capable teams do and so what i would say is if we look at the research, i think it stands that we would've had a more prosperous economy. >> ladies and gentlemen, please thank alexa von tobel of learnvest, and sallie krawcheck, for a very informed session or i should send as my colleague can we had the atlantic lead group and in our group i think we've got 25 women and one other guy. i think if there were 25 guys, it would be a disaster. so thank you very much. ..

tomorrow at ellen:00 a.m. eastern with the supreme court's announcement this week on gay marriage, booktv presents of their talks from our archives, watch these programs and more all weekend long on booktv. for complete scheduled visit booktv.org. >> you are watching booktv. next, mary eberstadt argues the decline of the family has led to the decline of religion in the western world. this is about 50 minutes. [applause] >> thank you, thank you all for coming out at lunch time, thank you for that lovely introduction. i am honored by the presence of everyone here and grateful to heritage for this opportunity to

talk about "how the west really lost god" 11. a few weeks ago report in great britain made headline news, argued the senate 2011 census numbers it looked as if christians would be a minority of the population there even sooner than originally predicted, specifically within the decade. that is one more datum in what looks to be the steady and accelerating pattern of secular station in western europe. the purpose of my book is to consider that pattern and the related pattern of secularization in the united states and elsewhere in the west in a new way. one thing i can say for sure is the new book doesn't. on a small canvas. it is about god, western civilization, men, women, the sexual revolution, theology, sociology and a few other things. if we left any big themes out the critics will put the man as they often do when a generalist like me goes lumbering through academic turf. in the sense of such

intellectual trespassing i also just thought the question of how societies that were once religious become less so is one of the most interesting intellectual puzzles in the world. is especially interesting if you spend any time in western europe where christianity has become of the boutique practice in many places quite despite the massive and singular influence that it has had on powered, writers, laws and history until very recently, including though not only on aesthetic achievement that stand at the pinnacle of human accomplishment. even without going to europe the question of how religion has loosened over the western line-western civilization remained an uptick the job deck of armchair fascination. as noted how laws, customs, art, literature, etc. and more to judea christianity than any of this in the tradition. that is just one reason why all of us, believe is or agnostic or

atheist, would seem to heliborne interest in figuring out something about this puzzle of western secularization because we carry remnants and sometimes more of that judeo-christian tradition inside us whether we want to or not. it is part of what we might call our individual cultural and historical dna. once upon a time for a great many people in what was once called christendom the judeo-christian code governing the details, daily life from dawn until dusk to say nothing of the momentous passages of birth, marriage, death and other human milestones. obviously this is true no more. for many of modern western people. a growing number of us greet the milestones of life with no religious framework at all. some are born without being baptized, and many have children without being married, some contracts civil marriages instead of religious ones if they do marry at all.

we darken church doors infrequently it ever end up on buying many of our bodies are incinerated and scattered to the winds read and prayed over hole in the ground as christian ritual and dogma hitherto commanded. these are just a few examples of the sea change known as secularization. many more could be added to the list. what happened? how did significant swaths of the western world go from being societies that widely feared god to societies that in some places now widely jeer him. that is the essence of the puzzle about western secularization and i mean a word puzzle literally. many times during the years that went into this book it felt as if i ever sitting at a table with a giant jigsaw puzzle spread out in front of me and sundays pushing the peace is this way, sometimes that way and there verdes they would just fall into place the way they do when you discover a pattern and suddenly a lot of them stopped being isolated pieces and line up the way they should.

so it is with this puzzle. industrialization, modern science, rationalism, feminism, family change, new atheism, urbanization, where do each of these separate forces fit into the big picture of secularization? little by little i came to the conclusion the conventional story line of secularization although full of truth in certain ways had done something pretty big wrong. it was as if modernity prayers together all the pieces of this great puzzle in a way that looks right from a distance but then a close look reveals the forest, not the right fit. it was in the quest for a better fit of those pieces that the book "how the west really lost god" can about. i would like to sketch briefly some of the reason the pieces of the puzzle don't fit together the way we have been told they do and then i would like to explain what seems to have gone missing and offered a sketch of evidence for this contrarian

