tv Tara Burton Strange Rites CSPAN July 18, 2020 10:00am-11:01am EDT
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>> the presidents from public affairs available now in paperback and e-book, present biographies of every president organized by their ranking and noted historians, from best to worst, and features perspectives to the lies of our chief executives and leadership styles. visit our website, c-span.org/thepresidents. .. we are so happy to have you here before we launch into a discussion i would like to share a little bit of history. there founded in 19207 over on fourth avenue. stretching from union square
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was an original 48 stores until 93 years it was sole survivor now run by third generation want to thank all of you for your support for our community of authors, booklovers, without that we would not be here today. tonight we are excited to have with this celebrate the release of her new book, strange rights new religions for a world tar is a contributing editor of the american interest, the colonists at the new service on the former staff reporter at fox.com bird she has written on religion with national geographic, the "washington post", the "new york times", and holds a doctorate in theology from oxford which is also the author of the novel social creature. joining tar to discuss her new book is ross. he is a columnist for the "new
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york times" op ed page. as the author of to change a church bad religion and privilege and co-author of a brand-new party before joining the "new york times" is a senior editor for the atlantic, he is the critic for national review and he cohosts the "new york times" podcast. he lives in new haven with his wife and three children so without further ado please welcome me -- talk with me tar and rust. so thank you so much for joining us this slightly disembodied way of talking about a book that may be appropriate to the subject matter. and tar, thank you for letting me interrogate you about future religion in the united states and beyond. so a typical thursday night thank you so much for being here. so just another thursday night
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in america. i want to make two comments the first is an hour air of covid i have now done enough zoom events to know sometimes people are more hesitant to ask questions when they are typing in questions than they would be at a real event when you can stand up until the author why she's wrong about everything in the world. [laughter] [inaudible] you have to listen to me ask questions for the entire hour and hopefully we will get 15 or 20 minutes of your questions at the end. that is the first point the other this is a challenging time for everyone and authors are on the lease challenge in many ways but putting out a book on a moment like this is a difficult fingered i had a book come out i was lucky enough to squeeze in a couple weeks of promotion before all the bookstores closed.
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i want to encourage you, if you are listening, don't just buy the book from the strand obviously been encourage your friends to buy the book you make of the bestseller seller deserves to be. without further ado let's start in with a big dumb question. this is a book about new religions for a godless world. that's the title. so is our world really godless? and if not or if so what religions are filling that void? so spoiler alert. no we do not live in a godless world. that's roughly the argument i make. i want to drill out the distinction that when we talk about a secular agent we often want to do or a world without religion, what are we really talking about?
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a couple of background statistics, americans say they are unaffiliated which is. [inaudible] about 36% of people born in america after 1985 identify with religion so huge increase. all of these nuns 72% say they believe in some sort of higher power 20% actually say they believe in the god of the bible which is the term. we are not necessarily talking about atheists although about 6% of the population and they tend to underreport. we are talking up people for whatever reason are alienated by institutional religion, organized religion who feel they have nothing to offer them.
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who may believe in the traditional god still have one form of faith but are unwilling as a limited of itself in time of spiritual but not religious. from our broader category. it includes not just spiritual but not religious which are most visible of the phenomena but those who do identify with a particular religious tradition. whose personal practices are more eclectic. some personal statistics i'd like to give to give an idea of how much more widespread it is is christians who believe in reincarnation which is not what we say one would associate with christian orthodoxy. we are living in an age, i
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would argue where religious life, the components of religious life meaning perfect community ritua ritual, willard relating them in a different way we are mixing and matching. there is a sense in which we are all sort of the endpoint of this as we are all making our own religions. not just issues of traditional but wellness culture, fandom, political activism. witchcraft wicked is among the fastest-growing religions in america and so on and so forth. so think one sort of initial response to a description of your thesis that someone well-versed in american history might have is how new is all this?
