more people by the campaign is also the argument for why we shouldn't have an electoral college because it seems what is happening in the place is largely being ignored maybe all those people would like to get some globalization or more involved, so i'm not a fan of the electoral college but we faced daunting challenges to move to another system.

>> onto the main events we are lucky to have a guest with us this evening the writer contributing to the columbia journalism review. her writing appeared over the place "the new york times," "washington post" and huffingtonpost in her essay appeared in the anthology not that bad. you will be hearing about this one tonight but she also has a second book that is coming out in 2020s keeping a keep an eye r that one. what is happening to faith in america at the time when more than 70% of americans consider themselves christian of some sort yet many are decrying the loss of faith in the genre and investigation of the religion, relationships with division the country is facing. let me just say that it is a very timely book. without further ado, please help me welcome liz. [applause]

can everybody hear me okay. i'm used to doing midwestern events where there is always the one woman in the back like please talk louder and you are talking as loud as you want to. then i heard c-span was going to be here, they were like do you have any questions and i said can you wear shorts on c-span and they encouraged it and i wasn't going to wear them that i felbut ifelt like after that ret i have to. i also want to acknowledge the shirt i wore specifically for you. iowa for some reason you have to come here to be president. [laughter] so, i wanted to just tell you

the origin story of the book. you don't want to just hear me read from a book about religion. if you wanted to do that, you could go to christmas dinner with your grandmother. she misses you. so, i want to talk about the origin of the book and then read from a small section and then take questions. if anybody wants to leave because they were here for her, i'm not offended. i was like well i'm out, too. so if you want to do that i will just find you later on the internet. okay. there is no way to transition out of that so let's just go. i tried to start a church which sounds like a weird thing to do, and it is. i don't recommend it, but it's to try to create a utopia, a

perfect place. except, unlike the community, mine was boring and it wasn't an old railroad defaults that had been converted and we called it stonebridge. spoiler, it was an epic failure you get to that in like the first three pages so hopefully you will so what to read the book. there were so many things wrong with it but what brought it all down was that our head pastor tried to take over a methodist church and to explain what i mean right back, we were in this old office he co- and he was tired of the space like there's

this population a couple miles away what if we just start posting events and slowly took over the building. i usually very pro- coup. i love the military push, i love it all. i just don't feel like advocating for violence against the violence. it was a crazy use of power which i'm sure you've seen in america recently come into that brought all of our sleeping divisions to a head over the course of four meetings, for very long and painful meetings. it brought up all the differences we had been ignoring. they felt new, but they had been there since the beginning. and so, we shut it down. and that was the summer of 2015.

that summer, i also went to visit a historical society and lamar iowa, which if you know it is famous for blue bunny ice cream. you seem so excited about that. [laughter] so i went to this society because i really love to have a fun time, but also what was advertised was a farmer had created like hundreds of anatomically correct within -- was involved -- i was there looking at the and that is a whole floor filled with pianos and organs just in that county alone and it was a couple months

after my own church closed and being a writer i thought i should write about this because it was now nearing the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2016. the caucuses were starting to happen, and there is a theory of three places. everybody has three places in your life, like your work, family, and then what is the third, for so many people, for so long, but third place was church. what i noticed was i wasn't going to church anymore. i was refusing to go, like a 16-year-old, angry 16-year-old. i want to have lunch instead, which is my new religion, bloody mary's. that is my thesis of the book. kidding. so, when you have a whole community and it's now closed or

nobody does anymore because they are driving 50 miles away to go to church in a law or you just don't go there anymore, what fills the void and i was asking thaabout my own life and about e heartland, about middle america. if all of these were closing what was filling the void. so i wrote an article for the pacific standard right before the caucuses arguing that the loss of space was changing us politically. this was a very journalistic on, so you might understand what i say next when i say so many journalists who were there in 2016 have so many embarrassing hate us in the past. this was my one good take, so

