they are attempting to be far worse to him and that what they accuse him of doing for them. it's telling. i have no right. i have a right, you have rights, these folks have a right to pass judgment on donald trump's language . >> to watch the rest of this program, visit our website booktv.org. click on the "after words" tab at the topof the page . >> now on to the main event, we're lucky to have a guest with us this evening . lyz lenz: contributing to the columbia journalism review. it appeared in the washington post and huffington post to name a few and her essays appeared in roxanne gaze anthology not that bad . you'll be hearing about that one tonight but he also has a second book called belabored so keep an eye out for that. and on land, lyz asks the question what is happening to faith in america when more than 20 percent of americans

consider themselves christian yet many religious leaders are decrying a loss of faith, "god land: a story of faith, loss and renewal in middle america" is an investigation of the division our country is facing area i don't wantto spoil anything else let me say it's a timely book . and without further ado, please help me welcome lyz lenz. [applause] >> hi. can everybody hear me okay? i'm used to doing midwestern events where there's always one woman in the back like to talk louder. you're like i'm talking as loud as i want you, ethel . so when i heard c-span was going to be here, they were like you have any questions and i said yes, can you wear jorts on c-span and they said c-span encourages jorts.

i wasn't going to wearthem but i felt like after that reply i felt like i had to. i wore a shirt for you, washington dc because iowa, for some reason have to come here to be president . sucks. so i wanted to just tell you the origins story of the book because this is a book about religion and you don't really want to just hear me read from a book about religion. if you want to do that you could go to christmas dinner with your grandma . shemisses you . so i want to talk about the origin story of the book and read from a small section and then we will take questions. christian was supposed to be here tonight, she couldn't make it so if anybody wants to leave because they were near for [lchristian, i'm not offended. i was like, then i'm out to so if you want to do that, i'll just find you later on the internet .

okay. there's no way totransition out of that so let's just go . in 2011, i tried to start a church. which sounds like a really weird thing to do. and it is. i don't recommend it but it's also a very american thing to do. to try and create a space, a utopia, a perfectplace . except unlike fruitland for the super sexy oneida community, mine was boring. and it wasn't an old railroad depot that had been converted to a small event space and we called it stonebridge. spoiler, it was an epic failure area you get to that in the first three pages. hopefully you still wantto read the book . there were still many things wrong with it but what brought it all down was that our head pastor, he tried to

take over a methodist church in kind of a bloodless true. and when i explained what i mean by that, they were in the old office depot and he was verytired of the space . and he was like, what if we just, there's this aging methodist population like a couple miles away, what if we started posting events there and then slowly took over the building and like, i'm usually very who. i'm loving the military puts, i love it all but i was like, i don't really infeel like advocating for violence against agingmethodist , even psychicviolence . so it was crazy. it was a crazy boost of power which i'm sure we've seen in america recently and that crazy useof power draw all our sleeping divisions to ahead .over the course of

four ermeetings, for very long, painful meetings, brought up all of the differences that we had beenignoring , all of the divisions. they felt new but they had been there since the beginning. and so we shut down. and that was the summer of 2015. that summer, i also went to visit a historical society in mars iowa which if you know lamar, is famous for blue bunny ice cream. you guys seem so excited about that. so i went to this historical society because i really love to have a fun time but also like, what was advertised there was this farmer and created hundreds of anatomically correct wooden dolls. and it's just as horrifying as you think it is. and i was like, i have to go see these creepy murder dolls

. there like we don't prefer to call them murder dolls. like, rebrand while i was there looking at the creepy dolls, i went up to the floor and there was a whole floor filled with pianos and organs from all the closed churches just in that county alone. that was just a couple months after my own church close and being a writer and a utnarcissist i thought i should write about this cause timeline wise, we are now nearing the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2016. caucuses are starting to happen . and there's thissociological. of three places. everybody has three places in your life . your work, your family and what's the third-place -mark for so many people for so long that third-place was i church and what i noticed in my own life was i wasn't going to church anymore. i was actively refusing to go like a 16-year-old, angry 16-year-old. i want to attend brunch

instead which is my new religion. blood he marries. that's the basis of the book. kidding. so what, when you have a whole community and the centerpiece was the church and that church is now closed or nobody goes to that church anymore because they're all driving 50 miles away to go to crcthe heartland, about middle america, all these churches were closing and what was going the void so i wrote an article for a place called pacific standard and in the beginning of 2016 right before the caucuses, arguing that the loss of face in america was changing us and changing us politically. and this was a very journalist town so you might understand swhat i say next when i say so many journalists who were there in 20 16/2 roman embarrassing takes in our path.