view. the first problem with conventional ways of explaining the federation had to do with the historical timeline. secular nation has been understood by most great modern thinkers and for that matter plenty of mediocre ones as a linear process in which religion slowly but surely vanishs from the earth or at least from its more sophisticated precincts. as people become more educated and more prosperous the collective story goes, these same people come to find themselves more skeptical of religion's promises. they find themselves less needful of religion's presumed consolation and somewhere in the long run, many people have fought, religion, specifically the christianity once dominant on the european continent will just die out. this could take a while. frederick nietzsche famously predicted that it would take hundreds and hundreds of years for the news of god's death to

reach everyone but again no matter how long it would take there has been a kind of consensus at least among secular thinkers that in the long run to paraphrase another context, god will be dead. exactly which feature of modernity would do this has been unclear but once again it should be stressed this process has been assumed by many people to the inexorable, like lit candles anna birthday cake it has been conjectured. the religious faith in the advance west would eventually win out until nobody is left. on inspection there are several logical problems with this idea including insurmountable ones. first, the conventional story line does not describe the reality of christianity's persistence in the world. american sociologists of religion rodney stock who is a contrarian in these matters rose a lively as a 1999 that is something of a classic, it was

called secularization rest in peace and it opens with an entertaining review of predictions of the demise of the christian faith going back to 1660 and continuing up to the present-day including but not limited to such secular prophets as frederick the great, thomas jefferson, sigmund freud and others. as he implies a lot of people proclaiming the death of god didn't get the fact that their own obituaries would be written long before the diaz's. plainly as the points of the almighty has not expired on the timeline predicted and as a side note the new atheists who are vocally frustrated about exactly this point, christianity's persistence in the world, would be the first to agree with him. that is problem 1 with the conventional story line. here is another one. contrary to widely held stereotypes, belief in the christian god isn't a straight

out function of social path or education. the stereotyped too is deeply ingrained. we saw this a few years back when the president of the united states unthinkingly repeated justice stereotyped in singling out jobless rural people who supposedly, quote, cling to their guns and their religion. the implication was clear, religion is something that and battered and for people do. the president was reiterating a view offered many times before, christianity and the minds of many sophisticated secular people is hallmarks's famous opiate of the masses, a consolation prize for the poor and backward. many people just take for granted that the better off have less use for god then the worst offense mart and educated people have less use for religion than dollar people. to be fair to president obama he is not the only one to have put that stereotypes out there. remember someone notorious piece

in the washington post ten years ago now that describes the followers of leading american evangelicals as, quote, was asleep for, uneducated and easy to command. those are immortal words. everyone knows these things and yet in actual fact few people who believe in the stereotypes know the empirical truth. once again if the conventional accounting secularization were correct, if it predicted who was a religious and why, then we would reasonably expect to find that the poor and less educated people are the more religious they would be. so the fact that the stereotypes are not correct and the weakened point to cases where the opposite is true means once again that the conventional understanding of secularization has missed something. here is an example. the british historian has done fascinating work on london between 18701914. his book is called class and religion in the late victorian

city. documents among anglicans in london during that period, quote, the number of worshipers rises at first gradually and and steeply with each step up the social ladder. put differently, quote, the poorest districts tended to have the lowest rates of church attendance and those with large upper-middle-class and upper-class population had highest. in other words and in contrast to the keynesian idea of the pious for morley of shining a debauched upper-class reality among the populace seems to have been the opposite in victorian london, quote, only a small proportion of working class adults, the historian observed, attended the mission sunday church services. british historian carolyn brown who is another expert on the numbers makes the same point about religion us eddie during those years that contrary to common wisdom, quote, the

working class where irreligious and the middle classes were that churchgoing best tunes of civil morality. much the same pattern can be found in the united states today and it is one more pattern subversive of the idea that economic and intellectual sophistication of our natural enemies of religious faith. consider a prominent book published in 2010 by sociologists, robert d. putnam and david campbell called american grace:how religion divides and unites us. its single handedly refute the idea that religious us to be in the united states is a lower class affair. in the first half of the 20th century the authors observed college-educated people participated more in churchs than those with less education. that pattern changed in the 1960s which saw church attendance of all of among the educated but then re-emerged another pattern according to which attendance tended to rise

