort of rebuild robust christian institutions, because i think it is possible that, you know, at least provisionally in the american context of the 21st century, the impediments to rebuilding institutions of any kind have grown much larger than they were in se, 1945, 1955, which was a very institution list in american life more generallily. i don't have sort of a perfect

answer to that question, but i think that yes, that issue, the extent to which there's a broader story here that goes beyond religion is one that we value to reckon with. the institutional question, this goes to one of the points that mike raised in his eloquent remarks. obviously, i am a roman catholic. and this book attempts, and hopefully times succeeds to offer a fair-minded and charitable -- but i do bring sort of, you know, a catholic sensibility and so on. i think that can be problematic. i think mike is absolutely right to point out the places where my pining for the gothic architecture of you were shall we say, and pope ben dick's velvet robes, might leave me to

overlook the virtual middle ground and less con sense christianity. i also think that particularly on this question of sort of institution lymph and those value of strong institutions that are capable of sort of transmitting christian faith across generations kathy -- i was speaking at an event that, you know, they circulated a sort of list of the attend keys of affiliations. a huge number of the attenkeys identified thement as a nondenominations. it was one of the great strengths of the billy graham era. the sense ability that transcended kind of fraction my denomination will ?rit off from yours and fight the other denomination. forces that work in the american even gel calls. i think that, you know, property

accidents in particular have a tendency to push nondenomination nation lymph too for a. there is, you know, the challenge for all of us but i think particularly for e van gel calls. what tuesday it mean when your, you know, our churches christmasmatic pastor is gone. what is our nondenomination church look like 100 years from now. i think that is a place where, you know, even gel calls might necessarily they -- but 2,000 years. >> okay. >> front row. amanda. --

>> wait for the -- >> i had a question about you spoke of kind of what you saw as the strength of various institutions and mostly referring, my situation to catholicism and evangelicalism, in earlier days, and how you saw it hollowed out in the '60s '70s onward and the problems that you pat robertson on the protestant side. and catholic side. but what i'm getting at. i see where you're coming from. i see rather large dropoff between billy graham and pat robertson. i wonder if the revival you speak of in terms of the reaffirming of the positive nature of the institutions has already started. it seems to me, i come from

evangelical background. that's when i know best. i have many catholic friends as well. benedict has done a lot to reaffirm the roots of the church. i would say someone like rick warren is a lot more positive than pat robertson at least among every even gal call is a dinosaur. >> yeah. i mean, i think there are absolutely in the prod test and catholic circles reasons for at least a certain measured optimism about the future. i think that the challenge is sort of, you know, if you -- still you step back and look at the marco picture and the numbers and affiliation and attendance and so on. the -- there is still in c.a.t thick,

this is a subject i know better. there is a conservative catholics a sensibility that, you know, the church, the american church in particular drifted into era into the '50eu6s and '70s. it isn't really catholic. you have universities in the tradition that aren't catholic and so on. but that out of this disarray, there is being forged sort of a smaller but purer more authentic church. the feeling feeling is strongest among those who attend traditional catholic mass. my worry about that feeling is that the -- i think the challenge in the context of catholic but the

challenge of the propertiestism. i don't know if american christianity is so for a gone in a way that christians can afford -- there is almost sort of a luxury to saying we're going to retreat. we're forging the smaller thing. we're not going to worry we're going to have a church of 5 or 10 million true catholics. and not worry about the 70 million who don't knowing anything from anything. the 70 million catholics are the coreligions and, you know, and they are baptized and confirmed, and if yeah. i say this in the book, you know, they are from a three logical perspective. one good confession away are from being sort of, you know, sort of catholics in good standing, let's say. and i worry about the idea of sort of -- i worry that sort of the idea of

a smaller sort of a pure christianity is insufficient to the challenge that sort of posed by, you know, these people are not actually america is not really a payen society. people are still christians in some meaningful her receipt call meaningful way. from the catholic point of view. that's my worry about some of the sort of i think some of the described. >> mike or barb, anything to add? >> in the back, last row. >> i'm a soon to be graduate of the university of indiana. i'm going to be staff from during at my time at college. i have been growing in my respect an affection for catholics. even though i wasn't raised as one.