so many, we don't want to talk about. i don't want to talk about my own tactics but this was my one could take and so because i think i was onto something. and indiana university press reached out in the summer of 2016 and they said you should make this book and i was like , i'm not really large for academics and they said we know, it's fine. we read your tweets. we are aware. so through those couple of months we were working out an outline of what the book would look like i had been doing a lot of research and then we all know what happened. in november 2016, i ate a ham sandwich. no,that ham sandwich became president . and so then i signed the contract in 2016. so by that time, america was

changed. my lifewas changed . i had heard from a mostly full-term they home mom to a full-time journalist. i turned from a married lady to a single lady. i turned from a person who started churches to a person who was very angry and frustrated at them so that's what the book explores and so i want to review this very small section on nostalgia. and don't worry, it's not super boring. it starts with a murder. i didn't do it. on october 22 1989, just ctoutside joseph minnesota 11-year-old weatherly was to while riding his bike home from the video store. a case remain unsolved for nearly 27 years until a local man, danny heinrich confessed

in 2016. the jacob wetterling case was one of those cases that redefined how minnesotans iesmolder saw their small-town area before jacob enrolled in minnesota believe they were apart, special somehow, isolated from all the crime and evil pandemic in the cities when jacob went missing, no one felt safe, not ever again. i heard about the jacob case when i moved from south dakota to minnesota and in a january 2000. the girl in my high school english class told me the story as a parable area after i told her how i often went for walks around the back by my house. i heard other parents asked the name of jacob like a talisman to their children when they invoked curfew. if it can happen in saint joe's, no place was a area i often hear my friend now who would be about the same age as jacob had been allowed to live in broken the info sometime before, that remembered time of innocence

when kids were allowed to be kids, when the dangers of hekidnapping and murder didn't hide in the bushes of every well manicured lawn. that belief is a lie, physically children have never been safer than they are now back to the era when we believe children to be safe that they were actually the least safe. in the podcast in the dark journalist madeleine behrens revealed before jacob went missing there was an epidemic of rate and assault among young boys in the area. according to the washington post, here we are, not in the book. in 1935, for instance, there were nearly 450 deaths for every 100,000 children aged 1 to 4. today there are fewer than 30 deaths for every 100,000 children, kids in that age group. more than tenfold decreased. i think about this case often during the month i sent in college bill minnesota on a sabbatical to write this

book. joe's is just a few short miles away from where i'm m staying at the college of st. john's area i drive through the town on my way to the gym and the grocery store. one night a friend and i go into town for a sandwich and coffee. it still feels like a small town like the fact the same cloud is swallowing it. the charming stores offering lower than funny cards, the rise of the college of saint benedict, stepping into the town islike stepping into a lot of moment. after eating our dinner of sandwiches my friend, a japanese pastor offered to walk me back to my car . i'm fine, i said. riit was after nine on a friday night and i had three blocks to walk. you think you are safe, then maybe you are and maybe you are i will go with you, he said. everyone wants that time back , never existed to begin with. people and things are always disappearing, stores closed, churches cclosed, rules consolidated, they lost.

60 percent of the people here voted for trump. i wanted to make america great again. again. i wanted to set back into a moment, to believe there was a time before this. mark and with his arms folded against a pale blue sky. steps of green fall behind him, that is land. next to him is a large, line with itsclouds over and above taxes likelihood. mark tells me he doesn't go to church as much as hewants . he has to be there in the field working and it's planting season. the spring was wet so everything is starting a little too late. it's always something, dry summers, flooding springs, the freeze of winter . every day he fights and worships nature in equal measure. nothing makes me believe in god more than working in a field in theearly morning, he tells me . he believes in global warming .