again faster among the educated and among the less educated. as the authors observe what makes this trend is contrary to any ideas that religion is nowadays providing solace only to the disinherited and dispossessed, with that high irritation subverts religion. it is true that there are pockets where belief in christianity or god is a minority view. among professors at ivy league schools for example, certain other campuses and among certain kinds of scientists to give two examples drawn from studies but these are exceptions, not the rule. similarly in research summarized in another wide-ranging book on american social class called coming apart:the state of white america political scientist charles murray make the same point. the upper 20% of the american population, data from the general social survey show are considerably more likely than

the lower 30% to believe in god and go to church. among the working class 61%, a clear majority either say they do not go to church or believe in god or both. among the upper-class the numbers 42%. murray summarizes despite the common belief that the white working class is the most religious group in white american society the drift from religion us eddie was far greater in his working-class towns than in his better off once. or the headline on invest nbc once put it, quote, who is going to church? not in use think. in victorian england and the united states today go to show that does not drive out not and neither does literacy or possession of a ba or ph.d.. come problem 34 conventional secularization syria. is a result of the world wars as

other people have supposed? this is another explanation which surfaced intuitive appeal. much of europe was shattered and mo all of the west deeply scarred by world wars i and ii. how couldn't that experience affect religious faith? yet this explanation also doesn't hold up. for one thing if it were true it would be hard to see how countries with different experiences of those was like neutral switzerland, vanquished germany, the korea's great britain should all lose their religion in tandem. for another thing, this is a point to which we will return, the world wars were actually followed for two decades by a religious boom, not religious bust. that fact alone makes it hard to square the emptying of the pews today with the idea is that the wars did it yesterday. on it goes, there are more

examples like this in the book. modern sociology tells us many things but about the elemental question of why people go to church let alone why they stopped, but the going series of come up short. contrary to what many have taken for granted evidence suggests secularization is not inevitable and neither is a linear process with an arrow pointing ever downward. rather, and crucially, religion waxes and wanes in the world, strong one moment, weaker the next for reasons that demand to be understood and that is where i hope the book makes a modest but real contribution. this brings us to the second part of the talk. what got missed? titanic theorists like karl marx and a lot of other secular thinkers never release stopped to ask what might make religion come and go in the world most likely because it did not occur to them that it could come as well as go.

yet christianity, to repeat, has not gone straight to hell in a downward singles with, rather it has been strong in some places and times, weaker and others so one logical way of approaching that question about what is missing, it seems to me, is to look more closely at what else is going on when religion seems to be on the upswing. let's take the years between the end of world war ii and the beginning of the 1960s. as historians and sociologists have documented, some people in this room who were around the might anecdotally remember, those particular years sought a remarkable revival of christianity across the western world. church attendance was up, denominational affiliation was up, baptism and related ceremonies increased, religious language and religious ideas influenced public speech, was, art, even popular culture like movies as many classics from the 1950s go to show.

this religious flowering was true not only in the united states but across the western world's. british historian colin brown and michaels made independently documented. australia, great britain, germany, canada, denmark, more countries, most of the west including some that are very secular today all saw an unanticipated rise in churchgoing and the profession of belief during those same years. remarkably this revival applied to the vanquished and the victorious, the impoverished and the affluent. in the united states so pronounced was this revival, some influential and the public square that some people assumed it would always continues this way, that religious faith, not its decline, would be inevitable. will herbert, perhaps the single most influential sociologist of religion during those years actually rose in the classic

book called protestant/catholic/jew that the village at -- the village '80s was a vanishing figure in american life that even agnosticism was being eclipsed and as already mentioned this revival is something new on the scene transpiring somehow when the two decades following the war. to us of course, half a century plus later, herbert's observation sound remote and even exotic, the opposite of christianity's fate in the public square today. most people, secular or religious would agree that today traditional christianity in america is playing defense, not offense. traditional christianity has been battered for many years by a combination of forces, sexual revolution, legacy of catholic church sex scandals and increasingly aggressive anti christian coalition of new atheist, political activists and libertarian secularist advice and more recently by an administration in washington that appears more flexibly skeptical and at times openly

contemptuous of traditional christianity than any since the first amendment was penned. and america of bustling churches and secularists is unrecognizable in 2013. but what happened to make that dramatic post war religious revival possible? let's look again at those same years. what else was going on at the exact same time across the western world? not only in america but the almost all of western europe, canada and australia? the answer is the extraordinary religious boom was accompanied by another boom even more familiar, the baby boom. which was itself accompanied by a marriage bloom. again either of these were anticipated by demographers but they spread across the west during those same years. that is the thesis of "how the west really lost god" in a nutshell, living in families, meaning families that are