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because after all there is certainly nothing more american than being entrepreneurial and setting up a church of one. every kid in high school english class at least back when i went to high school was assigned the collective works of emerson. you get a certain kind of in individualized religion there. and then there is intuitional religion that you talk about in the book. what is the same and what is different? what we have in common with 19th century american what is change in last 30 or 40 years? >> sure. what i call intuitional -ism is a catchall term for religious practices and beliefs that focus inward the gut, the individual, the feeling versus institutionalism.
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your church or external forces. we have seen quite a pendulum going back and forth of religious life these outcroppings institutional approaches to faith the various great awakening, tent revival but birth which is huge in the 1860s onward which is the secret self-help movement were basically you think about it hard enough it will happen. when she became hugely influential lead to a whole policy industry of self-help books. there is a spiritualism the increase of ouija boards and contacting the dead. there's also evangelical survivals within the christian tradition where the narrative
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was often something like i know the church has become more christianity has become -- nobody really believes in them where they go through the motions you go to church on sunday and it doesn't really matter. we need to look for a personal relationship with god. something more intense and intimate. there are various countercultural religions of the 1960s. that is absently not new. if anything it was a pendulum swing back and forth forever for however many hundred years. but where i think something distinct, new about this great awakening is the internet of eisai were trying to gather in this way at the time. i like to say what the printing press was the promise to reformation with the creation of a model of consuming information that would in many ways intimate inward your reading a book to
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internalize in such a way that one may draw the connection to the protestant overall. i would argue seeing these new religions being the religions of the internet age where we are all not just consumers, we are not just readers, we are also inclined to culturally think of ourselves as creators, to think of ourselves as people who have or want to have ownership to some i harkens back her own traditions but with added internet itself. i think the hunger to create, to be involved, to have ownership and our stories has made us all the more resistant
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to perhaps orthodox ways or traditionally orthodox ways of experiencing doctrine. i think as well our particular moments in the era of personal branding made as cognizant of our model based on her choices. what papers or. reporter: , movies we watch, what we tweet creates an odd public-private identity. i think within this culture is an odd constrain of what app am i using to meditate. what purchases am i making. my getting a sweet salad i think wellness culture is the biggest most obvious example of this. i think the way in which are conspicuous and less conspicuous consumption is seen to define suspicion the age of the algorithm where
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they are getting narrower and narrower contributes to the hyper. >> i want to pressure a little bit on the point you made at the end. when the interesting things about the book it is at the core you're talking about practices experiments. [inaudible] some side of religious or spiritual right. and now there is those practices in various forms in american life. the newer definition of new religion spreads outward and encompasses as you were just saying consumer culture personalize aspects everything holistic and personalized
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wellness culture and so on. so convince me as someone may be a little inclined to skepticism of that to fit the world of brands and that kind of self cultivation under the umbrella of religion or religious practice? >> i would argue there is a theology that shared by so many and particularly those that are consumer base and i talk about it is the theology of what i will call best self -ism. the idea just spiritual command to improve in a certain way that i would argue the collapse of distinction between the effort a purity you get from having the right green juice with minimal amount of toxins. looking at the ten step beauty
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routine. with the language of self-care the word self-care does come from a more political place it is in the wellness paradigm that it's founded. there's a sense in which if we are not taking care of ourselve ourselves, we are not putting in the effort to be the best in a certain way, it happens to make us prettier or sensibly prettier and fit or have a beauty complexion or what have you, there is a kind of purity in so doing. the elements of bad there taken from prosperity gospel tradition the idea that more
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broadly your job as a human being on this earth is to be your truest self your best self to release yourself from repression, ways society is acted upon you and kind of figure out who you really are is, i argue coded as a moral spiritual good. energy is popular wellness circles it's popular i think there are visions of that bitter course more political and much more outward looking sort of the capitals version of it the branded version of it does tend to equate personal fulfillment with a
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kind of vibration of the right frequency on the right energy that i find incredibly interesting. i'm quite revealing. >> and going to church? >> yes i would say so. that said is a brand we buy things and does not have a community aspect in a way parts direct i do all of my shopping there. [inaudible] cement go-ahead go on. >> i think the sole cycle is even better example because it combines a lot of the goop metaphysic, aesthetic and sense of purpose with a community and a ritual that let you experience that from the moment. went to a few cycle classes wish i could say they were all for research but they were not. as a community or a soul, a