he believes the world is changing but he doesn't think he can do anything about it. it's god's will. mark is a big man but it's clear he feels small in the context of the capricious beauty of nature. why do you believe in god , i ask -mark because if i didn't, i have to believe in the bottle. too many of the people in this place with the constant instability of the land by drinking and using drugs. this is illinois where the opioid crisis is in full effect. according to the illinois department of health more people have died from an opioid drug overdose in 2014 and from homicide ormotor vehicle accidents . his rural stress survival guide which is self published, explains the predicament of farmers this way. there's not a lot to do but worry, some much, drink to much, some gamble, anything to escape the anxiety. no props, no harness. esshort-term notes come due,

there isn't time to do something else. anything else make ends meet. no christmas, no dinners out. he worked with the town. the snow model has started and soon the towns and cities will feel the pain to. it's a cycle of struggle that breeds nostalgia and while fewer than seven percent of rural workers are employed in agriculture, farming mentality rectally influences our people in medical middle america bank and ask and you both leave or change, ron clausen marty wells and the marty mcgee note that even in the areas defined as cities, roman quality can still exist . this agrarian worldview as they call it ais pervasive throughout middle america and it's defined by a belief in thesouth , apart from the systems and government and it's a worldview that redefines success not as an advancement an the narrative is one of making do. a good year is not one marked

by achievements by simply adding alive. making moral advances rather than financial ones. finding solace rather than drive. it's a discourse of loss and the fatalistic language of survival. who has the capacity to care about climate change when you yourself are barely holding on? a world of survival, financial emotional and spiritual it and any place of holding on. sometimes the biggest freedom is found in yourgreatest fear me, letting go had a moral language i'm familiar with, one that weaves together the dispensationalism of conservative christianity and the rural discourse of loss. it's an ideology hethat says the world is bad i can my own garden and have faith in jesus. the political ideology that embraces the inevitable looks out only for those things that are believed to be in the individual's control which sounds nice but really it's just a thought you to the call to love our

neighbors as ourselves. so many of the farmers i need while researching the book experience there pastors under president obama but they voted for trump in 2016. in fact it wouldn't be hard to argue that under obama farming at least was great again but no one feels that way. there nostalgia is for something more than monetary gain, something more than trade deals or a sociopolitical climate that favored corn and we prices. even if things were good, ve they never trusted. plus even if the money was good mark explains, the morality was bad area i asked what he needs and he tells me abortion and birth control area plus all that other good stuff wasn't the result of the policies of obama, just a fluke. he doesn't trust the good moments, they go away too i easily . at the poverty mentality born of a reliance on the wings of the capricious flame. mark longs for the days when

his father was afarmer. things were hard life was good . easier somehow. ihe conveniently forgetting the farm crisis of the 80s in order to justify his worldview and in reality, mthere was never a time when people didn't engage in the relentless battle with her. never a time when it wasn't hard to be a farmer or a time when all families were good and moral and christian and white . even the belief in the wholesome rural community is ill-founded . according to rural people in communities in 21st-century, in the 21st century, i read so many interesting books . they're all textbooks. rural residents are more likely to experience chronic on life illnesses. they are more likely to have cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and mentalillness . while the risk of drug and alcohol use overall or slightly higher in metro areas, use among young people in rural areas is significantly higher. and with the statistics as i

traveled through the midwest and i often mentioned them in conversation area andeveryone thought i was wrong . even when i spoke to barney wells and ron clawson, the authors of the book told me this. they were of the class designed to assist ministers in understanding rural culture. they stopped at my statistics, i had to show a passage in the book that he wrote where those statistics were located for him to even consider the possibility but he challenged the methodology of the research. basically when it comes to this nostalgia, the cognitive dissonance between what is true and what we want to be true is on full display. and i will read one last section, just like a page. we go back to st. john's. i went to a lot of mass, i'm not catholic but i found i love spooky catholicism.

it's like so spooky nothing's weirder than transubstantiation . i see so many nods. yes, it's weird. and you're supposed to literally believe it. sign me up. i love it. so walking across the st. after mass a red berry au bush. i had come early to northern minnesota and in the three weeks i was there as a visitor there had been snooped to snowball that covered the earth in the quiet beauty only to melt in the great ice. now there was a shroud over the death of one church, when it melts the raw gray flesh of the world is revealed. i saw the berries only because it was the first beautiful day in so long andi was walking slowly . in a benedictine mass and overwhelmed me with its sense of eternity. amongst and the mass seemed

to be part of an eternal community, each one vinyl and the continuation of a tradition that had begun long before they were born and would continue long after they were gone . i felt the same sitting in the pew taking part in the liturgy that welcomed me but didn't need me. i felt like i had been immersed into an eternal landscape of faith. it was the same feeling that comes over me as i drive across the midwest. i'm yielding myself the land and the place that welcomes me but doesn't need me, that will continue long after i'm gone, that resists the push of humanity in an eternal and relentless existence. here land sky,mortal touches immortal . so much is seen and much is lost. the mass had been a drink before war, i would be leaving the campus soon where i had been cloistered writing this book , then i would have to return to my children, my friends and the rack of my life. there would be the holidays to muscle through. oh by the way, i'm getting divorced in this action. the war.

