Speaker 1: As a baby of the eighties and child of the nineties,
Speaker 1: If George Michael taught me anything it's that you gotta
Speaker 1: have faith. And that's the theme of this episode. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodski. On
Speaker 1: February twenty sixth, Pew Research, one of the premier think
Speaker 1: tanks that looks at American life, put on their third
Speaker 1: Religious Landscape Study. This is a study conducted in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, twenty fourteen, and last week that examines
Speaker 1: how It's a massive study. It examines how Americans think
Speaker 1: about religion in multitude of ways, everything from raising children
Speaker 1: to praying to church attendance. It's over thirty six nine
Speaker 1: hundred people were part of the study. That's a massive,
Speaker 1: massive study. So what it defined Between two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven and twenty fourteen, these are the older studies. Christianity
Speaker 1: and daily prayer decline substantially in this country, right, and
Speaker 1: the number of people claiming to be part religiously unaffiliated
Speaker 1: climbed pretty dramatically. That trend continued all the way through
Speaker 1: their smaller studies. They have small studies between these major years.
Speaker 1: All in these smaller studies until twenty twenty. But and
Speaker 1: here's your data for this episode. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: seventy eight percent of Americans reported being Christians. The number
Speaker 1: fell to seventy one percent by twenty fourteen and declined
Speaker 1: further to sixty two percent by twenty twenty. Likewise, number
Speaker 1: of Americans who said they prayed daily went from fifty
Speaker 1: eight percent in two thousand and seven to forty eight
Speaker 1: percent in twenty twenty, a ten point drop. Americans have
Speaker 1: been getting more secular every day until twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: that's when the really interesting part of this survey happened.
Speaker 1: Since twenty twenty, Christianitian America has remained stable and even
Speaker 1: increased Among some segments of the population. The boomers, Zoomers,
Speaker 1: and millennials are having a bit of a religious revival.
Speaker 1: The number of people born between two thousand and two
Speaker 1: thousand and six who reported to pray daily rose from
Speaker 1: twenty percent to thirty percent. It's only ticked up slightly
Speaker 1: from millennials born in the eighties and baby boomers in
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, but they all so a flight increase,
Speaker 1: a noticeable increase. These are the generations that are most
Speaker 1: likely to also see an increase in reporting that they
Speaker 1: identify as Christians since twenty twenty. For Zoomers once again,
Speaker 1: those born between two thousand and two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: the numbers identifying as Christian went from forty five percent
Speaker 1: to fifty one percent. For millennials from the eighties, it's
Speaker 1: going from fifty to two to fifty six percent, and
Speaker 1: for older gen xers and young baby boomers going in
Speaker 1: the sixties and fifties, the number one from seventy two
Speaker 1: to seventy six percent. That's an average of a five
Speaker 1: point increase in those three generations. And while that's not massive,
Speaker 1: it's not like a thirty point increase. It's not this
Speaker 1: you know, religious revival, it's in any like you know,
Speaker 1: massive way, but it's a it's the first time in
Speaker 1: almost twenty years that there's been any reversal or any
Speaker 1: slowing down of mass secorism. That's worth noting. And while
Speaker 1: young people are still far less Christian than their parents,
Speaker 1: Zoomers went from being plurality agnostic in twenty twenty to
Speaker 1: being majority Christian. So what happened in twenty twenty, Like,
Speaker 1: why was that the thing? Why are did it spark
Speaker 1: the change. Some of my readers onlines that it was
Speaker 1: because of immigration by President Biden. After all, did let
Speaker 1: in millions and millions of people demographically change this country,
Speaker 1: possibly permanently and unless we get the mass deportations, really
Speaker 1: you know, kicking big time. But these millions of peoplend
Speaker 1: so maybe they changed the country, and that it's a
Speaker 1: valid point. So I looked into it. The overall Christian
Speaker 1: population America was sixty one percent white, thirteen percent Black,
Speaker 1: eighteen percent Hispanic, and three percent Asian. Now look at
Speaker 1: the overall composition of the US, which is fifty eight
Speaker 1: percent white, twenty percent Hispanic, thirteen percent Black, and six
Speaker 1: percent Asian. Basically, America's Christians look like the rest of America.