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tribe, a pact it says it right there and then all the sign say things like more energy affects your neighbor energies please do this out of the other thing that is in a way big nebulous language to talk about or to blend what could be an uncomfortable fitness class to burn some calories into something with an aura of spiritual attainment. what's your doing is good for you it's good for the universe and your goal in it. >> so one thing that has struck me that i think fits with your argument about the difference between the early 21t century is just absence of
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institutionalization. that the united states has a lot of the same kind of spiritual entrepreneurs and would be gurus we had in the victorian area enchant era the h century they don't seem as likely to found things we call churches. so just said marianne williamson in the presidential campaign. she is a pre-internet feature and rises to prominence in the 1980s. she has updated new thought kind of figure. felix and the 19th century there would be at church and it would not be huge but it would have 200,000 people there and beat chapels around the country. that does not seem to happen to anything especially over the last couple of
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generations. you have a little bit of stuff in the 70s and 80s but especially lately. how much of that is the internet? how much of that is an ambient skepticism of institutions why doesn't gwyneth paltrow have -- i guess connie west is sunday services boys in that verb goop? >> i am not sure it would not be successful at least initially. i think the label of church or the label of making something at church is, as they say met with the degree of suspicion i think as well the fact there is a willingness to mix and match that we millennium, me personally, so much of the
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contemporary religious landscape is about that kind of precise individualization so in the and we can't get away from the endpoint being we are all the high priest of her own church. i think this is true much more broadly in our religious institutions are civic ones and political ones journalistic media institutions as well unfortunately but i do think there is think that suspicion doesn't lend itself to such a focus. i want to be careful here i think there is an easy narrative we can go to that says kids these days with their selfies there so narcissistic i think that is attempting way that one could go about reading the language situation i think what we are seeing is not necessarily a
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story of narcissism but institutional failure. i think it's perfectly reasonable and could be understandable if you're institutions have failed you. if you don't think you can trust the media, the scientific establishment the political system the academic system, so on and so forth it makes perfect sense to turn inward to rely on yourself and rely on your own gut instincts. and desires and affinities and feelings as authoritative. at least you know -- you might be lying to yourself in a broader theological way, you might have slightly more trust you're aware of yourself than other people. >> so i guess to push on that point a tiny bit, is the sustainable? this is a book about her whole culture but it is obviously focused i guess you could say on people younger than me i just turned 40 so millennial's and generations.
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these are people who were conducting experiments in religion in a time they are conducting experiments in relationships and professional experiments and so on. i think you can tell a plausible story where these are the children of baby boomers who had their own rebellion you obviously talk a little bit about these kind of perks. [inaudible] the generational turnover picking one step outside of the door one step inside the door. they've gone to the 50 or 60 years of life that awaits after 20s the communal forms of religion. the solidarity of religious
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institution not clear goop or soul cycle provides the role that a bar mitzvah or first communion plays and so on. so obviously this is more in the prophecy line. what does this look like and 25 years for the people conducting these experiments now? >> guest: you're absolutely right the more inward looking not just self focus but present. those are the things that are on the table. i think we'll see a hunger for solidarity pure self-interest version of these religions. that can't offer elsewhere. i think we will see -- i'm interested more in particular with the social justice as a movement in part because what
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does offer its ideology of community and ideology of solidarity. there is a real hunger for. i am interested to broadly to talk about this in a chapter and free love is a continuation of perfectionism in the 19th century. but ways in which, as a term that's been using the clear entering in the community's family. people who are or marginalized by her experience of marginalization from traditional religious institutions. people who for whatever reason are alienated with civic institutions whose family of origin, they might not be in touch with the same way might be able to find one another. think there is a helpfulness as a result of the tribal is
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asian you find on the internet where they can find like-minded peopl people. or they can find communities there are options for solidarity of coming together for the creation ritual that may not look like organized religion as traditionally practiced but nonetheless offer that sense of community. i will always remember a woman i interviewed before starting the book who lost her husband unexpectedly quite young. wanted his friends to celebrate and commemorate his life that was specific to him. the friends got together and they played music from his payment videogame there is a service that was very much designed about religious minds
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but rather a long who this person was, what his life was like. he wanted to play a video game they played together he is not able to do that. with people she met online through this game played this game in his memory. she reported as hugely important to her. i think that is an example of how these communal bonds and the desire for the communal bonds can survive the reshaping. i'm perhaps the pure selfish inward -- i'm being really mean about this i hope they don't hate me. the end of her nest of a certain culture shall we say is an example. >> so let's drill down on relie relief. were talking about community.