there would be the holidays to muscle through and relatives to answer to for my broken marriage . i'd haveto move out of my house . ihave to start a new life . each half was so monumentally overwhelming i couldn't make ma list . instead i walked slowly and look at berries on the bush and i picked one. as a child i also always been warned about bright waxy berries area my mother told me natures breakfast was a warning of poison and bitterness, the protectionfor the season side but you berries are not poisonous themselves . it's the small black seeds on the inside. the pine needles also slaughter off a highly allergic pollen. the through window screens. you trees are noxious cows and horses and are often planted as a barrier to keep rolling braziers out and yet all is not best with you. extracts of the european you were using early chemotherapy drugs which kill the cancer cells in order to save life.

ancient mythology told that because of the poison of the plant, but you is a symbol of death but there are also evergreens, a symbol of eternal life. it'sbecause of their ambivalence symbology that yew's are found in churchyard . so many boring books i quote. in antiquities curiosities of the church published in 1897, that wasactually a fun book . axial ways into the confounding symbol of the yew . i'm not going to read the whole part because you guys would die and there's a baby crying. babies like with the history of trees. but he basically says it's an emblem of mortality. an emblem of immortality. death and life, all in one tree but i wasn't thinking of all this when i picked the berry. i was thinking about the broken pieces of my life i have to pick up when i went home . i was mourning death, longing for a way home / seed out of

the berry and immediately regretted it. i'm allergic to yew apparently had my face from sinus pain. nostalgia works like the yew. it offers a shield and weaponry but often turns on those who touch it. both everlasting and oe harbinger of death. scottish poet robert blair memorialized the yew writing in his poem jealous and unsocial plant that loves to dwell mid stalls and coffins at the traffic worm where my field ghosts and visionary shapes benny the warm cold moon. and bodies to perform their mystic rounds. no other merriment old tree is fine. what a burn, right? i imagine blair shouting this and shaking his desk at the yew, his face probably also aching with allergies, man and nature internal battle. want, blair and me zero.

when i see mark i feel the same overwhelming sense of the eternal as i did in that mass on sunday. the cathedral of the church, they're just a part of something bigger here and we both feel it. we're both lost in it, trying to take our claims in the struggle between us and nature. nature we realize will always win but we wrestle anyway writing life and death, our bodies robbing after reaching out totouch you . that's just a little bit. [applause] i would love to answer some questions. if anybody has some. i know it's a little bit of a lighthearted topic but let's just go into it. go in balls to the wall, let's do it. i don't know if you can say that on c-span. [inaudible] well, what's your

safe place? it's different. it's different for everybody and it's different for communities and cultures. what i think is still there is i do believe that all people are interested in accessing mystery, even if you are not a religious person so much, if you left the church, their parts of your life that are defined by the loss and one of the things that didn't actually make it into the book but was fun was i spent a couple of sundays with humanists in cedar rapids, a little humanists group. they're so lovely but it cracked me up because i went and it was just like, it was just bible study but like instead of the bible we were talking about what was in the news and there were still

life, they didn't, when i was there they didn't singsong but i was told times a singsong and like, but like woody guthrie or something. i was like, it's so funny that you're just like a church. but a church of yourselves which is fine and wonderful and beautiful and they do such amazingthings but i think that , i do think what i found was that spirituality is not absence even if it takes on a different form in our lives and so i hear much has been said about the death of religion in america but i think it is still an active and vibrant force as we see, i don't think that's a hot take but it's a force in a way different way than it used to be. it's nolonger these little centers of our community . it's happening on thefootball field . sports is a type of religion