because i think i was onto something and the press reached out in the summer of 2016 and said you should make this book. i said i'm not that smart or academic and they said we know it's fine. [laughter] so common in those couple of months we were working out an outline of what the book would look like and i have been doing a lot of research and then we all know what happened in november of 2016. i ate a ham sandwich. no, that ham sandwich became president. [laughter] i signed the contract in 2016. by that time, america was changed. my life was changed. i turned from a mostly stay at

home full-time mom and turned from a myriad lady to a single lady and a person who started churches to a person who was very frustrated and angry at them so that is what the book explores. i want to read this very small section on nostalgia. and don't worry, it's not super boring. it starts with a merger. i didn't do it. on october 22, 1989 just outside of st. joseph minnesota, jacob was knocked while riding his bike home from the store. the case remained unsolved for 27 years until a local man confessed. the case is one of those moments that redefined how they solve their small towns. before he disappeared, people in

minnesota relieved they were set apart. from all the crying and evil in the cities but when jacob went missing no one felt safe. i heard about the case when i moved from south dakota to minnesota in january, 2000. a googla.: my high school englh class told me the story after i told her how i went for walks along the path behind my house and i hur heard others pass thee to their children when they invoked curfews. if it could happen in saint joe, then no place was safe. i often hear my friends now who would be about the same age as jacob had he been allowed to live invoking them with the time before. at the time of innocence when kids were allowed to be kids, when the dangers of kidnapping and murder didn't hide in the bushes of every well manicured lawn. of course that is a lie.

children have never been safer than they are now. in fact it is the era when we believe children to be safe that they were actually the least safe. in the podcast be revealed before jacob went missing there was an epidemic among the younger boys in the area. according to the "washington post," in 1935, for instance, there were nearly 450 deaths for every 100,000 children aged one to four. today there are fewer than 30 for every 100,000 kids in that age group more than a tenfold decrease. i think about the case often during the month i spent in collegeville minnesota on a sabbatical to write this book. saint joe is a few miles away from where i'm staying at the college of saint john. i go through the town on the wy to the grocery store. one night a friend and i go to

town and it still feels like a small town despite the fact yard offering flowers and cards. stepping into the town is like stepping into a lost moment. after eating our dinner of sandwiches, my friend japanese pastor offered to walk me back to my car. i'm fine, i said. he insisted. it was after nine on a friday night and i had three blocks to block. if you think you are safe and maybe you are and maybe you are not so i will go with you, he said. everyone wants that time back but it never existed to begin with. people are always disappearing, stores closing, schools consolidated. 60% of the people here voted. they wanted to make america great again. they wanted to step into a moment to believe there was a

time before this. he stands with his arms folded against the sky. green falls behind him. next to him is a large combine hovering above the earth. that is his livelihood. she doesn't go to church as much as he wants. he has to be there in the field working. the spring was it so everything was starting a little too late. it's always something. dry summer and freeze the early winter. every day he fights and warships in equal measure. nothing makes me believe in god more than working in the field in the early morning, he tells me. he believes in global warming. he believes the world is changing but he doesn't think we can do anything about it. it's god's will. mark is a big man but it's clear he feels small and the context of the beauty of nature. why do you believe in god, i

asked, because if i didn't i would have to believe in the bottle. he means booze. too many of the people in this place cope with a constant instability of the land by drinking and using drugs. this is illinois with the crisis is in full effect according to the department of health. more people have died from an opioid drug overdose in 2014 then from homicide or murder vehicle accidents. the survival guide that are self published, i don't think you can get a copy of explains the predicament. there's not a lot to do but worry me too much, drink too much, anything to escape the anxiety. no harvest or income, nothing to do but wait and worry. there isn't time to do something else, anything to make ends meet, no christmas for dinners out, fewer trips to town and soon they will feel the pain.

