at the top of the page. >> so now on to the main event. we're very lucky to have a guest with us this morning, lyz lenz, >> we are very lucky to have our guest with us this evening

her writing has appeared from the new york times, washington post and huffington post in the first book she also has a second book coming out in 2020. to ask the question what is happening to faith in america? and 70 percent consider themselves christian of some sort and is the multi- genre investigation of the division our country is facing. i don't want to spoil anything else but it is a very timelyy book. without further ado please lehelp me to welcome our author. [applause] >>. >> hi. can everybody hearo me okay? i'm used too doing midwestern

events and a lady says please talk louder. i am talking about is i want to athol. say do you have any questions say yes that i felt that after that reply had to was c-span also acknowledged the shirt i specifically wore for washington dc because for some reason you have to come here to be president. l[laughter] i want to tell you the origin story of the book because this is a book about religion and you don't really want to hear me read a book about religion

and then you go to christmas dinner witur grama. she misses you. and then to read from a small section and then we'll take questions if anybody wants to leave they were here from kristin i'm not offended because i thought cool. i am out to. that i willto do just find you later on the internet. there's no way to transition out of that. 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 recommendd it but it's a very american thing to do to create that utopia, that perfect place except for that

community it was the old railroad depot and we called it stonebridge it was a failure and i get to that in the first three pages so hopefully you still want to read the book. there were so many things wrong with thatwi but but i brot it down was that our head pastor tried to take over a methodist church in a coup and we were in this old office depot like we were very tired of the space and said there is an aging method of population a few miles away let's host events there and now i'm very

pro- to but i really don't feel like advocating for violence so it was crazy. was a crazy use of power which we have seen in america recently and that brought all of our sleeping divisions to a head over the course of four meetings for very long painful meeting meetings, it brought up all of the differences we have been ignoring that has been there since the beginning. so we shut it down that was the summer of 2015 i also visited the historical society and the mars iowa if you know that it is famous for blue bunny i.c.e.ny cream.

you guys seem so excited about that. [laughter] so i went to the historical society because i wanted to have a fun time but also what was advertised was this former head created three hundreds of anatomically correct woodent' trolls is just as horrifying as you think and i have to go see these creepy murderer dolls you don't call them murderer dolls. but while i was there there was a whole floor of pianos and organs from all the closed up churches in that county alone and it was a couple of months after my own church closed being a writer and narcissistic thought i should wwrite about this because timeline wise now were earing nearing the end of 2015 to the

beginning of 2016 there is a sociological three places there's work and family and what's? the third? suffer so many people it was church so what i noticed in my own life i wasn't going anymore i was refusing to go but i want to have brunch instead that as many religion. blood he marries. that's the thesis of the book. [laughter] kidding. and the centerpieces the church and it's now closed or nobody goes to that church anymore because they are all driving 50 miles away to go to church in omaha, they just don't gous there anymore i was

use online - - i was asking about my own life and the heartland and middle america. so i wrote for the right before the caucuses that it was changing as politically so this is a journal town that so many journalists have so many embarrassing things in our past we don't want to talk about it. that this is my one good take and so because i think i was onto something in the university presidentnd reached out and said you should make

this book and i said i'm not smart for academics and they said we know. it is fine. [laughter] we read your tweets. we are aware. [laughter]r] so we were working out the outline of what the book would look like and i was doing a lot of research. and then you know what happened november 2016. i ate a ham sandwich. know. that ham sandwich became president. and then i signed the book contract. so by that time america was changed, my life was changed i had turned from a mostly full-time stay-at-home mom to a full-time journalisti' a married lady to a single lady a person who started churches to a person who was very frustrated t and angry so that

is what the book explores i want to read a very small section don't worry it's not super boring i didn't do it on october 271989 just outside st. joseph minnesota joseph was kidnapped while riding his bike home from the video store the case remained unsolved for nearly 27ne years until a local man confessed in 2016. the jacob case was a moment to how minnesotans look at their small town before he disappeared people believe they were set apart or special isolated from all the crime in the cities but when jacob went missing nobody felt safe everbo