for americans. it's an online, so many people are finding communities of faith or centers of organization or that spiritual human connection online and facebook groups and the ends and ask, kids use the so those were a couple of the things that i realized. hopefully that answers your question. quite high. click i was wondering if you have any conclusions or the beginnings of thoughts with the overlap between religious life and college life. >> caucus life? religiouslife and caucus life . the caucus mentality, where we just roll our eyes while metal and on all of our tables, his , whose cleaning that one of you guys can mark

yeah, so here's the thing is i think that the one thing that i really wish was, people take away at the take away from the book is that the way that religion in america works is that it's so inseparable from the way our communities are organized. have you wondered why maybe this doesn't happen in dc as much but in most of america cools to hold events on wednesday nights because it's church night but that's just like a thing.that happens. there's so many of our default modes that are because sso many of our communities and our social structure, our political structure is deeply impacted by religion though when you talk about real life, what's the diagram. here's the then diagram. it's like all one big messy hot circle so what i'm saying is i don't have a great answer. it's a hot mess but yes,

politics can feel a little bit like religion in iowa, especially among some people but what's interesting is most people don't care at all , like rates of involvement so most people live their life and i don't even know until you're sitting in a cafc and it filled to the brim and hey, it's bill clinton good god, i just wanted a sandwich . this is a dumb story, i shouldn't tell it but there's this town called mount vernon which is often, very close to where i live candidates love to stop there because they're charming and a small town but easy access from interstate and there's milk and the coffee shops and so we were getting ready, we were just going to me and my friends, she's very politically involved and i won't out for here but we were going to go in there and he gets ready to push the door open and he

goes, god dammit. i walked in there and beto is standing on one of those tables, i just want one night . and we open it and it was a perfect iowa coda out caucus season. i would object to say if you need a question, please use the microphone because we're recording. the formal line right here. >> formed a line. >> icon in your research in the midwest finding that the mainline churches, mainline churches that are struggling while evangelical ones are holding their own or doing better or do you find that in the, what's the case mark. >> sure, also know whatyes . tokay, next question. no, there's this really interesting thing about

religious research where there are these arguments that when groups are more like conservative and fanatical, they tend to attract or adherence and i feel like this is a distinctly american thing we love people. we love a cold and i know you all think you would join a cult but i guarantee you come up with a cold that everyone would join. are you personally. we just love calls as we love being told what to do because we love comfortability so the problem with very smart academics, i'm just rephrasing it in a dumb way but they've all been like so, when religious groups get more fanatical, make it more adherence but also and then as they get more liberal, they kind of spread apart and then lose adherence and i was very depressed by this cause i don't want christianity to

just be like crazy medical all the time. i wanted to let tichill so i emailed some of the men have these theories and i was like, are you sure? could we just discussed this and he said well, it looks tlike that in the research cause a religion is going to get more open, it's harder to track because they're just like more inviting and accepting. sure, yeah. so it's a little bit of a misnomer. yes, evangelicalism does feel stronger but i think like if you rest down on the statistics of about 80 percent of americans believe in a god but very small percentage of them actually go to church there's this group of people who say their spiritual but don't go to church . they're not evangelical, where are they? right here. so yes and no, it's the easy answer to your question.

>> hello. first, my wife can't be here is from, she's currently on a cruise to the bahamas with a bachelorette party, full of midwesterners so i'm sure it will be cruise . >> sunburn. >> very. i'm sure she will appreciate this later. first compliment from her is that she tells me tell you that your book is the first that she has read about the midwest thatshe can see her own experience in . >> much easier. so many. >> and as a person of sucrose and now that i get married into the midwest, it's great to see some i don't know, it's great to see more stories about the midwest coming into america's consciousness.

so and second, a question from somebody else, a process question. is also a writer. so her question is basically your writing process change throughout your book, going through yourinterviews , interviewing people change what your book became? >> i just want to acknowledge that you're a man who got up here and did two things for women . thank you, that's present as feminism, i just loved it. so absolutely, i have this very general, i did a lot of research and trial for making the outline for that book so that informed it and then after, change, was a very broad line i was like the internet. it's not very specific. and so they change it.