it's a cycle of struggle that brings nostalgia and while fewer than 20% are directly employed in agriculture, the farming and company directly influences how people in middle america think and act and they are waiting to change in the new era. they don't even in the areas defined as cities, the mentality can still exist. this agrarian worldview as the culprit is pervasive throughout middle america it is defined by the belief in the south. apart from systems in government, and it's a worldview that redefined success not as an advancement and survival. the narrative then as one of making do. it isn't one marked by achievement, but staying alive making advances rather than financial ones. finding solid rather than drive.

it is a discourse of loss and a language of survival has the capacity to care about climate change when you are barely holding on. the survival emotional and spiritual is a place of holding on. sometimes the biggest freedom is found in your greatest fear, letting go. it's a language that i am familiar with and that leaves together the conservative christianity and ideology that says the world is bad so i tend to my own garden and just have faith in jesus. it's an ideology that embraces the inevitable and looks out for those things that are believed to be in the individual control which sounds nice but that's jusit's justto love our neighbos ourselves. so many of those i need while researching the book experience the best years under president obama that they voted for donald trumtrump in 2016 and in fact it

wouldn't be hard to argue on your obama it was at least great again no one feels that way. the nostalgia is something more than monetary gain from something more than trade deals or political climate that favored the prices. even if the money was good, the morality was bad. all that other good stuff wasn't a result of the policy. it's just a book. he doesn't trust the moment. they go away too easily. it is born of the reliance on the whim of a capricious land. he longs for the days things were hard life was good. in order to justify his worldview and in reality, there was never a time people didn't engage in the battle.

there was never a time it wasn't hard to be a farmer or all families were good and moral and christian. even the belief in the community is ill founded. according to people in communities in 21st century i've read so many interesting books. the residents are more likely to experience chronic or life-threatening illnesses and you have cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and mental illness. while the drug and alcohol usage are overall slightly higher than those areas, the use among young young people in these areas is significantly higher. i was aware of these statistics as i traveled through the midwest and i often mention them in conversation. everyone thought i was wrong even when i spoke the authors of the book that told me this day

were the architects of the class designed to assist the ministers in the culture. they scoffed at my statistics. i had to show the passage in the book that he wrote where those statistics were located fo him o consider the possibility he challenged the methodology of the research. basically, when it comes to the nostalgia, the cognitive dissonance between what is true and what we want to be true is on full display. and i won't read one last section. we go back to st. john's. we went to a lot of mass. i'm not catholic but i love how spooky catholicism is. like nothing is weirder than the substantiation.

and it's like you're supposed to literally believe it, sign me up. [laughter] so, walking across the st. john's campus i picked a very off the bush and snow had come early to minnesota and in the three weeks i was there as a visitor there had been two snowballs that covered the earth only to quickly melt into gray eyes. it was over the winter when it melts is a great revealed i saw this only because it was the first beautiful day in so long and i was walking slowly. it overwhelmed me with its sense of eternity. it seemed to be part of a community each one vital and get a continuation of the tradition that had begun long before they were born and would continue long after they were gone. i felt the same taking part in

the lethargy that welcomed me that didn't need me. i felt like i had been immersed into a landscape. it was the same feeling that comes over me as i drive across the midwest yielding myself to a place that welcomes me that doesn't need me and will continue after i'm gone and resisi am gone itresists the cry and in a relentless existence. so much is seen and so much is lost. there have been a drink before war i would be leaving the campus soon where i had been writing this book and i would have to return to my children, my friends and the rest of my life. there would be the holidays and by the way i'm getting divorced in this section. helpful information. that's the war. there would be the holidays to rustle through. i would have to move out of my house and start a new life.