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trying but the core of what were talking about has always been relief. there's a lot of sociological debate on how important the statements and don't they take the religious identity from community it's also true the major roles of religion have been structured around actual metaphysical claims about the universe. i always ask this question i will ask it again that radiates through a lot of the more super naturally oriented experiments which is how much do people really believe in what they're doing? specifically when you're talking about neopaganism, the occult, people who are reaching back or reinventing free christian non- they have demons urging witchcraft, some of it seems like play some
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have real belief how do you see the question of belief playing out there? >> belief is very difficult to quantify. difficult to disentangle from any of these other processes. i think as we say of me arguing the book there are many definitions of religion as scholars of religion. they are the medical truth claims yes or no. but i think the truth is something a little bit more complicated. if you affirm something to be true that kind of devalues you create, you reaffirm the truth of that within a community. it's a social reality that is a little bit more complex that is a little more inward there
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just pretending to get along. kind of the straw man version of what a community model would look like. so the acts of faith. it could be a precursor to faith or a spiritual awareness. rather than simply being an either or, or saying belief has to exceed virtual community. >> so, there is also than the way these things sort of feedback into political life, right? i think one of the more interesting aspects of the neopagan thing that happens in american culture is it has
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left a wing and right wing manifestations. their chapters in the book that follow what we call pagan threads two very different political cultural destinations unit talk a little bit about that? >> the first and perhaps most prominent example that i broadly the terms are a bit there is the religion of wiccan itself but my not belong to a covenant et cetera. kind of a rough umbrella of progressive witchcraft or progressive which culture is hugely significant phenomenon. so on 2014 when he read the book which is of america's identified about a million self identified which is in the country that said it was the fastest-growing tradition. that was before 2060 which i
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would argue is where it all changed. so i think in the wake of donald trump election, the march in particular, and the feminist movement around that. i think there is a real interest on the part of interested progressives, young progressives particularly young women who found within the imagery of witchcraft a conscious transgression of the nasty woman, the difficult woman, the woman who was sexually in charge of her liberating in part because it was in opposition the way of evangelical trump alliance. which is taxing trump or kavanaugh aziz and mouth
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cathartic symbolic but spiritually real outpouring of grief, when i say spiritually real to be fair to say it's a set of language people were able to used to process their anger rather being in effect sprayed then as you say they're going completely across the political spectrum is sort of reactionary desire -- and you find this fans of jordan peterson members of men's rights groups, generally this kind of quasi- neo, watered down hyped up of let's return to good old days when the hybrid of ancient greece
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as seen through hercules legendary journeys in senior pleasantville were men were men and women were women and we all had our place in this kind of obsession for physical trends with truth of the blood there is an implicit blood and soil here i will let hang in the air. i think it is reactionary codes itself is a response to the modern world and the civilization which feminism and pc culture have destroyed is kind of desire to reclaim an imagined primal path. as a very strong interest with the wet nature says goes.