so the only chapter i did end up having throughout the process was the chapter on football . because every time i talk to minister, they were like football is our biggest competitor and i was like are you sure? i'm not a sports person. so i just really didn't want to write about football. i am going to get out of iowa for saying this but i did not want to go to iowa hawkeye football game. i did not want to tailgate. so many midwest activities are like let's drink beer in the cold. right? that's what tailgating is except it two in the morning or something because we get out super early to get the tailgatingspot . so you can stand outside in the cold drink miller high life which is the champagne of beers. and i love it, no disrespect . to the beer, but a lot of disrespect to the early morning though i didn't want

to do it. i was like, i don't want to do that though that was the one thing e that was added but newhat mostly changed through writing the book is it wasn't busupposed to be sopersonal . and then it just got real messy and that the only way i know how to handle things, writing in my life is just be a hot mess so that was the biggest change. halfway through the writing process, i was like oh, i have to put my divorce in here because of personal is political and pretending otherwise is just privileged. those were the biggest things, thanks. >> did you limit your research maybe the midwest and did you into the south to see if the south is like the midwest because to me, at least politically, the south seems really far behind. >> come on now.

i limited it because i gotthe smallest advance in the entire world . it was money, i'm not going to lie to you. if i had gotten more money i would have been talking all around and i love the road. just drive around and meet gas station breakfast food. and report this out but yes, i didn't go to other places because i didn't have the money to . i do think there are a lot of similarities, but also america is a big country. and each place is its own place and i do think has been a lot already with so many wonderful books written about the south and space there but i didn't feel like that had been done for the midwest so i was very happy to narrow it down on that place and location but i do just want to up and say let's not call

it backwards . or behind. like, there's each place that we had stereotypes about are so far more complex than i think we give themcredit for . and especially in the south. so many liberation theology ideas and these like really forward thinking movements have arisen out of faith and churches there inthe south . so i would just, yeah but there's so many great books about it already. iq. >> my confession is i haven't read your book. >> get out. >> i would like to ask you anecdotally what are the main reasons you find people are leaving the church . >> they are mad. right?

there? about sexism, racism. the church is one of the few places in america where it's totally fine to be like be quiet, you're a woman. we still do that but we try to be low-key about it.ha so yes, people are done with that. there's this idea that people are leaving the church as if there was an idea that ar everybody used to go to church all the time. that really only happened at ra very specific time during the cold war when it was, you go to church because that's what americans do because we are not communist but really, even in the 1930s it was like barely 40 percent of people went to church so the whole idea of peopleleaving the church is more like , we might just be correcting from the cold war.thanks.

>> i'm really not from this area. i'm from west virginia. so i am from a extremely conservative place being a liberal. so don't tell me after this. >> is fine, we love you. >> i come from a city that 26 people in one day died from opioids. and the main opioid epidemic is, stems from huntington west virginia if you've ever seen heroine or any of those documentaries that we are known for my grandfather has been a preacher for 60 years . he has been fired from eight different churches for his beliefs, anywhere from allowing someone to be a part of the church to drink to allowing women to read scripture. so my question was during

your research, do you think that in this type of christian community that churches who are trying to be more accepting can survive? >> first of all, thank you so much for talking and sharing and that's so interesting to hear about your dad or your grandfather and it sounds like he's a really cool guy doing some really hard work inside of a place that is very resistant to change. i think what's dominating our culture right now is the idea that when we say christian, what comes to mind is a white heterosexual evangelical man whose mid-50s and upper-middle-class. it's a very specific idea all also his wife was super hot on instagram . you knowwhat i'm talking about . so that's what dominates our idea of what faith is in

america. that is wrong. that is not whatfaith is in america . we are like the home of you know, african-american social justice movements arose from politically progressive churches in the south. like dorsey day. it's not. and so when we only privilege one voice over another voice, we fail to realize that there are so many people like your grandfather out there. doing the work, trying to do the change and it might feel like you're alone but you're actually part of a grand tradition in faith and so what i have been telling people is sometimes it's impossible to change systems from the inside. sometimes you got to burn them down. i don't mean that literally, i'm not advocating arson. not actually. but like, here's the thing. if your church doesn't affirm