each task was overwhelming i couldn't even make a list. instead i walked slowly and pick one. as a child my mother told me it was a warning of poison and bitterness, protection for those insights that they are not poisonous themselves. it's those on the inside, the pine needles on the highly allergic to pollen so small it can filter through the window screens. they are noxious to cattle and horses and planted as a barrier and yet they were used in the early chemotherapy drugs which kill cancer cells to save lives. ancient mythology holds because of this it is a symbol of death but there's also evergreen, a symbol of eternal life. because the symbology of use are

often found in churchyards. so many boring books i quote. and then using the curiosity the 1890s, i'm not going to read the whole part because he would die and there is a baby crying. [laughter] he basically says that it is a tough become an emblem of mortality. death and life all in one tree, but i wasn't thinking of all this when i picked very. i was thinking about the broken pieces of my life i would have to pick up. i was longing for a way ou way i squished the seed out of the dairy into the ground and immediately regretted it. for the rest of the day nostalgia works like this. it's a protection of poisonous.

it offers a shield in the weaponry that often turns on those who touch it. it's both everlasting in harbinger of death. they memorialized it writing social plant that loves to dwell with the shades beneath the cold moon as the same reports for the mystic realms no other tree. what a burn. i imagine blair writing this and shaking his fist, his face also probably aching with allergies within eternal battle. when i see mark i feel the same overwhelming sense as they did sunday. the cathedral of the church. just a part of something bigger here and we both feel it.

we are both lost and it's trying to stake our claim between us and nature. we realized that will always win finding life and death. our bodies crawling after reaching out to touch beauty. so, that is just a little bit. [applause] i would love to answer some questions if anybody has some. i know it is a little bit of a lighthearted topic. but let's go into this. i don't know if i can say that on c-span. >> it's different for everybody into the communities and

cultures. what i think is still there is all people are interested in accessing mystery even if you are not a religious person so much if you left the church is part of your life that are defined by this law and one of the things that didn't make it into the book but i spent some sundays with some humanists, and in cedar rapids they are so lovely, but it cracked me up because i went and was bible study but instead of the bible, we were just talking about like what was in the news, and there were still, like when i was there they didn't think that what i wathat'swhat i was told y do. and they just, you know, woody guthrie or something. [laughter]

i thought it was so funny it's just like a church which is fine and wonderful and beautiful and they do so many amazing thing is that i do think what i found was that spirituality is not absent even if it takes on a different form in our lives. so it has been much said about the death of religion in america. but i think that it is still an active and vibrant force as we see. i don't think that is a hot take it's different than it used to be. it's no longer these little centers of our communities as it is happening on the football field. sports is the type of religion for americans. you know, it is happening online. so many people are finding communities of states with hundreds of organizations with spiritual human connection

online and facebook groups and applications could use. so, those were a couple of the things i realized. us. hopefully that answers your question. >> i was wondering if you have any conclusions between religious point in talking points. >> the caucus mentality where we roll our eyes. [laughter] who is cleaning that one up. so, here's the thing i think that we, the one thing i hope people take away from the book

is the way that religion in america works it is inseparable from the way the communities are organized. have you ever wondered why, in vb this doesn't happen in dc as much but most of america's schools don't hold events because it is church night. that is like a thing that happens. there are so many of our default modes because so many of the communities and social structures are deeply impacted by a religion.

. >> i just want one night.

it was just like a perfect ending to the evening with the caucuses. >> can i interject to say? form a line. >> in your research are you finding those that are struggling are doing better quick. >> yes. sure. with his religious research as

conservative or fanatical and i feel like this is a distinctly american thing. we love the colt. i know you thank you wouldn't join a colt but i guarantee you i can come up with the colt that everyone would join. we just love them. we love comfort ability so the problem with very smart academics as those get more fanatical but also as they get more liberal they get spread apart and lose adherence. but i want to be chill not crazy fanatical and then can

we discuss this? it look like that in the research because it will get more open it is harder to track because it's more inviting and accepting so a little bit of a misnomer but if you press down on the statistic about 80 percent of americans believe in a god and those that say they are spiritual but don't quite go to church yes and no but my

wife is currently on the cruise and i'm sure it's a very interesting cruise. so she told me to tell you the first book that she could see her own experience in there are so many. and and to marry into the midwest it's great to see more stories of the midwest and then secondly the question is a process question did the

process change what your book became quick. >> i just want to acknowledge doing two things for women. that is feminism. thank you. absolutely. doing a lot of research and travel even before making the outline for the book. a very broad outline it's not very specific so it did change it. but i did change the chapter on football.