married with children is an important part of what drives many people to church. i will say a few words in closing about a couple reasons this might be so. there are many reasons and they are delivered another couple chapters in the book but if you look at the time line of the west and ask what happened to christianity what you find is it is only as strong as the family on which it depends. family and faith are the invisible double helix of society dependent on one another for support and reproduction. the combined boom of babies, marriages and christian practice from the 1940s into the 1960s are all alone powerful evidence that this relationship is in trouble to understanding the real causes a christian religious decline. here are a few other ways of bolstering that claim from different directions. what is the least religious region in what was once known as

the christian left? any takers? scandinavia. poland, surveyed data confirm this, only 10% of gains and swedes believe in hell, for example, which is below was number in the western world. the receipt of weekly church attendance is lower there than anywhere else, few people say they believe the bible was divinely inspired and so on so what else do we know about scandinavia? we know that scandinavian were way ahead of the western curve in setting marriage and childbearing to be optional behavior's. scandinavian rates, out-of-wedlock births lead the western world. just as interesting is a lesser-known fact, more people in scandinavia live alone in households of one than anywhere else in the world. in sweden now, half of swedish households are households of one person in norway, something like

40%. so once again i would argue what we see is societies where more and more people stop marrying and having babies and living in families, societies where more and more people stopped going to church. one more example, evidence for the claim that family strength is intricately related to religious strength or at least to the strength of traditional christianity, that is ireland. there is a phenomenon called the demographic transition in whose name many ph.d. theses and books interestingly and uncomplicated diagrams have been committed. i am not pretending to understand any of them, briefly put, what it means is people around world beginning with the western world have been having fewer babies than they used to, in many cases many fewer, this demographic transition interestingly predates the sexual revolution of the 1960s. it appears to have started in france 200 years ago and spread

first to the rest of the continent such that more and more countries would come to fit this pattern of many fewer births. island was an exception for a very long time. catholic ireland was a place where catholics lived like catholics, longer than they did in most of the rest of europe. this is true no more. in fact of a trilogy of the city is measured by mass attendance and survey data, etc. let alone changing the changing legal landscape has dropped faster than has anywhere else in europe. the point that is striking in this again, ireland's remarkable religious -- does not occur in a vacuum. what else has been happening in ireland in those same years? the answer is will the dias' the was not the only thing anomalous in the speed of itss. so too was irish fertility. island's 20th century baby boom

came markedly late, 1970s, during which birth were double replacement level followed by a steep decline of fertility. the numbers are in the book and if you need more you can ask a demographer name nicholas everest-who knows more than i do. island went through the demographic change in one degeneration rather than two and fertility and religious yossi collapsed simultaneously, similarly radical rates suggests once more that the family has been a silent and unacknowledged partner in christianity's feet all along, not just a bystander as conventional sociology as it. so in closing i would like to share a couple brief thoughts about what might make this double helix go-arounds. in the book there's a whole chapter called toward a new religious anthropology that explores this at wind but as i like to focus on a couple things that might explain how having

families sometimes drives people to church. lots and lots of data, perfectly circular data confirm that married people with children are far more likely to be found in synagogue or church than single people but as a matter of fisheries this has been almost wholly and explored. here are couple suggested lines of argument about it. one is uncommon but widely overlooked fact. for many mothers and fathers, whether they are religious or not, childbirth itself is experienced as a transcendental event. is not only an event that most parents will say is the most important of their lives all those very well, it is also an event that radically transports people outside themselves as individuals. it gives some people a feeling that they have understood earned a place in the cosmos for the first time. for some of them that cosmic connection translates into being more religiously inclined than

they were before. whitaker chambers, the great hero of the cold war who was also enviably beautiful writer expresses this perfectly in his memoir witness. he writes about how studying his innocent daughter's beer as she sat in her high chair because of personal and cosmic the tiffany. that moment was the beginning, he wrote of what became his epic journey away from atheism and communism and eventually back to christianity. without being writers or communists, a great many other people experience children in the same way. anyone who knows them knows how different the r and can't help but experience them as created. so this sort of unbidden powerful gestalt may be part of why people who stayed out of church when they are single or more likely to be interested in it once they become a parent. this caller language was confirmed today by a pastor in detroit who is said to me do you