as i join staff with the campus administrate try. do you have any advice or insight that might further catholic, even gel call relationships? >> here is my advice, it's very id owe sin karattic, but i talk a lock in the book about the success of the evangelical callet lick starting in the 1970s and continue together present day. i think there is an enormous amount that has been done sort of in common between catholics and the evangelical sort of politically in social activism as terms of care for the poor. that kind of interconfessional cooperation, you know, that's an obvious sort of focus, right? but i also think that it is very important for the future of

christianity in the united states for sort of catholics to be catholic and protestant to be protestant. i think there is as much to be gained perhaps, i told you it was -- from the idea of, you know, sponsoring a protestant catholic debate about sort of the three logical differences between, you know, say, the sort of sort of reform versus catholic view on, you know, predis nation or whatever. that's going to pack them in. at the university of maryland. i think that it's very important to sort of find a way. it's hard thing it do to simultaneously for catholic and protestants to recognize themselves as brothers and sisters in christ and find ways to straightforwardly to work together. but find ways to air their defenses defenses in a productive way. i think ultimately has the

potential to attract outsiders as well sort of as a testament to the fact that we take our commonalities seriously and we take our differences seriously as well. as i said id owe sin karattic. >> mike, you look like you had a comment. >> i strongly agree with the points that ross makes about the political sized faith in the book. in the broader public role. but it's really interesting side effects much conservative brings in america -- conservative politics in america that you had, you know, the overcoming of one of the most durable decisions in the american public life. the catholic protestant divide, was often an violent divide in american life. you had the 19th century riots in philadelphia that killed dozens of people. you had church burnings, you had

nones assaulted in the street. it was a deep division in american life. it's an interesting effect that politics can have. particularly in the 1980s you had conservative catholic and conservative protestants forced into some of the same political trenches, they'd never been in that kind of proximity before. i remember prowillpro-life marges people bust in from liberty universities along with niect knight of the columbus who had not been in the same political movement in any time in the past. so it's one of the interesting side effects because a politicized faith can be very damaging and have the effects that you talked about. but that -- was three logical to some extent. being at the same cultural tether.

having, you know, kind of the come rod rei of the fox hole. and it's changed things to have, you know, even gal callism even in the golden age the post-war era. the pope was offer referred to the antichrist. john changed that fundamentally. it is one of the best things that happened mt. in american religion. >> barb? >> actually, i have a question. can i ask a question, since i'm up here. it's not about -- it's not about women. one of the things -- what do women want. >> we can't help you on that. one thing they was curious i was struck by was the optimism about the potential for a restrengthing, a reviolate

decision of christianity. can you hear me? >> okay. one was struck by was your optimism about the potential for revitally decision of christianity. i'm not optimistic about it. i can see there is twin forces going on here, that are different from previous times. one is the -- i really think, the interesting intelligential assault. just to name one, most i don't believe we have free will. if we don't have free will, that means we don't make bad choices. what happens to the concept of sin. >> actually interestingly studies have shown when people believe whether they have free will or not. those who read they don't, are

more likely to cheat on the test. i think there are implications for believing we don't have free will. i think there is an overall assault. i'm not saying it's a vicious one but it's intelligential on christian sciences homosexuality. is it nature or nurture. there's that. on on the other hand we have something that is growing religion today is the nuns that are unaffiliated, atheist, what's interesting about that we're not seeing david charted this kind of exodus of young evangelical out of the church we have that but the entire generation that is unchurched. the phenomenon where we see in the past where people drop out of church out of college and they are have kids so they go back to church.