every time i talk to a minister they say football is our biggest competitor. are you sure about that? i just did not want to write about football but i would get kicked out because i did not want to go to the iowa hawkeye football game. i did not want to tailgate but so many midwestern activities is let's drink beer in the cold. [laughter] right? that is what tailgating is except like 2:00 o'clock in the morning because we get up super early to get a good spot so you can stand outside in the cold and drink miller high life which is the champagne of beers. [laughter] i love it no disrespect to the beer but a lot of disrespect to early mornings. i didn't want to do it. so i did add that but mostly what changed but it wasn't

supposed to be personal but it got messy and then just to be a hot mess that is the biggest change halfway through the writing process i have to put my divorce in here because it is personal and political and pending otherwise was just privilege. spirit did you limit your research to the midwest or to see if it was like the midwest because at least politically it seems really far behind. >> come on. i limited because i got the smallest advance in the entire world require will not lie. if i had gotten more money i

would be trucking all around michael i love a road trip i was just so excited to drive around two gas stations but i did not go to other places i do think there are a lot reaches its own placed there is a lot already so many wonderful books written about the south and i don't like that had been done for the midwest so i was happy to narrow it down but to back up and say to go backwards or behind each has far more

complex than they give them credit for. especially those liberation theology ideas that were really foreword thinking that had risen out that was there in the south. there are so many great books about it already. thank you. >> i have a confession i have not read your book. >> what do they say about your book quick. >> they are mad. they are mad about sexism, racism, the church is one of the few places in america it is totally fine to

disregard a woman. and we still do that? so people are done with that. during the cold war we go to troll church but really in the 1930s barely 40 percent of people went to church so the whole idea leaving church is maybe we are corrupting from the cold war to. >> i'm actually from west

virginia. >> i came from a city 26 people died and one day because of opioids it the main epidemic stems from all the documentaries that we are known of but my father has been a preacher for 60 years. so allow someone to be a part of the church to drink and with that research do you think that as a christian

community that that can survive? >> thank you for sharing. it sounds like a grandfather is a cool guy and has hard work and what is dominating the culture is what comes to our mind is white heterosexual evangelical male that is a specific idea. so that is what dominates the idea and that is wrong.

with african-american is social justice like dorothy day. it is nuts. so when we only privilege one voice over another we fail to realize there are so many people like your grandfather out there doing the work and it might feel like you are alone but that's part of a grand tradition so what i have been saying it is impossible to change sometimes you have to burn them down perk why don't mean that literally i am not advocating arson. and then to affirm it is 2019

it's too late. but there are so many other great places and faces that are doing the work one of my favorite people lives here. her name is julie rogers. so go hang out with her. don't just believe the lie of what is to be this one thing if you're christian. but thank you. your grandpa sounds awesome. >> i'm from south dakota and is someone who has been to many world communities what made you the most optimistic or the most pessimistic or sad

quick. >> i think the idea that is the most optimistic with those in real life and now she's 100 she had her birthday the other day she is what i found that makes me optimistic she is a 100 -year-old white lady and in so many ways is very conservative. but some things we're doing in america is super wrong and we need to stop doing this. so yes make more jell-o

casserole. so it makes me hopeful is again our ideas of the old farmer's talking about how much they love trumps trade policies and that literally never happens. that guy does not exist. but what does exist people like her who are complex who are active and are struggling with those same questions and casey's is old money gas station and then come and go as the next one.

i love the place where i live i think there are things i am deeply troubled by but it is nuanced. so as i talk i hate silences or churches are quieter people sit around and say i don't want to be political right now. you know what you are doing. it is a privilege and i get angry by that. i yelled at them and she says please i'm just the mail person. [laughter] no i have not yelled that may mail person yet. that is what i hate is the complicity. thank you.