know how i get lots of people in this church? he said they come to me with something in their arms saying help. he meant a baby. second as a related matter, people seek out churches for another reason, which neil derrick time would have understood because they're looking for a community in which to situated those children particularly in moral community consistent with what parents want to teach. that is another example of how family drives people to church. finally there is another way in which family life might incline some people toward the idea of god, the christian god in particular. family life as everyone knows is full of sacrifice, taking care of sick people, old people, people with mental problems, sacrificing time, be sure, etc.. generally putting up with what could be an incredibly frustrating and baffling phenomenon which is other human beings. christianity as a religion

starts with the birth of a baby. his mother and adoptive father begin their lives with th baby by making an enormous sacrifice, fleeing to protect him and at the end of the story at the crucifix symbolizing the ultimate sacrifice the laying down of one life for another. is it really any wonder people who live in families are more likely to go to church when everything about the story of jesus resonates with everyday experience of sacrifice when it ratifies that sacrifice in a way that no other world view does? ..

the human family ensure appears to have been the symphony through which many people have heard god's voice. not everyone, not the profits and intellectuals perhaps, but a great many of the ordinary people. and given the state the families and today including no not only in western europe, it's not surprising that some people find it hard to hear the music anymore. thank you, and welcome your comments. [applause] >> we will allow for question and answers right now. i think with microphones going around. james? >> james with heritage foundation. what do you think explains the decline of the family starting in the '60s across most of the western world? >> this is an example of where i

think the conventional script gets something right but doesn't connect the dots in the right way. so what experts would say to that question is there to urbanization and industrialization and religiosity starts to decline. but those are abstractions, and i have nowhere seen explained exactly how urbanization did this. it's instead you expire by saying it was urbanization on the family that made religion decline. it goes something like this, people move to the cities, often leaving their families behind in the countryside. they find out things in the city. in the city nobody is watching you on the village screen. there are all kinds of reasons why, this is something i also get into in the book, people who live in cities are less likely to be religious than people who live in rural areas. that it's the destructive effect

on the natural family and particularly the extended natural family that i think is a missing link come and it explains i get some of these distractions the loss of people just are going to church anymore. so it's the missing link. >> my question is about the role of against positive law and relationship you described, things like zimmerman described in his book sort of the rise of statutory law as families weekend. and it seems i could almost be like a trip he looks to make things really complicated. where the increase in law decreases the role of the fund but also decreases the role in church which in turn has -- quite complicated. i'm not sure if you can help. >> i'm still trying to understand the double helix. so thanks a lot.

instead of which are calling positive law i would introduce a related actor, which is the welfare state. and they get into this in the book and didn't do anything about it in the talk, and but there are sociologists who think that the welfare state itself is of course part of the fracturing of the family, and with it religion ever might about the relationship between those two things. i have a lot of symphony -- simply for the arts is because the fact of the welfare state has the operating in this sort of he looks like a way in the fracturing of those other two institutions. on the one and a lot of what it does is substitute for what the family used to do. write? and on the other hand the more families of fallen apart, the more it's been called upon to do that. and in the book i conclude on the note that it's entirely possible that the future of the welfare state is an important

part of what happens to christianity in the future. because what we're seeing in western europe suggests that these large, expensive family substitutes known as the modern welfare atare not sustainable over time. not thanks to the sexual revolution which is reduced taxpayer base such that it looked to be an incredible experiment in many countries 50 years out, say. so if the welfare state implodes as some people think it will, or is reigned in or is this just a general recognition that this is an incredibly expensive and onerous way of substituting for things that are better done at a more organic level, the family, then i think you might see a religious and family revival come out of it. and that's at least one interesting scenario. >> adam brickley her heritage. i was wondering if you would address i guess the increasing

role of organized religious groups in promoting their own secularization. i was asked a rather large church of the very traditional denomination which i won't name recently, where the individual preacher said i believe he said only then god was not necessary for christian the. belief in the resurrection was not necessary for christian be. they were sending out cards further upcoming support for gay marriage. how do we count those people in christian versus secular, and how were the denominations frankly self immolating, cannibalizing effectiveness of? >> there's an entire chapter in a book called assisted religious suicide, and -- [laughter] it's about the doctrinal and other changes in the kind of churches that you describe. reintesting thing and