i don't think we're going have that same kind of phenomenon. i'm not optimistic about the future of christianity. i wonder where you get your opt optimism. >> are you ask me or my view. >> no one else accused this view of being opt migsic. i'm staggered and gratified. hope is a vis changer haveture. >> it has come risen out of the, you know, out of the flames. >> right. i guess two i don't know if they are quite reasonses with complete reasons for optimism but one point to keep in mind is that christianity began as a counter cultural force. and, you know, if you read the gospels, they are counter cultural narratives in sort of a deep sense. i identify as a religious

conservative. christianity did not begin as a conservative movement. it began as a -- it was not politically radical, but three logical radical and culturally radical. and so on. there is the phenomenon you're describing of people growing up -- is in the short run one of the biggest challenges that the sort of institutions christian churches face. in the longer run, i'm talking generationally not in the next ten years or so. it's also an opportunity for i think christianity to, you know, christianity is more interesting and more provocative and challenging sometimes if you haven't really been exposed to it before than half heartedly. to that extend, dc not a reason for sort of hope in 2013, but it is a reason to think that there

are opportunities for christianity in this future for, you know, a more christian christianity in a way. so that was one point i'm trying to remember what the second point. science, yes. i do not feel qualified to weigh in on the sort of the free will debate. so i'm going to bypass that. and but i'll say something about it evolution. because this is -- that's the place i think a lot of the new atheist writers, the evolutionary scientist and so on. and i think there, what -- the way i tend to think about it. i don't think the darwin's theory of evolution poses any kind of serious intelligential challenge to though yifm to a belief in a greater god. i think the fact that science is unlocked a mechanism perhaps by which one species has been

transformed into another on the way to the creation of the human race tell us -- actually, i think it tells us nothing about sort of the underlying debate about whether that process is, you know, has an intelligent at the root of it. i think the that's why i tend to be skeptical of the intelligent design movement. i don't think it's actually the problem that the theory of evolution poses. it's a theological problem. it's a challenge to some extent to the notion of original sin, right. and too, this it why evangelicals are currently have the debate over the historical adam and eve. it isn't the particular issue of adam and eve. it's broader issue of we think that sin and death entered the world with the fall, what would it mean if death was sort of the part of the mechanism of the creation that lead to the fall. intelligent design, even if it

weren't entirely correct that the you could find the stamp of the creator in the microorganisms in the cell. it would be evidence for the greater but it wouldn't resolve the three logical problem. this is not a reason for optimism. i think it's a place where where sort of -- i was quite impressed by a series of -- who i praise at one point the book. had posted on just these issue. but i think from a lot of christians, those issues, they've been there all along, but a lot of christians are only just beginning to reckon with them. and we're sort of the process that maybe should have begun 100 years ago but didn't because focus was on this let's prove there is no god. of course it doesn't prove there is no god. it poses some challenges.

there's a not a reason for optimist. we'll take one short question, we're just about out of time with short answers. so michael. >> yes. i'd love to hear ross answer barb are a's question. can't we talk about, you know, the presidential rhetoric and the presidency of george w. bush? so i'm very hard in the book on the search for the historical jesus rid large and the endless revision nice take take on the gospel and the use of what i think are much less historically credibly tears that build christianity. the one place where i think sort of people writing in that area,

the place where that case becomes the strongest, i think, is in some of the seminice scholars critiques of the way that early christianity developed and the extent to which different ways there was more of a simulation to existing norms than was suggested by the particularly the gospels. the new testament text as a whole, particularly the gospels, which i think, they don't suggest, they reveal that, you know, that -- they reveal a pretty radical, certainly by the standards of the day sexual eagle tear yafm. soft scholars are doing the right thing and trying to prioritize the gospels themselves over sort of some subsequent acreations. ii think in that sense, there is in the aftermath of the sexual

revolution, which i think as i said, was, you know, a challenge to christianity in many ways, and certain ways particularly on the issue of abortion are kind of moral disaster for western civilization. thing is an opportunity for for the christian churches to sort of -- and some, you know, it's been taken up to some extent to look anew at some of the issues and look anew at what the gospels themselves suggest about the sexes. that does have to coexist though, with a recognition that the christian narrative about humanity that sexual differences is real and it matters and it may have implications for, you know, the different vocations of men and women and the way they relate to one another. but i do think that, you know, there is -- i mean, i am sort of personally