, doesn't affirm a gay marriage , or women, leave. it's 2019, it's too late. were not going to have this conversation, just go because there's so many other great places and great spaces that are doing the work. there's otno many good places here. one of my favorite people in the lives here. her name is julie rogers. i don't know if you know her but she's there doing it. so like go hang out with her. find your people and don't just believe the lie that justice, that the christian is beavis one thing or to be a person of faith it to be this one thing but thank you. your grandpa sounds super rad. >> hello, i'm also a native midwesterner from a rural state . north dakota. i was just curious. as someone who's, have you

been to many rural communities and you're talking about religion which is the center of a lot of rural communities, what made you the most optimistic for the future of rural communities and what made you the most pessimistic and sad . >> i think the idea thatlife the thing that most optimistic , there is this a one of my favorite people in the book who's one of my favorite people in real life, when i look she was 97. and now she's 100. she just had her birthday the other day, happy birthdayella that evelyn burke be what she's what makes me , she's what i found that makes me optimistic because here she is, she's 100-year-old white lady whose super religious. and there's been so many ways, very conservative but she's also like, she's also something that we're doing in

america are super wrong and we need to stop doing this. and the president is bad and i like yes evelyn. let's see some more jell-o casserole. and so that's, and i think what makes me hopeful is that again, our ideas of because we have this idea of the midwest that it's like the old farmer sitting in cascades talking about how much they love trumps trade policy and that never happened. i've never seen that guy, he does not exist but what does exist is evelyn and people like her who are complex, who haare interested, who are active and who wants america to be a better place and who are searching and struggling nt with the same questions weall are. so that makes me hopeful. it was the other part about what do i hate >> hate , come and go, i like

casey's general store better. it's a gas station. and come and go is the young upstart one . casey's is like old money gas station. no, what do i hate? i don't hate anything about it. i love the place where i live. and i think there's things that i'm deeply troubled by but all things are complex and nuanced . so actually, i'm done talking. i hate silences i churches that are just izquiet. i hate when people around and say i just don't want to be political right now. you know what you're doing. you're being privileged. i get angry by that. and i yell at them and she's like please, i'm just a male person. stop yelling at me. i'venever yelled that a male person yet . oh yes, that's what i hate is the complicity of silences . >> high. >> i first got to know your

work in the excerpt or a passage in not that bad. roxanne gave anthology with charted sunrise briefly, without our culture and how often individuals who been victimized by sexual violence and to minimize or try to work around things. which strikes me as superduper relevant to the topic of the decline of the american church. and i found myselfwondering , my perspective from the standpoint of psychology is when you have a crisis, you either fight, flight or freeze. and my perception is that the church isn't really fighting this epidemic. they'reeither freezing , saying there's nothing to see here or fleeing it through denial and i'm wondering if that's how that came up in your research. >> there were a lot. i mean, more than just things.

there are places that are completely silent from a, completely don't want to talk about. it's fine, wejust want to talk about jesus . there are those there are those that are likelet's do this, let's get into it . i think what i started to see was more of the people who had been silent before or the places that had been silent before were now no longer quiet. i also think there's fight, flight, freeze or get free. and i think i see more of people just getting free. like, i'm done with these things. zei'm going to do my own thing and i love that. like, start on call, you guys. you know what i realized is there's a lack of gender representation in colts. and they're just like, we want to encourage young women out there to just go. just feel empowered tostart

your own goals . just crack that glass ceiling. but yes, so yes, it's a little all of them, i have a great chapter in there about all these great ministers who had been quiet before the election sitting down and grappling with the question, do we talk now because there's this huge public divide where a lot of ministers or a lot more liberal in their congregations which is not necessarily the stereotype you would think that happening but it's there. so there's a lot of mixtures of reactions and there's, difference and we will see what wins out. idon't have a crystal ball and i'm not interested in doing another bad take . >>. >> i'm left wanting by your answer. you're not actually addressing my question push back. number what do you think. >> i feel like your answer sort of is about generally how do we talk about

challenges versus the actual topic of sexual violence in the church. >> you wanted to talk about sexual violence in the church, i'm sorry i understood it as a question swleabout how cartridges responding to politics. oh yes, sexual violence in the church. they are not talking about it. and that's a huge, huge problem. even, i mean even super liberal congregations just like, we don't talk about it and i've written about this many years ago. i wrote an article about how sexual violence persists in the church because people will go to their ministers are not trained, not mandatory reporters and they will just kind of like the okay, will deal with it from here instead of getting people help and that perpetuates cycles ofviolence . and assault and fighting and it's just, it is , it is such a huge, huge , and it makes me