Speaker 1: It's not overwhelmingly you know, Hispanic or overwhelmingly African. It's
Speaker 1: it looks just like us. And I think people forget
Speaker 1: that while America has grown more secular in the last
Speaker 1: twenty years, so has the rest of the world, including
Speaker 1: Latin America and even Africa. Like the image that we
Speaker 1: have of like regions of Latin America where there's like
Speaker 1: nine kids running around, you know, in a household, Crucifixes
Speaker 1: in our lady of wild up statutes. That doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: That doesn't exist anywhere, not in any big way. The
Speaker 1: most of Latin America has a birth rate way below
Speaker 1: fertility level. Some parts of Latin America have a fertility
Speaker 1: oh you know, have fewer kids than we do in America.
Speaker 1: So the study that the study is actually as They
Speaker 1: also found out that people born outside the United States
Speaker 1: actually have a less religious affiliation than those born in
Speaker 1: the United States, which does make sense when you remember
Speaker 1: that Asians Asian immigrants are the least religious group of
Speaker 1: people of any demographic in the United States. So if
Speaker 1: it wasn't mass immigration that stopped the decline and create
Speaker 1: a slight resurgence in Christianity of the last few years,
Speaker 1: what was it. Some analysts said it was COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: that sparked maybe a slight religious change amongst some people.
Speaker 1: With a lot of free time and the lockdown, I
Speaker 1: think people re examine their faith. But there's a bigger story,
Speaker 1: and that's the story of young men. Young men are
Speaker 1: much more religious than they used to be. Religion was
Speaker 1: something that women always did more often than men, and
Speaker 1: that's true of the Silent generation, Baby Boomers, Gen xers Millennials,
Speaker 1: but not much for Zoomers. Young men were basically as
Speaker 1: religious as women for the very first time. Some sady
Speaker 1: is actually besides the PUC, they have young men being
Speaker 1: more religious than young women. Analysts like David Campbell, a
Speaker 1: political scientist from the University of Notre Dame. He says
Speaker 1: that young men who have also become more likely to
Speaker 1: support Donald Trump because of cultural values, are saying that
Speaker 1: they're more likely to identify as Christian. That there's an internet
Speaker 1: personalities besides like the Joe Rogan's and the Barstow's sports
Speaker 1: which are not religous at all, that have created this
Speaker 1: cultural movement to sit there and say, you know, you
Speaker 1: should at least identify as Christian because it's part of
Speaker 1: our overall political values, are our moral values. You know,
Speaker 1: people like Daily Wires hosts Michael Knowles, big big you
Speaker 1: know podcast hosts. He talks about Catholic faith a lot.
Speaker 1: Father Mike Schmitz who had a huge podcast called a
Speaker 1: Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year. There
Speaker 1: were big hits. He's a prominent person on the alternative media.
Speaker 1: And then there's even like subculture interne people, people who
Speaker 1: are not huge like those people are as far as
Speaker 1: you know, podcast hosts go and Internet people Dasha and
Speaker 1: Arika Sova. I'm probably just butchered her last name, but
Speaker 1: Dasha from Red Scare and she was on the TV
Speaker 1: show Succession. She talks about her because a lot like
Speaker 1: a lot a lot, and she has a lot of
Speaker 1: women and young men and people who are maybe like
Speaker 1: in more of the internet's subculture, but they are looking
Speaker 1: and they're listening and they're talking about it. Is this
Speaker 1: part of a permanent change? Are we just going to
Speaker 1: get a much more religious country? No, because zoomers are
Speaker 1: still way less religious than baby boomers are. So as
Speaker 1: baby boomers die off and Zoomers go into adulthood, Christianity
Speaker 1: will decrease as that time goes on. It's just a
Speaker 1: generational shift, but it's not bleeding the way that it
Speaker 1: used to be. And maybe if the door's open to
Speaker 1: some kind of revival, maybe that means something else will happen,
Speaker 1: you know, because religion matters more than just people's personal
Speaker 1: morals personal faith. There's entirely different life experiences that are
Speaker 1: happening from people who are religious than those who are
Speaker 1: not religious. Eighty two percent of people who are politically
Speaker 1: conservative say they have some kind of religion, compared to
Speaker 1: just thirty percent of liberals. Those who are religious are
Speaker 1: also more likely to babies, They're more likely to boleance
Speaker 1: it for charity. They're more likely to affiliate with other
Speaker 1: religious organizations like schools like religious schools and private schools,
Speaker 1: and homeschooling organizations. Think about this. Among thirty eight year
Speaker 1: olds church going Mormons, seventy percent have children under the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen. Compare that to thirty year old atheists.