again. i heard about the case i move from south dakota to minnesota in january 2000 a girl in my high school english class told m me the story after i told her i went for walks on the path behind my house i heard other parents say his name in the invoked curfew that could happen in saint joe's the new place is safe. i have friends would be the same age as jacob if he would be allowed to live that remembered time of innocence were kids could be kids and the dangers of kidnapping and murder did not hide in the bushes of course that belief is all i statistically children have never been safer than they are now and the era will re- believe them to be t safe they were the least safe in the podcast in the dark

revealing that before jacob went missing there was an epidemic of those in the area. in 1835 there were 450 guest for every 100,000 children between age one and four today there are fewer than 30re deaths. so i think about this case often the month i spent in minnesota on a sabbatical saint joe's is a few short miles from where i'm staying i drive to the town on the way to the gym one night a friend and i go in for sandwich and a coffee it feels like a small town the rise of the college

of saintedict that's like stepping into a lost moment eating on - - after eating her dinner i was offered to walk back to my car i said i'm fine but hee, insisted it was after 9:00 o'clock on a friday night i had three blocks to walk. you thank you are safe maybe you are and maybe you are not so i will go with you. everybody once that te back people and things are always disappearing churches c closing schools consolidated. 60 percent ofhe the people here voted for trump they wanted to make america great again. again. they wanted to step back into a moment to believe there was a time. standing with his arms folded green behind him that's his land next b is a large combine

hovering above the earth that is his livelihood. he tells me he doesn't go to church as much as hee wants he has to be there so everything starts a little too late. every day he fights and gworships nothing makes me believe in god he believes in the global warming but he doesn't think we can do anything about it. mark is a big man but he feels small in thet context why do you believe in god? because if i didn't. >> too many people in this place with a constant

stabilityid this is illinois where the opa - - the opioid crisis with the department of health more people have died from the opioid drug overdose in 2014 from homicide or murder vehicle accidents. with that stress survival guide i don't thank you can get a copy explains the predicament anything to escape the anxiety and then to do something else anything else to make your ends meet the snowball has started and it is a cycle of struggle fewer of 7 percent of rural workers are employed in agriculture but directly influencing how they

think and act and to shepherd the church into a new era they note that even in those areas that was pervasive throughout middle america and a belief in rothe south and it's a worldview that redefines as survive all. the narrative is making do not marked by achievement to make advances rather than financial ones. of the fatalistic language survival when you yourself are barely holding on cracks that world of survival is the

anemic place of holding on sometimes the biggest freedom is your fear of letting go. it's a language i'm familiar with that has that conservative christianity and the ideology that says the world is bad so i tend to my own garden and have faith in jesus but the political ideology the that embraces the inevitable that looks out only for those things that are believed to be an individual control which sounds nice but really is just the call to fuck you to love your neighbors as yourself. they voted for donald trump in 2016 in fact it wouldn't be hard to argue under obama it was great again but nobody feelse that way something more than monetary gain more than

better trade deals are the politicalor cli so even if things were good they never trusted it but then the morality was bad or if they say abortion and birth control. it was just a fluke. they go away too easily with that mentalityty born on the reliance mark longed for the days when his father was a farmer. . . . .

obesity and mental illness. while drug and alcohol use overall are slightly higher in those areas, use among young people in rural areas is significantly higher. i was aware of this acoustics as i traveled through the midwest and i often mention them in conversation. everyone thought i was wrong even when i spoke to the authors of the book that told me this. they were the architects of a class designed to assist ministers in understanding rural culture. the passage in the book that he wrote were those statistics

located for him to even consider the possibility, but he challenged the methodology of the research. [laughter] basically when it comes to the nostalgia of the cognitive dissonance between what is true and what we want to be true is on fulll display. i will read oneas last section. we go back to st. john's. i went to a lot of mass. i'm not catholii am not catholii love how spooky catholicism is. [laughter] like nothing is weirder than transubstantiation. i see so many people mobbing. it's geared, and you are supposed to literally believe it. sign me up. [laughter] i love it. so walking across the st. john's