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i'll call of a kind of nature worship. it's a very different form of paganism that takes very different things from our pagan path shall we say. >> just in listening to you describe it in the figures you reference, it seems to be in parts that you can see that as kind of and gender polarization in religion. will there are mail which is and mail pagans and neopagan women, but there does seem to be a sense in a larger polarization of the sexes in our culture which manifests in politics seem to play out a little bit in this religious landscape. you could come closer to the center on say opera winfrey
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and joel o'steen are the yen and yang of the religious center in the young and yang of these extremes are the which is heck sing kavanaugh and there's reflects certain ways there's religious failure that you would expect a successful religious community to socialize admen and women which maybe is not happening? what he think about that? so i think it's a much broader failure than religion i think when you look at the wide range of these groups. and i don't think they are exactly comparable. i think there's quite a bit of that for them for the which is, that said, i think what we are seeing a lot of find so fascinating is so many of the subjects of their ire, other than one another are the same.
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certain newspapers for example, the horrible work ager are they white supremacist patriarchal papers and i'm not naming nays, that should be struck down because they failed in that way? these are often both charges leveled against institutions more broadly. think whatever else you want to say their civic institution have failed this more broadly. not anything in particular but more broadly a sense in which, not the center but institutions that make up our lives have lost our trust. however, we may understand or
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give voice to those feelings. i would argue there is something interesting to me on how widespread the distrust is of institutional. >> i like to thank everyone has followed my instructions and asked some questions. we have 15 or 20 minutes now i'm going to take some questions out of the queue, maybe adapt them slightly using the moderator's prerogative. i will start with this question, he cites the catholic philosopher taylor the canadian author of secular age the largest book you can possibly buy and maybe possibly read. some version of what you're describing is inevitable if we get the history of the last
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500 years right since religion has been decoupled from the state they still find fullness and meaning which can only be understood in religious terms. taylor calls this a nova effect. an explosion of religious options. he defends this because it was individualistic or narcissistic. and so on. i think that dovetails and obviously doesn't dovetail with some of what you have been saying. i want to take it and briefly mention the social justice movement of black lives matter, that are dominating discussion right now. one thing that struck me about this protest is it seems like as a desire for individualism but there's also still a
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desire for a religious unity, right? it sort of striking to see some of this corporate bs. this sense is we want to live in a society where every institution, high and low, corporate and government is on board with this cause. that may push against the nova affects this may be all individualism. there is some desire to have a unified church of social justice do you see that? >> guest: yes. absolutely and that's one of the reasons, again speaking as we have during this conversation the social justice is -- work so well and it is so powerful and it is so effective because in part on the one hand -- insofar as it its current version is a version of our times. it is rooted in a degree of
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inwardness. it also offers that vision of solidarity and a common good that can be shared of a better world. i think there is something vital -- there is a hunger for something vital that i see more broadly which is a sense that our institutions should not just work in a functional way, this should be for something good. i think it is often the case that when i have read the social justice culture and religion there is a version of that i read a lot and sang as the culture or zealots or so on and so forth. i think a better way, yes it works because it is a religion it works because it can harness a real sense of meaning purpose and community and ritual that points beyond the self.