Speaker 1: Only thirty eight percent have children under eighteen, half as
Speaker 1: many are experiencing parenthood Like this life altering part of
Speaker 1: your life as an adult, being a parent is only
Speaker 1: being experience, or is being twice as experience among religious
Speaker 1: people as non religious people. And that will bleed into
Speaker 1: our politics, It will bleed into our values, it will
Speaker 1: bleed into our economy and a million other things. And
Speaker 1: while sixty three percent of Republicans say that they believe
Speaker 1: in God without a doubt, just thirty nine percent of
Speaker 1: Democrats do so. Is politics fueling a religious revival, especially
Speaker 1: among men? Or is religious inspiring a political conversion? To
Speaker 1: talk to me about it. This week is Catherine Ruth Bacullich.
Speaker 1: She's a professor of economics at Catholic University and the
Speaker 1: author of the great book Hannah's Children. Catherine, Welcome to
Speaker 1: a numbers game.
Speaker 2: Thanks Catherine.
Speaker 1: In your book hannash Children, which I am in the
Speaker 1: middle of reading, it's a great book, by the way,
Speaker 1: you interviewed dozens of college educated women who had five
Speaker 1: or more children, basically demographic outliers, and they all had
Speaker 1: college educations. That's the important equation. They had college educations,
Speaker 1: and they had lots of kids, and you know, having
Speaker 1: large families is a very obvious in the book. In
Speaker 1: the book, they often talk about their religion, all these
Speaker 1: women and how are and plays an important part in
Speaker 1: their decision to have children. We've talked a lot about
Speaker 1: religion earlier in the show and the and the change
Speaker 1: in how people act with religion, how religion is changing,
Speaker 1: and that there's been this small increase in number of
Speaker 1: young people saying that they are religious that aside from
Speaker 1: just marriage or is it just marriage and chowering? Is
Speaker 1: there another thing that religion plays a part in?
Speaker 3: Probably education?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean meaning we're seeing a real shift. Let's
Speaker 3: just say, explosive rise in homeschooling, Christian schooling, you know,
Speaker 3: those kinds of things. I think that's probably something to
Speaker 3: keep around. I haven't dug into the data on this.
Speaker 3: I'm not actually sure I've seen any, but I think,
Speaker 3: you know, if we were to break down the trends
Speaker 3: and like the rise of homeschooling, you know, we're seeing
Speaker 3: that motivated by a lot a lot of Christian.
Speaker 2: Groups, a lot Jewish groups. So right, so I think
Speaker 2: it's there.
Speaker 3: But of course education, I'd say, like in terms of
Speaker 3: marriage and family, it's it's part of the transmission of values.
Speaker 3: So it's it's probably part of this story of this
Speaker 3: political interaction.
Speaker 1: The Pew study was interesting because there was the number
Speaker 1: of people who are zoomers right generations see people worn
Speaker 1: two thousand and two thousand and six who are port
Speaker 1: being Christian is up from twenty twenty. But they are
Speaker 1: not praying daily increasing there, but they're identifying as Christian,
Speaker 1: Like they're over there Christian. What is it? Like they're
Speaker 1: they're consumptly Christian. The door is open. They're kind of
Speaker 1: like walking through. Yeah, is being culturally Christian just a
Speaker 1: big part of it? Like to say, I'm not down
Speaker 1: with blocism, so therefore christian.
Speaker 3: Maybe, I think that's part of it. Another piece of
Speaker 3: it is probably what we would call like immunity, So
Speaker 3: like they're because they're Christian or the identify as Christian
Speaker 3: if some of like other identity group that keeps them
Speaker 3: immune from these trends or gives them like a safe
Speaker 3: space to be I kind of wonder looking at your.
Speaker 2: Point about like these are zoomers, they're certainty.
Speaker 3: I mean like if they're zumors, they're born in like
Speaker 3: two thousand, right, that means probably a lot of them
Speaker 3: haven't started their families yet. Yeah, And we know in
Speaker 3: terms of religious trends on behavior that actually a time
Speaker 3: when sort of cultural religious people become like actual religious
Speaker 3: people is when they have their first kid, see right right.