campus one sunday i picked a red berry off the bush and had come early to northern minnesota in three weeks i was there as a visitor on the campus there was new ibiza two snowballs that dovered the earth only to quickly melt. snow was a shroud over the ugly death of winter when it melts the gray earthth is again revealed. i saw them because it was the first beautiful day for so long and i was walking slowly. sitting in a benedict mass overwhelmed me with its sense of eternity. they seem to be part of an eternal community each one a continuation of a 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 liturgy that didn't need me. i felt like i've been immersed into and eternal landscape of faith, the same feeling that comes over me as i drive across the midwest as if i'm yielding

assault of asultry place that we that doesn't need me that will continue long after i'm gone that resists the push of humanity and an eternal and relentless existence land meets sky immortal purchase a moral, so much to see and so much i has lost. it had been before the war iv i would be leaving the campus soon where i had been writingee this book and i would have to return to my children, my friends and the rest of my life. it would be the holidays to muscle through and by the way i'm getting divorced in this section. helpful information. that's the war. there would be the holidays to muscle through and relatives to answer to from a broke for my bn marriage. i'd have to move out of my house, start a new life. each thing was so overwhelming i couldn't even take a list. instead i walked slowly and looked at various on a brush and i picked one. i've always been warned against white berries and my mother told

me nature's brightness was a warning of bitterness a protection for the seeds inside that these areas are not poisonous themselves it is the small black seeds on the insides.th pine needles also fall off a highly allergic to pollen so small it can filter through a window screen. they are not just for cattle and horses an and are planted as a barrier to keep the roaming out. yet all is not death with it. abstracts of the european were used in early chemotherapy drugs which killed cancer cells to save lives. ancient mythology holds because of the poison of the plant it is a symbol of death but there's also evergreens, a symbol of eternal life. because they are ambivalent symbology that they are often found in churchyards. so many boring books i quote. antiquities of curiosities of the church published in 1897, that was a fun book, they wade

into the compounding symbol and i am not going to read the whole part because you guys would die and there is a baby crying. the baby is like stop with the history of trees. [laughter] but he basically says that as an emblem of mortality, of immortality. the death and life all in one tree that i wasn't thinking of this when i picked the very, i was thinking of the broken pieces of my h life i would have to pick up when i go home. i was looking for a way out so i squished the seed out of the berry onto the ground and immediately regretted it. i am allergic to them a pimply. my face was aching for the rest of the day from sinus pain. nostalgia works like this it is a protection but a poisonous one. it offers a shield of weaponryd but often turns on those who touch it.uc it's both everlasting and a harbinger of death. robert blair memorialized it in

his column cheerle and unsocial plants that wants to dwell with epitaph sandworms with ghosts andt- visionaries beneath the cold moon as the team reports and perform domestic grounds no other mary meant treaty as buying. what fun, right? i imagine boyer writing this and shaking his fist, his face also probably aching with allergies man and nature andte eternal battle. when i see mark i feel the same overwhelming sense that i did on that sunday. the cathedral of the sky with the church and a part of something bigger here and we both feel that, we are both lost trying to stake our claims in the struggle between us and nature. nature will always win but we wrestle anyway fighting life and that our bodies throbbing after reaching out to touch beauty.

that is 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 go into eight balls to the wall. i don't know if i can say that on c-span. [laughter] [inaudible] >> is 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 the history even if you are not a religious person so much if you

bless the church there's parts of your life that are defined by that and one of the things that didn't make it into the book was fun as i spen if i spent a coups with some humanists in cedar rapids, a little humanist group. they are so lovely but it cracked me up because i went and it was just bible study but instead ofe the bible we were talking about what was in the news. when i wa was there they didn't sing songs but i was told like sometimes they sing songs but like woody guthrie or something. [laughter] i was like it so funny you are just like a church at a church of yourself which is fine and wonderful and beautiful and they do amazing things that i do

think what i found is that ospirituality isn't absent even if it takes on a different form in our lives so there has been much 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 is a heartache. it's the centers of the community. it's happening on the football field. sports is a type of religion for americans. it's happening online. so many people are finding communities of faith were at human connection online, and facebook groups and applications, kids use apps, so aose were a couple of things i realized, yes. hopefully that answers your