>> as i try to summarize briefly how those individuals who have been victimized had to be minimized or work around things. that makes them superduper relevant. so my perspective is that if you have a crisis fight or flight or freeze. my perception that the churches are not fighting they are freezing or through denial and then that's how it came up in your research? >> there are places that are completely silent and don't want to talk about it.

so let's do this and let's get into it. i think what i started to see of those who had been silent before that were now no longer quiet. also fight or flight or freeze or get free. i am done with these i will get out there and i love that. start your own teeten there is a lack of gender representation in a cult. so just to feel empowered to start their own cult now crushed that black - - glass ceiling.

and then to have a great chapter of these ministers who were quiet and grappling with the question because there is a huge divide were allied of ministers are more liberal you wouldn't necessarily think that is happening and we don't have a crystal ball but i thank you that is such a smart question but is not actually addressing my question. >> so your answer is generally had we talk about challenges versus the actual topic of sexual violence in the church. >> i'm sorry.

i understood that as a question about our churches responding to politics. sexual violence in the church they are not talking about it. that is a huge huge huge problem. even super liberal congregations just don't talk about it. i have written about this many years ago there was an article how sexual violence persists because people go to their ministers who are not trained or mandatory reporters then say we will deal with it from here instead of getting people out. of assault and gas lighting and it is such a huge huge problem and it makes that anytime there is a foreword

movement that the mega- church had a big sex scandal but you never hear anything about it it is so quietly swept up so this is the problem of power and privilege in the problem of the fact dominated by nondenominational churches that have no oversight. and it is less than 1 percent that the pastors are women they are all sitting around deciding what is best that is engaging in violence. >>. >> you want me to yell at churches.

>> so one of my favorite things is that you do that hard and that is something and then that essay will try to do something completely different but that i'm left with three essays that i don't want to finish any of them. and those that fit in with the book. >> i found this none. nun don't have to answer their

e-mail theirs comes from god. that she closes up catholic churches specifically in the midwest and i heard about her you close up churches? and it just sounded so beautiful i wanted to see one and follow along with it i even tried to ride it as an article for publicity or something but i just couldn't make that happen but i would really love somehow to see that and who knows? but there is also a time that i didn't get murdered but that's not in the book.

[laughter] >> you didn't say anything why your church failed after four year. >> they try to take over the methodist. [laughter] >> so what did you learn after four years of trying quick. >> don't start a church. you need to have unity of vision and i've also learned what also has happened like entrepreneurship anytime they try to start a new thing there are charismatic personalities involved they want to be wary because that is a way to call a social path. [laughter]

that is what i learned. something is cannot be compromised or nor should they be bridged. there is so many but they stay around it's hard to say what will win or what will survive very happy and sad. thank you. >> hoping that we can and on some advice going into election season. i am from northwest iowa. everybody i know who left. i am seeing some crazy stuff. >> steve king territory. so it resonated the most is

the idea that everything is more peaceful and safer and better than to reconcile that. so how do you do that? especially on social media. >> i unfriended my. but i don't think they could be one or lost on social media. but that is exactly how our president is that when you are engaging with the people that you know and love, has to

happen that i don't thank you can go into any situation proselytizin proselytizing. please vote for or not trump but but here's the thing. but i am just a mess and that's only way i know how to be so that just how you can be as just be all of yourself. this really sucks and it hurts my feelings. and then to justify all those babies in cages on the border. i hate it. it is trying it but also is

fine to unfriend people. and had to do this any better than anybody else. [laughter] but then people get mad then give them cookie bars then it all goes away. [laughter] i guess we are done. sorry i didn't answer your question. [laughter] [applause] i will be signing books. [inaudible conversations]

>> i am so excited to be here today to discuss her new book the knowledge gap. welcome natalie. >> i'm glad to be here. what was your inspiration quick. >> i live in