very upset and i don't know what the answer is because literally anytime there's some sort of forward movement , anytime the new york times writes about his church and his sex scandal, maybe this will change everything. and younever hear anything about it ever again . and it just gets so quietly swept up and i think this is the problem of power. of problem of privilege and the problem of the fact that inamerica we are dominated by nondenominational churches that have literally no oversight . from anyone, not even their own structures and it's less than one percent of pastors, i'm sorry, now i'm going to get mad now but less than one percent of pastors had, head pastors are women. this is all men sitting around deciding what that is actively engaging in violence against women's bodies in the s

church so it sucks, thank you forpushing back against that . i thought you were talking about something else. youwanted me to yell at church? yes . you want me to yell at a man? sure. so we're unfortunately runningout of time. were going to limit it to these three questions . >> high. one of my favorite things about your writing style in particular is the blend of personal and research. you do it definitely and it's really hard and as a writer that's something that i have trouble with as well, i'll research dumping and the essay will turn into something different than what i wanted to be andthat's fine but i'm left with three essays and i don't want to finish any of them and i keep falling down radicals so my question is what is your favorite thing you found in

researching for this book that ultimately did not fit in well with the book ? >> i found this none. she's very old, i don't think she ldanswers her phone or does female. nuns don'thave to, their emails are bad . but she goes around and she closes up catholic churches. she has a region is typically in the midwest and i heard about her, she goes around and she performs like a funeral ritual to close up churches and it just sounded so beautiful and so interesting and i wanted to just like, i wanted to see one but i wanted to follow along with it and i tried even up until the book was being published, i was like if i can figure it out maybe i can write itas an article . it's something that i couldn't make that happen but i would still really love to somehow see that and it sounds cool and weird and spooky and who knows where it could go but there's so many

of them. also that one story but there's also a time when i want a thought i was going to get murdered but we're running out of time, i'll tell you later. get a book kind and i'll tell you about the church, it's fun. >> you didn't say anything about why your church failed after four years . >> we decided to take on the methodists . >> yes. >> what did you learn from that after four years of trying? >> never started church. >> what i learned was you need to have, the unity of vision and unity of purpose and i also think what i learned is that i've often happens in just kind of you know, entrepreneurship or silicon valley or anytime people tryto start anything , usually there's very charismatic personalities

involved. they learn to be very wary of a charismatic personality because that's just a way of calling a sociopath a white sociopath . >> so that's a lot of what i learned. i also learned that some things can't becompromised on. there's some divide that cannot be bridge , nor should they be bridge. so that's a couple of the things i learned . there's noso many go, the church is close, bad churches stay around. it's hard to say what will live and what will survive. i was very happy when ours went under. >> thank you. hi. >> i'm hoping we could end on some advice as we getinto election season . i could use some help. i'm from northwest iowa and unlike everybody i know who left northwest iowa i did not purge my entire facebook group . so i'm seeing a lotof really

crazy stuff . beating territory. >> that's home sweet home. so i think what resonated most was when we are talking about the lack of police, there's this idea that everything was more peaceful and safer and better. 10 or 20 years ago or even within the last two years and i think people are reconciling that with religion so you think engage people really well, how do you do that, especially in a world where it's largely on social media?>> don't fight with your uncle on social media. you can't win. i unfriended mine. i really only had just one uncle. and i think you might actually be in jail right now. sorry mom. but like, i think i don't think bites can be won and lost on social media which sounds a little like defeatist since that's exactly how our president is

waiting these fights but i think when you are engaging with the people you know and that you love, it's has to happen in kind of a real and messy way and i don't think that you can go into any situation proselytizing. even if it is please vote for not. which sounds like a great proselytization situation but i don't think you can approach a relationship that way. i don't know. here's the thing, you see that i seem like i'm good at dealing with people, i'm not. i'm just a mess and that the only way i know how to be so i think perhaps that's the only way that you can be, just the all of yourself and say hey, this sucks. this really sucks and it hurts my feelings. and it really sucks when you justify holding babies in cages on the border. i hate it and i don't want to

be here at christmas dinner. i don't know, i think it's like trying it but also i say that and an unsafe place, it's fine to unfriended people. you know what's best for yourself. i don't know how to dothis any better than anybody else does . i just thought all the time. >> then if people get mad at me i'm just like make them some cookie bars and it all goes away. >> is the midwestern way. sorry, i didn't answer your question . >> i guess we're done you guys, thank you so much for coming . [applause] coi think i'm signing some books. >> the new c-span online

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