question. >> i was wondering if you have any conclusion with thetw overlp of religious life and caucus life. the caucus mentality where we just roll our eyes while he stands out all of our tables. [laughter] who is cleaning that one up. so,he here's the thing, but one thing i really hope people take away as a take away from the book is the way that religion in america works is that it is so inseparable from the way our communities are organized. have you ever wondered why, maybe this doesn't happen in dc but in much of america schools

do not hold events on wednesday nights because of this church might. it's just a thing that happens. there is so many default modes because so many of our communities and the social structure, political social structure is deeply impacted by religion so when you talk about like the venn diagram, like here's the diagram and it's just one big nasty half circle so i'm saying is i g don't have a great answer, it is a hot mess. politics can feel a little bit like religion but what is interesting is most people just don't care at all, the rate of involvement in the caucuses were low most people live their life and don't even know until one day you are sitting in a café and it goes to the brim.

this is a dumb story i shouldn't tell it, but there is a town called mount vernon which is close to where i live candidates love to stop their because it is a charming small town and easy access from the interstate. we were getting ready, me and my friend she's ver she is very poy involved and i will not doubt her here but we were going to go in there and she gets ready to push the door open and she says god dammit if i walk in there and he's standing on one of those tables, so help me i just want one night and we opened it and it was fine but it was such a perfect iowa code to the evening as the season warms up.

>> if you have a question please use the microphone because we are recording. >> in your research in the midwest are you finding that it's the mainline churches that are struggling while evangelical ones are getting better or do you not find that? >> so yes, sure but also no. next question. [laughter] there is an interesting thing about religious research where there are these arguments like when groups are conservative and fanatical they attract more adherence and this is a distinctly american thing. i know you all think you wouldn't join a cold but i

guare i can come up with a cold everyone would join. we've been told whawe have of bo because we love comfortability. sothe problem very smart academs have said this and then just rephsi it in a dumb way that they have been like when religious groups get more fanatical they get more adherence but also as they get more liberal, the kind of split apart and lose adherents. i was very depressed by this because i do not want christianity to just be crazy fanatical overtime. i e-mailed some of the men who had these theories like are you sure, can we just discussed this and he said it looks like that in the research because if religion is going to get more open it's harder to track

because they are just more inviting. it's a little bit like a misnomer so yes, it does feel stronger. about 80% will believe it's very small percentages of them go to church so there's a huge group of people that say they are spiritual but don't quite go to church so they are not evangelical, where are they? right here. yes and no is the easy answer to the question. >> first a comment for my wife who can't be here she is currently on a cruise in the bahamas with a bachelor party with midwesterners i'm sure it will be interesting. [laughter] >> sunburn. >> a lot of very pale people.

first the complementhe from her she told me to tell you your book is the first she has read about the midwest that she can see her own experience in. and as a person of the two coasts and now in the midwest it is great to see more stories about the midwest sort of come into america's consciousness socomplement. and then from another person who couldn't make it tonight, she's also a writer her question is basically did your writing cause change throughout your book going through your interviews, did interviewing sort of change what your bookes became? >> i just wanted to acknowledge

that you got up here and did two things for women, thank you. that's feminism. thank you. [laughter] sorry, just love that. absolutely i did a lot of research and travel even before making the outline for the book so that informed it and then after it was like a very broad outlineither a broadoutline likt the internet. it did change it. the only chapter i did end up adding throughout the process was the chapter on football because every time i talk to like a minister they are like football is our biggest competitor and i'm like are you sure about that. i ai'm not like a sports persono i just really didn't want to write about football.