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other iterations of purely interest intuitional list. that is hard to say. in self focus, religious phenomena don't. and i do want to draw a distinction here between the social justice movement as an organic phenomenon and corporatization as indeed pretty much everything one could think of that is assumed by corporations to sell product. i want to draw the distinction of the movement in and of itself in the way it gets fed to the shredder and now certain brands are going to say the right thing at the right time and post the right instagram like candle janitors
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pepsi black lives matter pepsi added 2017. that is his own thing. >> but isn't that sort of how religious wins? if you go back to the fourth century roman world and zealots of christianity, and then have the roman aristocrats and jackrabbits who did not really care one way or another but decided. [inaudible] i am going to endow a church over here. going to act to the christian part. it seems to me that corporate virtual signaling is inseparable from the triumph of a new world being. >> that is not necessarily one
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path to victory but it could be through corporatization. i can't help but wonder though, whether an other path might be through politics? icom it like many others was rather excited about the bernie sanders campaign. i knew something i might have wondered about was slightly more hope a few months ago than now. i do wonder whether these religious nuns and particularly these progressive nuns do vote. they are actually -- in 20 states they are the single biggest religious demographic. if you think about there's 13 or 14% of the population they vote in an outside way for turnout is great we talk about
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religious nuns slot of crossover which i met 23% of americans one way which this might make its way into the culture is the ballot box. whether we are at some point might see a political experiment that takes the values and puts them into practice and sees how they work i would certainly be curious. >> this is actually one of our questions asking how do you think these new religions will affect our current parties. let me suggest the sort of darker scenario that to the extent that one of our political coalitions become sort of defined by and dominated by some version of these new religions. our other political coalition is still defined and dominated
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by what remains of chris g entity. that creates a much bigger religious divide than america has had in the past. even our civil war was inter- christian theological conflict with people having huge arguments but they were still arguing about the interpretation of the same bible, right? the vision you just set up does seem to set up a version of the culture war that in certain ways could be more profound and divisive than the one we have had for the last 30 or 40 years as christianity is slowly retreated. >> i think that's right. it's certainly a danger but another way to put that as we are in a vacuum moment. something you brought up earlier, ross, and i want to reiterate it's not a purely new phenomenon is a multi generational phenomenon. we talked about as you said
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the boomers with 1 foot out the door in terms of a kind of disillusionment in this case religious organized religion but there's a different way of doing things. as a sidebar here, i think most people who leave religious tradition do so is why the biggest predictors and indicators is how much religion is spoken of in the home. you have your nuns who weren't leaving the faith are doing so in part, kind of having witnessed a certain apathy in their own terms. there's still a bleakness or potential bleakness to this coming vacuum. i would also argue it's a long time coming. >> 's we have a question for maxine that drills down what you were just talking about. which is that you find there is anything -- any specific
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patterns in the background of people who were involved in these new movements beyond their religion in their homes tend to be more attenuated. were they likely to be lapsed even jell-o, catholic, mainline evangelicals and so on? >> in terms of churches -- rigidly white evangelical churches. on the side back under a note to black churches and white churches are pulling data differently that's why making the distinction. but at the same time at this point, the nuns come from everywhere at this point. there are not actually -- they are relatively reflective of the united states as a whole. a little whiter but not by much. as only one actual very big
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predictor that is 46% of queer people rather than 24% of the national average are religious affiliates of that's the kind of really notable and perhaps expected, given how many core people have been marginalized institutions. >> is there any big gender breakdown? just men versus women? >> slightly more women are unaffiliated over all, slightly more men are likely to say they are full on atheist or agnostic. >> and they wear fedoras? [laughter] aren't we've got about six minutes left to let me try to squeeze in a couple more questions. one question someone brings up what i mentioned religious
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coming-of-age ceremonies, the idea that colleges and college admissions and graduations fill that role. one thing we have not talked about is the harry potter phenomenon. maybe this is a chance to talk about the particular role that schools play in a search in quasireligious events like the idea -- talk for three minutes about harry potter. >> alright go. i think it's true there is a remnant we have a cultural but harry potter specifically, especially over the past week as jk rawlings has alienated quite a big potential fan base. it is so fascinating that harry potter has been a canary in the coal mines since its publication between 1987 when the first book was published until 2000 and the fourth book was published, at home
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internet in america is based on 19 million households to 100 million pizza more than a 500% increase. that dovetail -- that version of fandom and the way in which fan culture developed around it dovetails completely with the very internet culture whether does fanfiction, creation, meme memes, but the idea you could have ownership of your text. you could have ownership of the things you love which was not a model where someone came down from on high the powers that be and had the final word on what a property was. you could certainly see that in our relationship to media now the amount of shows for fan service or design for the fans that are a much bigger back-and-forth between consumer bits of information and creators of information. the idea that jk rowling