this is not the converse shall think this is a phenomenal that's been studied. the phenomenon called -- if you look at american protestants and to become you see the churches that tried hard to be nicer and to jettison some of the very strict traditional moral code of christianity, and to bend with the time, and even to get behind sort of contrary ideas like bishops talk about overpopulation for example, and how important it is not to procreate. those of churches in demographic freefall now. those churches will not exist in the wild. on the other hand, the stricter protestant, evangelical churches generally, are doing well not only in america but across africa. the couple take a point about this. one, if you're a pastor and

you're indifferent to the question of people having babies, you are writing yourself out of a job, demographically. that's part of what has happened here. and, too, the effort to be nice doesn't really seem to get you more than a few years. in other words, is not going to sustain your institution in the long run. this has not been well understood your the effort to curtail or jettison the traditional christian moral code has not been understood to result in institutional disaster. and so in the book i of the chapter about why that has happened and using again perfectly secular social sciences to make the point because it's been well studied. >> you mentioned the christian the has a strong ethical component that could be playing into this. what about the theology of christianity itself being

inherently familial, the trendy, the father and son, to adoption of christian as adopting children of god distilling relationships in the church, the most common word for christian in the new testament is the brother which is gender-neutral. i could go on. does the substantive theology of christianity provide a bridge in the family to the church? >> absolutely, yes. and there's some stuff about that in the book. and also i flip it around and say, because o of this, what you're going to intensively familial metaphor and substantive christianity, also because of his when you live in an age as we do fractured, scattered, atomized families their holy dairy center put up to christian beliefs in ways that haven't been well understood and i think are important to understand. so for example, if you live in a world where many people grow up

in fatherless homes, leaders of the social science about that and the outcomes and all of that, judeo christianity from the very beginning has presented the idea of god as that of a loving benevolent father figure. if you don't have that in your life, you've got on the more of a conceptual reach, right, to understand where that's coming from. similarly, christian the stars with the birth of a baby. it starts with this act on the part of the baby's mother of saying god be with me as he will. abject obedience. after 1973 we live in a world where every birth is negotiable, write? so of course people are less likely to understand what is some reckless about subversive of the christian story, similarly, a world of prominent birthrate is a world where many people grow to adulthood never having held a baby. if it is if that is your

experience it might be hard to understand what a summer i just about the idea of god coming into the world as a baby. so in all these ways i think it's important to lay out kind of new anthropology of belief, because that way we can speak more clearly what can in a way of people approaching the christian church but it is not what conventional three says. it is not inevitable cyclization, inevitable rationalism. it's not what the new atheists said. it's not the just people get smarter and come to their senses. there's something else going on and his family stuff that you're pointing at is very much a part of that. >> i'm curious how the data in regards to single parents for unmarried parents, i'm seeing a lot married of my friends not getting the complacent of that about attending church. defined it's just imagine some aspect that you define more

people are attending church or just the facility aspect? >> no. marriage is part of this. and i am not an expert on this. i would refer you to brad wilcox's work which is very important in this regard. there's something about marriage that drives people to church. not just fertility. and also i should be clear of course this is not come in making the point about fertility on the make some kind of argument like family of 12 is ipso facto or more religious than family of one. it's not about stuff like that but marriage disappeared to have an independent effect on churchgoing, especially male churchgoing. i know that would really surprise the guys in the room. >> we will go to the back. >> josh with aei. one of our colleagues has just put out a new book, nick schultz, call home economics,

the economic consequences of changing family structure. i wonder if you might speak to the link between family structure and work along the lines that you just have been describing. he says along the lines of the new normal for people are under the age of 30 is child out of wedlock. now just over 50%. he tells a story that without the norm of two-parent families it is more and more, for people and business hiring to say that they can't get employed capacitor test, that character is enough to show up on time simple but any thoughts about the connection between family structure and work? >> no, i saw i don't know his book although i look forward to reading it. so i don't really feel as if i can comment on the. obviously, these things are of another piece though.