i'm going to get kicked out of football for writing this but i didn't want to go to the iowa hawkeye football game, i didn't want to tailgate. so many activities are liquids drink beer inn the cold. that's what tailgating is accepted is like at two in the morning or something because they get up super early to get a good spot so you can stand outside in the coldau and drink miller high life which is the champagne of beers and i love it, no disrespect, but a lot of disrespect to the early morning. so i didn't want to do it. that is the one thing that was added but what must be changed for writing in the book is that it wasn't supposed to be so personal and then it just got really messy and that is the only way that i know how to handle the survey was the

biggest change. i think halfway through the writing process i was like i have to put my divorce in the here so those were the biggest things did you look into the south to see if it was like the midwest because at least for me, for politically, the south seems really far behind. >> i limited it because i got the smallest advance in the entire world. if i had do gotten the more moni would have been all around. i loved a road trip so i was just so excited to drive around and eat gas station breakfast

food but 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 really big country and each place is its own place and i do think there has been a lot already so many wonderful books written about the south and the states, but i didn't feel like that had been done for the midwest, so i was very happy to narrow it down on the place and location, but i do just want to kind of back up and say let's not call it backwards behind. each place that we have stereotypes are so more complex than we give them credit for coming and especially in the south, like so many liberation theology ideas and these really

forward thinking movements have arisen out of states and churches in the south, so i would just yet there are so many great books about it already. thank you. >> my confession is i have not read your book, but anecdotally, what are the main reasons you find people are leaving the church? >> d.they are mad. they are mad about sexism, racism. the church is one of the few places in america where it's totally fine to just be like the quiet, you are a woman. still do that but we try to be low key about it. so like in the church, they just don't. people are done with that.

there's a reason people are leaving the church. there is an idea that everybody used to go to church all the time. that really only happened at a specific time during the cold war because that is what americans did because we are not communists, but really like even in the 1930s barely 40% of people went to church so the whole idea of people leaving the church is more like we might just be corrupting from the cold war. thanks. i'm actually not from this area, i'm from west virginia from an extremely conservative place so don't tell me outside. i come from a city 26 people in

one day die from opioids and the main epidemic stems from huntington west virginia if you've ever seen any of those documentaries. but my grandfather has a neat feature for 60 years. he's g been fired from eight different churches for his beliefs anywhere from allowing someone to be a part of the church who drank and allowing women to read scripture so, my question was during your research do you think in this type of christian community churches who are trying to be more accepting can survive? >> personal thank you so much for talking and sharing. that's so interesting to hear

about your grandfather and it sounds like he is like a really cool guy doing some reallyfa had work inside of a place that is very resistant to change. i think that is dominating the culture right now is the idea that when we see christian, what comes to our mind is in evangelical man who is like mid-50s and upper middle clas class. that is what dominates our idea. it was from the progressive churches in the south like dorothy day.

when we only privilege one voice over another, we fail to realize that there are so many people like your grandfather n out thee doing the work, try to get change and it might feel like you are a g loan that you are actually part of a grand tradition sometimes you've just got to burn them down. i don't mean that literally. i am not actually advocating arson. not actually, talk to me later. but, like here is the thing. if yourr church doesn't affirm, leave. it's 2019. it's too late. we are not going to have this conversation.in isst go.

to be a person of faith is to do this one thing but thank you. your grandfather sounds awesome. >> we talk about religion which is at the center of a lot of the communities. what made you the most optimistic and what made you with the most pessimistic?

she just had her birthday the other day. happy birthday. she is what makes me, she is what i found makes me optimistic because here she is, a 100-year-old super religious and in so many ways very conservative, but she's also like some things we are doing in america are super wrong and we need to stop doing this and the president is bad and i am like you, evelyn. that and what makes me hopeful is that again our ideas because we have this idea in the midwest

but it's like these old farmers sitting in cafés about how much they love the policies and that is literally never happened, he does not exist. they want america to be a better place and they are searching and struggling with the same questions we all are, so that makes me hopeful is what is the other part that i hate. i would like casey's general store better. pcs is like old money gas station. i don't hate anything about it. i love the place i live and there are things i am deeply troubled by that all things are complex and nuanced so as i am

talking i realized i hate silence and churches that are just quiet and when people sit around and say i just don't want to be political right now. she's like please, i'm just a male person. stop yelling at me. so that is what i hate is the complexity. i first got to know your work in the excerpt or the passages are not that bad. they tended to minimize or work around them is which strikes mee as super relevant to the topic