interested, again, there is a particularly catholic issue. but the pope, you know, the vatican puts outs a lot of letters, a lot of documents and so on. the pope put out a document recently it was about the deacons, the office of the deacons in the catholic church. it was making a particular distinction between the sack remittal priesthood in catholic threology is reserved for men alone and the deacon. it didn't mention gender at all. it was making a distinction between the sackment tal difference between the two roles. a couple of whroggers who follow those things closely made the point in the document you could see something that in fifty or 100 years, the catholic church. we think on those time scales. but my rise onto the idea of sort of female deacons in the

roman catted catholic churches. for instance, i don't have a strong opinion. i think we have again, begun to reckon with the society that's emerged from the sexual revolution and what it means for men and women. i guess this is a reason for optimism. on issues having to do with sex and gender and, you know, all of the issues i'm discussing across the board, we went through the period of crisis. we emerged from it. but we actually aren't into the post crisis world. i think on a lot of the questions, it's too soon to say because christianity doesn't know what to say about homosexuality. christianity is doomed because of the next 200 years. because there are challenges posted by science right now. we don't know what people will think or do and work out on the issues. and again, it's not, you know, there's no guarantee, but, you know, as christians, we do

think, you know, the most important battle has already been won. so that is at least some reason for hope on that will people will sort of think their way through the questions in ways that make christianity residence nate more than it does right now. >> ross, barb, mike. thank you. >> for more information and read the author's column visit the website. oklahoma university president david talks about his book a letter to america. the former utah senator details what he feels are necessary to ensure to the country's survival as global superpower. >> what is a letter to america? >> well, it really is literally an attempt to write to the people of the united states about the problems we face, the challenges we face. what our future needs to look like. what we should be doing.

and i decided to write it in a very simple letter form after i had an experience. i was interviewing some of the brightest young people in america who are competing for a scholarship. and i asked them a question. how long do you think america will be one of the world's leading superpower if not the leading superpower. and they answered every tough question up to that point very quickly. there was about a dozen of them. i asked each one the same question in term. they couldn't answer the question. they looked down at their feet. they paused. we're 6% of the world's population. china and india are going to have economies the rate they're grow. they have ten times as many people. what makes you think we're going to the world's leading superpower. they literally had not thought about it. you know, with all of the challenges we're not in the top 20 anymore in the educational

scores k through 12. the middle class is shrink. our share of the world's wealth is going down 1% per year very quick drop. why aren't they thinking about it. i tried to help them, i said, what are the things you think will determine how long we're the -- that's one of the great assets. we to have to have in the talent in this country fully developed and we do right now have 90% of the greatest universities in the world according to world surveys. that has to be part of the answer. what worried me. you can tell they wanted to say forever. they hadn't thought about it. they hadn't thought about the possibility possibility the that

we wouldn't be. the interesting thing is, ask that same question about six or seven years later to a group of honors that i was teaching. and it was a totally circht answer. some of them said ten years, twenty years, short periods of time. so they gone from just a assuming we would always lead to the world to really having a pessimistic outlook like two-thirds of the american people who think the future won't be as great as the past. i was very disturbed by the reactions in both cases but for very different reasons. >> what disturbs you? >> well, i think first of all the beginning that we weren't talking about the important things enough. , you know, we talk about scandal or entertainment or we talk about sports. not that i'm against sport ises all of those are interesting but we needed to be talking about what's going to determine of the future of these young people. how can we make our system start working better and come to better conclusions? how can we make sure more young

people are going to college? we drop from first in the world to twelfth in the world in eight years in the percentage of college asian population going on. from first to twelfth in eight years. so we've got get engaged. and added -- out of frustration i wrote to the letter to fellow americans say we have a lot to think about. we can do it. we need the can-do american spirit. we need to do what needs to be done. >> what impact do you think the book has had. >> it's been interesting. i'm sure it had influence with some. never a huge amount. various people got interested themselves. in fact of all the state legislature. it was amazing the number of letters i got back from that. some, for example, some of the other state universities people got interesting in having the