>> i want to follow up on the previous question. i associate, always associated family decline and religious decline with moral decline. and get you mentioned the fact that nordic countries seem to be doing quite well right now. am i missing something here or have you thought about that particular aspect? >> i think there were riots and stuff last week. how well they are doing overtime is going to depend on whether they have enough taxpayers to support their extended welfare state. it's also the case that the nordic countries are more homogenous and rest of europe, as i understand it, which probably has something to do with what has here to been kind of social cohesion that you don't seem places with more diversity. i don't think the verdict is in yet. i mean, we are very new into all

of his experiment including the spirit of the sexual revolution. just because they have been part of the wallpaper of our lifetime doesn't mean that they are not relatively new in human experience. hundreds and hundreds of years is what is going to take for these experiments to an outcome including that of the welfare state. >> although i do co-chair the committee of my congregation that interfaces with the denomination of officials, one of many that concerns me, the question i have for you is how do you prove which phenomenon is causing the other one? how do you show that it's the decline of family which is causing the decline of religion, not the decline of religion which is causing the decline of

family? and, because families are so optional in most religions, fairly strict ones, is it possible that as, whatever is the cause, manifests itself first in the decline of family and only later in the decline of a church attendance because it takes longer for people to morally wrap their heads around distancing them from church than from having a family. even though distancing them from whatever it was that distance them from church is taking place first and just manifests itself last? because of the moral, because of the moral pressures that religious attendance entails?

>> the reason to talk about the double helix is because i think that is what best describes the relationship between the two. and its purpose is to get away from monte carlo ways of looking at this. in other words, switch metaphors, i think it's a two-way \street/{-|}street but i think it's both a religious and crime is causing family decline but that is the conventional causal model. in other words, is people lose their religion and in the stock icons can put can put a stop having family in size, et cetera, being so interested in family. but my point is it's a two-way street. it's most -- both things at once and they're both hard to do something about the model of helix looks like the thing that really explains it. so instead of trying to say it's always the family and crime comes from and the other thing happened, no, i think that's a faulty model and that's what we have something three-dimensional they can't be separated without

rendering each side of possible to reproduce itself. >> time for one more question. >> i was just wondering, you talked about the '50s and '60s, reverting back to strong family structure. had he found what causes those, for people to refer back to strong family, strong religion? >> well, i don't like the word referred because i don't like the idea of going back to the '50s. the other carried like a victory buried at focus on that. that's what i focus on that. where you see that these things cannot be disentangled. what i'm saying is that when you see that the family is strong, you'll see the churches are full. that's the nature of that

relationship. and i'm sure, you know, this is one of something i know much about, but i know governments that try to tweak things by making it cheaper for people to have children, have editors kind of success, something that should be studied mostly not success if i understand because these are deep matters that a few extra hundred dollars a year probably are not going to persuade you one way or another. obviously visible for policy in this. that's not something that i get into in the book but it's certainly a place for future study and future direction. >> i might actually end with my own question. how would you trace a profamily revolution if things were turned around and where to get religion and family going again? how would you predict that happening or how would we change the course we are on? >> well, you know, it's part of the argument of the book is correct and the welfare state has been propping up the fractured family, as we saw for

example, indicated, everyone remembers the video. the welfare state makes this cradle-to-grave mustard we will take care of you at every stage of life. now, first of all, the question is, is that promise sustainable? but even leaving that aside their something else that we can look at that's very interesting. in 2008 when the economic crisis began, a couple of interesting things happen. one, a lot of adult children do not strike out on but went back to those with appearance and this is known as the boomerang generation. this got a lot of bad press including from parents. [laughter] but there was also a drop in the divorce rate. and divorce lawyers said at the time this is because of the economic crisis. both of these are examples of how in times of economic adversity people look to their near and more organic connection. there are things about hard times that drive people home.

is industry of church, as was the and a very different light after 9/11 when suddenly the churches were full and people had been church and decade were suddenly showing up for a few sundays. that was another example of adversity, driving people back to more organic human connections. so without looking for a full-scale catastrophe, i think over time as we see the costs of substituting for them and substituting for what the churches do, too, that's something that we will be sort of, trickle down and make sense to people and make them change their minds about things in much the way it took many decades of information about tobacco's effect on health to make a difference there. and that's another model that i talk about in the book because i think it's an interesting example of how something that looks unthinkable 50 years later given enough information will really make an impression on people of rational creatures. so there's room for hope if that's the question.