of the decline of the american church and i found myself wondering, i mean my perspective from the standpoint of psychology is when you have ati crisis you either fight, flight or freeze and my perception is that the churches are not really fighting this epidemic they are either freezing saying nothing to see here or they are fleeing thugh denial and i wonder if that is how it came uin your research and pricing. >> there were a lot. there are places that are completely silent that don't want to talk about it. it's fine we just want to talk about jesus. there are those like let's just get into it. what i started to see was more of the people that have beenwa silence before were now no

longer quiet. there's also fight, flight, freeze or get free and i think i see more of people getting free like i'm done with these things. i'm going to do my own thing and i'm done with the fact. that. like start your own coming guys. i want to encourage young women out there to start your own cold. [laughter] crack that glass ceiling. but yes, so it is a little -- all of them i have a chapter about all these ministers who have been quiet before the election and grappling with do we talk now because there are these pulpits where a lot of ministers are more liberal than their congregations which isn't

necessarily the stereotypes you would say is happening but there are mixtures of reactions in its different and we will see. i don't have a crystal ball and i'm not interested in doing another bad take. but thank you. that is such a smart question. >> i feel like the answer is about generally held we talk about the challenges versus the actual topic of violence in the church. >> you want to talk about sexual violence in the church. i understood it as a question about like how our churches responding to politics. yes, sexual violence in the church, they are not talking about it and that is a huge,

huge problem. even the super liberal congregations don't talk about it and i've written about this many years ago i wrote an articlee about how sexual violence persists in the church because people will go to their alministers who are not trainedr are not mandatory reporters and will just be like okay we will just go with it from here instead of getting people help and that perpetuates the cyclesd of violence. and assaults and gaslighting. it is such a huge problem and it makes me very upset and i don't know what the answer is because literally any time there is some movement anyrd time they write a story like they had a sex scandal and maybe this will change everything but you never hear anything about it ever again and it gets so swept up and i think this is the problem of power and privilege.

from everyone not even their own structures and assist less than 1% less than 1% are women deciding what's best in its actively engaging so yes thank you for pushing back against that. you wanted me to yell at churches. [laughter] we are going to limits to these three questions.

one of my favorite things about your writing style is the blend of personal research i think you do it really deathly and that is something i struggle with as well i will research something than the essay turns into something different than i wanted it to be. i'm fine with it but i don't want to finish any of them and my question is what is your favorite thing that you found and researching thinresearchingt ultimately didn't fit in with the buck >> she goes around and performs almost a funeral ritual and it

sounded so beautiful and interesting and i wanted to follow along with it and i thought maybe i could write an article for it but i just couldn't make that happen. i was still really, really love to see that. it sounds cool and weird and spooky and who knows that there are so many of them. we are running out of time. i will tell you later. >> you didn't say anything about why your church failed.

what did you learn from that after four years of trying? >> you need to have unity of vision and purpose and what i learned is as often happens. i learned to be charismatic and the personality because it is a way of calling a sociopath a nice guy. that is a lot of what i learned and i also learned some things cannot be compromised on, there are some devices that cannot be bridged nor should they so that is a couple of things i've learned. there are so many.

i was happy and sad when ours went on for. thank you. i am hoping we can end on some advice as it gets to election season. i am from northwest iowa and like everybody i know i didn't purge my entire facebook group or lives there so i'm seeing a lot of really crazy stuff. steve king territory. you know all about it. what resonated most is when you talked about the lack of belief that everything was more peaceful and safer and better ten, 20 years ago were in the last two years and i think people are reconciling that.

don't fight with your uncle on social media. i undefended line. i don't think they can be lost. i think when you are engaging with the people that you know and that you loved, it has to happen in israel and a mess a ry and i don't think that you can go into any situation proselytizing even if it is pleasese vote for not trump whih

sounds good but i don't think you can approach a relationship that way. i am a mess and that is the only way that i know how to be so perhaps that is the only way. but you can be all of yourself and say like this sucks and it really hurts my feelings. itit 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 just talk all the time.

make them some cookie bars and it all goes away. it's the midwestern way. [laughter] i guess i'm done. thank you so much for coming. [applause] i think i'm signing some books.

it is a beautiful day in washington