freshman read it. and that made me feel really good. there have been places in which i think it has been read. but, you know, you think about some of the shocking things we need to work on. that only 7% of the students in the united states college students have to take a single course in american history or american government to graduate from college. and they don't know the history. my goodness, the high schoolers half of them didn't know which side we issue on in world war ii. half of them thought we were on the side of nazi germany. how are you going to build a kind of future for your country without knowing what happened in the past. not to mention, the cost of campaigns, what's happening to grassroots democracy in our country. the cost has gone up thirty times just since the carder-ford race. now we have superpacs for people

to write $5 million checks change the course of how the primary is going when the money comes flooding in. things like and the fact that democracies and republicans have forgotten to work together. there are a lot of things we have to work on. our history shows us. we have yient. >> where did the idea come to write the book. were where you? what came to your mind. >> i guess from having that rhodes scholarship interview. i started thinking about it. if the best and bright nest this country are not really thinking long and hard about the ten or so things we need to do if we're going to share america's future. think about the rest of the population. we're numb to the kinds of challenges. if you have a pearl harbor, or you have something dray mat take happens to your country. we get together as americans and we yient and we make things happen. but when you're dealing with an erosion of our strengths, that

is a dramatic sing the day event like pearl harbor. sometimes we don't pay enough attention to. you know, whether something destroys like you like a thunder clap or whether over a ten or fifteen year period drn in terms of the rest of the world the result is the same. and diminished experience diminished opportunity for the next generation. i wanted to shake the american people and say, pay attention. pay attention. you know, our middle class is shrinking 1% a year. our two parties aren'tworking together. they can't agree oning anything what would have happen at the end of world war xii if they couldn't get together and have the martial plan. could you imagine what the republicans could have done to raise taxes on the american people to give it to countries like germany and italy that fought against us and killed

americans during world war xii. think of the there was some republicans like senatorvance berg that said we have to work together. we've got to work together across party lines because other the communist are going to sweep in and take over all of western europe. where has the spirit gone? our government has become dysfunctional in terms. the two parties are doing is fighting each other in some way. and i suggested in the book, someday we're going have more some shock therapy to get the two-party system working again. and maybe the way to do that is get a democrat and republican to run together and say we're going to set up a unified cabinet half and half. we're going to have to do something dramatic to shape the system back to the senses again, and work together to take care of our deficits.

everybody is going to have to join in and sacrifice to think about history before we plunge into someplace like afghanistan why alexander the great couldn't tame the tribes and neither could the british about russians. we need to sit back and really seriously pool our best think anything this country and work together again. >> since you've written the book, what has changed? >> well, unfortunately i've written a little postscript that came out last year in a new edition of the book. i don't think it's gotten better. they've gotten worse in a number 77 ways. the cost of campaigns, that's gotten worse. the inability of the two parties to work together has gotten worse. the shrimp age of our standing in the world in temples of our share of the world's economic output has escaladed. it's accelerates. our rankings in education k

through 12 has gone down pane the percentage of our students going on to college is dropped. in this period of time science i've within the book i think our challenges have gotten more severe. and above all, i really worry about the possessism. i think -- when you think congress represents the people like you or cares about people like you? you know, only about 8 to 10% say yes. out 90% say no? they know that the average men of congress gets for a more than half of their campaign contributions from people outside of the state that enter in their districts but people have the grassroots have the ability to do much it is a wash in the money the one with the most one wins. they become cynical. that's frightening. it's a frightening thing.

it begins to break the bond between reps who are supposed to represent us in government and others. so an then when they say two-thirds sometimes even three forties say i'm pessimistic about the future i don't think my children or grandchildren will have a good chance. i want to shout, that's not america. one thing we believe as americans we can do it. we can provide even more opportunities for the next generation and even generation in a row of americans have that greater opportunity. i want to say, no, no, stop that! let's get together. we can solve this problem. we're a free country. i really in the long run, i'm an optimist. i don't think that china, freaks, is going to overtake us in the long run. we're a free country. they're a controlled society. i think freedom itself creates an environment of opportunity