>> that will conclude our time together this afternoon. again, books will be available out in the lobby and i think mary will be willing to sign books. and we also have light refreshments. and thank you for coming. and if you would please join me in thanking mary eberstadt. [applause] spirit and you are dismissed. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking sure on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format. booktv streams live online for 40 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. tv.org. spent booktv is on location at

the book expo america which is the annual publishers trade show held in new york city. we are talking with the publisher of chicago review press about some of their upcoming titles. cynthia sherry, what do you have coming out this your? >> we got the last warlord which is the life and legend of the afghan warlord who led the u.s. special forces to topple the taliban. on horseback, and he's a very interesting character. he's been fighting the taliban for 30 years. our offer -- our author is a professor at dartmouth and the embedded with them an in the clothing and got to know his family. some unique access. when he was forces pull out of afghanistan, he is likely to come back to the forefront and be a major player again picks who has been an ally of u.s. while we have been in afghanistan and? >> of the u.s. and he's been

fighting, that's him right there in such a big also believes come is kind of unique character the police in the education of women in afghanistan and is a bit, he's got some liberal tendencies so he's very much against the taliban in the extremist. >> what would like for professor williams to write this book? how well did he get to know him? >> he really did get to live with them and get to know some of his family and friends and so that, i did was really unique experience for him, and jeff, kind of unique view of the war. >> is there any chance he will be coming to the u.s. for the book your? >> no, probably not. >> what else? >> we have redefining girl. very, can fight stereotyping of young girls. there've been a lot of books on the subject as far as issues concerned by this book is recounted i guess there's a real practical strategies that when they go into the halloween store looking for costumes and they

can't find things that are appropriate for the young girls, what steps they can take, writing letters, finding the magic and what practical steps they can take. very practical. and also gives parents to start think a very young at not sexualizing, stereotyping their own kids or the author has a blog, real popular blog it's all about this redefining -- "redefining girly." >> that's come out in the fall of 2013 and? >> in the fall. >> even in 2013 where facing the same issue of girls being sexualized? >> even more so now. you really have this whole culture of, well, the holman cautions is difficult for parents to go and find hollowing cautioned that appropriate for young girls because it all the short little french maid costumes or kind of, but it goes throughout. we go into the toy store, going to any target on what the commute the whole section which all the barbie dolls, the whole section which is the building

toys. so it's getting more and more. >> what is the chicago review press? are you private? >> we're in the penalty on. we been i in publishing for four years so we'll so they are 40th anniversary this year spent not associate with the university or a? >> no. the owner of the companies was aggressive at the university of chicago and he works for the poetry magazine the, the chicago review. so when h it got somewhat of things that could publish for the journal, he wanted to do that on his own so we did get permission to use of the name so we did taken in from the chicago review speed up what is your backrest because i've been with the company for 25 years, so start out in the accounting department i've worked my way up the company spent quite as you about another book that you have? >> this is one of our great authors as a journalist and he's traveled to afghanistan and really met with people there and

we talked to them about the experience has been with the u.s. occupation and with the war that's been going on with the phillies are. so he really gets in and meets with the shopkeepers, meets with the different people. >> another book that caught our eye was sabrina lamb's new book. >> this was, do i look like an atm? it's very practical and actually about financial education and starting down with the kids the understanding money and how to responsible about spending. it's particularly interest in anti-american committee attendance been on the money on when have cars and fancy jewelry and this is really kind of looking at your issues as a pair with my and i spend money and how to better halves out of your kids spent one more award ask about before we leave you. homefront girl. >> this is a wonderful director at the diary of a woman from chicago who grew up in chicago. she went to the of chicago and

during the war she was a teenager and she kept a journal. she was very politically active as a teenager and really smart, started of universes chicago as a 16 year old, got in. after daughter found her journals much later in life, and publish them. so we kind of publish this journal as a teenager in the wartime in chicago. really wonderful little glimpse of what it's like to be an american homefront during the war. >> we asked what are you reading this summer. here's what some of you have to say.

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>> is a moral law was just share of -- him another costanza the twinkie union and confederate armies in vicksburg, mississippi