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excelled from her creation. it is not seen as hers is seen as everyone. hogwarts is often the response to rowling has about harry potter it's hogwarts is bigger than she is. we can still love these characters they belong to us. i think that tendency at large can tell us so much about the wider questions of institutionalism and weirdness and individualization are seeing at large in the book. >> the last question. let's do a post covid world question. one person says do you think in a post covid world where people are looking to find meaning and purpose and community the newer stranger face will be fast tracked? and do you think there is a
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sense in which they can be more likely to form actual communities or cults which is a word we have not used as much. one way to put it is we are seeing an 1968 moments in politics right now. the 1970s with the high tide of we are communal experiments , strange religious cults. what do you foresee after covid and maybe after donald trump? >> i think the combination of our increased ability to in awareness of the ability to gather remotely with increased awareness of reliance on one another, our need for social bonds and the loneliness of pure itemization and simultaneously both the more we track one another online but in our own houses we are privileged enough to be, and that kind of loneliness in
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itself is like increased hunger so there's absolutely we will see people gathering digitally and perhaps not to mayor able to not. i think people will be much more interested in forming intentional community especially if we get to the point of who are our bubbles, i wonder if that is something that will lend itself out may be a disembodied intention giving it's also possible there could be -- this has been fantastic but it's not the same as doing that in the flesh i think that goes double and triple for a lot of religious practices could there be an anti- international religion back lash that backlashes in flesh
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communities or comments with large vegetable gardens and some of those are very tempting i personally like that right now i think that is certainly possible i think it may be possible for these things do come about in the flesh ultimately we use the internet to get there we'll find one another online into partner alignment does not mean thus far is not ended up that way. the digital space in the promise of that will be a launching pad for people to find, seek out and find communities that may manifest themselves. >> alright it is 8:00 o'clock and i want to apologize to everyone who asked questions we did not get to. you were terrific and many
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even more wonderful questions down the queue. thank you all for joining us. again to repeat what i said at the outset i hope if you found this illuminating experience you will buy the book. by other books support the strand support your local bookstore. and as my final word since i did not say anything in my capacity as a practitioner of one of the ancient institutional faced as a roman catholic, while you're dabbling in strange new rights, stay safe out there. with that, thank you also much for joining us. >> thank you. >> here are some of the current best-selling audiobooks according to audible. topping the list is president trump's niece mary trumps critical look at the present and the trump family. too much and never enough.
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that is followed by journalist james nester's examination of the science behind how we breez breezy. after that is white fragility, robin d'angelo's exploration of the challenges of discussing race in america. then everone argues that america must choose to be antiracist and work towards a more equitable society and how to be an antiracist. and repping up the look some of the best-selling nonfiction audiobooks according to audible, is activist glendon doyle memoir, untamed. some of these authors have appeared on book tv and you can watch them online @booktv.org. so on tuesday president trump's niece, mary trump released her book that is critical of the president entitled too much and never enough. she's talked about the book with george stephanopoulos in this portion of the interview she recalls her father's death and how the rest of the trump family reacted to it so you do
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right he once had a spy of kindness. >> yes. i think he did. one of the un- forgivable things my grandfather did to donald, is he severely restricted the range of human emotion that was accessible to him. which makes it incredible. >> what you mean? >> means that certain feelings were not allowed. so light? >> like sadness. the impulse to be kind, the impulse to be generous, those things that my grandfather found soup herbalist, on manley, so your feather and gem father got very ill, deathly ill need get a call for your grandfather. remember that conversation verbatim. my grandfather got on the phone, he said your dad is sick.
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i said is it serious in these cities in in the hospital but it's not serious. okay, why my calling it 10:00 o'clock on a saturday night is not serious? that's what i sink into myself. so i said is it hard he had open heart surgery three years earlier at the age of 39 : : with strangers surrounding him. but no family >> you write that his mother went to the movies? >> yes.
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that shocked even me when i heard about it. it was bad enough, it was probably worse, honestly, that my dad's parents just sat in the library in the house waiting for a phone call, i will never know why they didn't go to the hospital to be with their son who was clearly dying. . maybe it isn't surprising that donald didn't think he needed to be there. maybe that would've looked bad to his father. and may be sitting around waiting for the phone call was too burdensome. i don't know. . i often wondered what movie did he go to see that seemed more compelling than sitting with his dying brother?
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