and creativity and look at the number of nobel prize winners we still have compared to the rest of the world put together. it we come we dominate. i believe in the future. the students that i teach here at the university, and i'm with every day. they make me optimistic about the future. they're old fashioned. we have hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours perform bid our students. we're already getting life experience. out helping the rest of the community. working with the profits. for example, our journalism, college has a program in advertising. they have an advertising agency where students are doing probone know work for private organizes. they're learning how to do a job and work at the same time. i can go on and on with the kinds of opportunities and we have them in the rest of the world. we have them seeing the rest of

the world. in the u.s. only 2% study abroad in the course of their career. that's where we were fifteen years ago. now we're above 25%. we're projected to be at 50% five more years. so we're doing things to try to prepare our students to live in the global society and there are going to be living in it. >> you mentioned pessimism. if we can go back. you noticed an increase in pessimism. how do you think, your opinion, your plan to that could change that? how we could -- >> well, i think that perhaps i think there are a couple of things that could give us the most pessimism. we're wise enough to know you can't live beyond your means forever. even if our politicians don't have the courage to say, look, we're going have to increase our revenue, and we're going have reduce our spending. we're going to have to do both and we're going to have to touch every single american in the process.

shared sacrifice. instead one party says don't touch our constituent and the other constituents say, don't tax the top 1% even if they have 30% of the income this the country. we have to do all of that. democratic and republicans are all going to have to share in the sacrifice. there's nothing more something more important -- there's something more important it's call the united states of america. i think the system of money not working because it's not paid for. they don't listen to most of it. unless you write a $5 million check to the superpac. who's going to listen to you? i think that's a big part of it. i'd like to see the next president set up a bipartisanship cabinet. i'd like to see how it work. it was get people of the other

party very much involved. i'd like to see them hands on in working with both sides of the aisle and coming up and saying here's the president's proposal. no the president has been working six weeks intensively with a group of say congressman and senators and both parties in is our bipartisanship proposal. i think there are things that even the difficult time, we can do to to make the system work better. if people saw that light at the end of of the tunnel. thing it would begin to change their attitudes. >> do you think the current administration can do what you suggested. >> well, i hope so. i've talked to both administrations while i'm now on education. and out of day-to-day politics, they still cochair as bipartisanship group passenger's side called the intelligence advice i are board. it goes back to president isabel celisen hour --

and former republican and senator and nebraska and i cochair it. we try to give very bipartisan. the group works together very, very well. i think you can do the same thing with key members of the current congressional committees. it's something that ought to be tried and whoever gets elected president this next time. i hope they'll try something like that. >> you mentioned the advisory board. can you tell us about that. what's your role? >> i can tell you a little bit that. it was established it's mainly composed of more very people who bet, for example, i chaired the senate committee when i was in the senate. dealt with the most sensitive secret programs of the government. helped to oversee agencies like the cia. many of us have experience on the committee having some intelligence committee.

they used to work for the cia. or out of public office that dealt with national security issues. so the president has sensitive going on. he wants input anded advice. always the advice of the abroad issues. obviously the world is going to change as we wind down the wars of iraq and afghanistan. and the role of intelligence committees is going to change. it's kind of like when the cold war ended. and you had half the intelligence community maybe 90% focused on the soviet union focus on the target president world became more complex. you needed to know different things. it wasn't just one country. it had to change. we try to gived a violence on big, broad questions like that. sometimes on small specific secret programs. are they doing what they should. i think it gives the president a good sounding boor board. >> gifnt political climate today are you pessimistic or

optimistic about the future. in reference to the historical conference. you mentioned earlier and i heard you say it today. if you don't know where you have been you're not going to know where you're going. >> with all worries i have about the two parties not working together and seeming to understand when they did work together historically they must relearn that lesson of history. i really worry about budget deficits. that's going to take like the martial plan. it's going to take the conges of the two parties. they're going to have quilt worrying about the blame game. inspite of all of that, i'm still an optimist. as i said, part of it is my faith in the free society. i think a free society is going to defeat in the long run, economic competition or whatever. they're going to win out over a controlled society.