Speaker 2: You have something to take to church.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also if you go sit into a religious school,
Speaker 1: that's a big part of it as well. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: listening to It's a numbers game with Ryan Gerdosky. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back after this message. There's a big question
Speaker 1: mark of like why did Christianity stop declining? Yes, part
Speaker 1: of it could be it happens like twenty twenty is
Speaker 1: like the figurehead. And there's a lot that happens in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, right, there's the racial riots, there's the wokeism.
Speaker 1: There's also COVID, and there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who turned to podcasters. You know was a father, Mike Schmidt.
Speaker 2: As his famous that's true. Yeah, you have, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Michael Knowles, you have even like sub texts of people.
Speaker 1: What do you think it could be? You're college kids
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that's right. I was going to say, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think the alternative media has been a huge piece
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: My sons are probably my sons who are exact that
Speaker 3: age range, and two of them are married. I mean,
Speaker 3: they listen to more podcasts than I do, and they're
Speaker 3: probably like politically a little bit to the right of me,
Speaker 3: you know which, and I'm like to the right of
Speaker 3: most people, but my sons are definitely probably to the
Speaker 3: right of me. Jordan Peterson had a big impact, and
Speaker 3: of course he's like you know, and he talks about
Speaker 3: God in religion all the time, even if he's not
Speaker 3: a member of an organized religion.
Speaker 2: Is oh is he I best?
Speaker 1: Like, I think I'm not a huge follower, but I
Speaker 1: think like his wife was like dying, she had a miraculous.
Speaker 3: His wife converted, converted, I mean, and obviously he talks
Speaker 3: about God all the time. And so if you were,
Speaker 3: if you were, if you were like a kid growing
Speaker 3: up in a religious family and looking for sort of
Speaker 3: permission to be sort of politically religious or to express
Speaker 3: yourself or identify as a Christian, Peterson would certainly have
Speaker 3: been something that would support that. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 3: actually just I'm thinking of another detail from my book
Speaker 3: that I forgot to mention earlier. I tell that story
Speaker 3: like in the second chapter of this Family, I walked
Speaker 3: into their house. They lived in New England. It's a
Speaker 3: super democratic area. There's like a Jewish family with a
Speaker 3: bunch of kids, and the dad greets me with a
Speaker 3: maga hat on, you know, and I.
Speaker 1: Was like, I read part of your book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and it's like.
Speaker 3: You know, you go look at the you go look
Speaker 3: at those correlations, and there's there's obviously something going on
Speaker 3: that I think it'll crystallize and the number is better
Speaker 3: in the next decade. But like something we're seeing these
Speaker 3: red states, I have more marriage and more family, more
Speaker 3: traditional family behaviors, I'm assuming, although I don't have a
Speaker 3: good chart of it, but I think the religious behavior
Speaker 3: is stronger there as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean yes, I think like the highest states
Speaker 1: for fertility, off the top of my head is like
Speaker 1: Utah is always usually number one because the LDS like
Speaker 1: things still kind of even if the Mormons don't have
Speaker 1: as many kids they used to, they're still higher than
Speaker 1: the average. And then it's like Nebraska, Kansas sometimes the.
Speaker 2: Dakota, Dakota's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The Plain States and Utah really outstretched the rest.
Speaker 3: Of the yeah.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The other thing about like young people becoming more religious,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking we may want to think about too,
Speaker 3: is like religious college. There's this kind of story of
Speaker 3: these kind of scrappy religious colleges, many of which stayed
Speaker 3: open during COVID. And we've also got the homeschoolers coming
Speaker 3: of age. I mean, that big shift, that kind of
Speaker 3: growth in homeschoolers, which was like, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: like a classic tipping point. You'd say, well, people were
Speaker 3: out there homeschooling their kids in the nineties when I
Speaker 3: hadn't even heard of homeschooling.
Speaker 2: They were out there.
Speaker 3: Doing this, and then those kids had kids, and like,
Speaker 3: are we just starting to see a sort of tipping
Speaker 3: point of all those homeschoolers right, community.
Speaker 1: People said, like, I mean, my followers on Twitter were
Speaker 1: saying to me, well, obviously this uptacking religion is all
Speaker 1: because of immigration, Biden, let all these people.
Speaker 2: In No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: Well. I looked it up the numbers and it's basically
Speaker 1: the same exact demographic breakdown as America, So there's no
Speaker 1: big change. And also I think that people forget that,
Speaker 1: like Latin America is much less religious than it used
Speaker 1: to be. People. Yeah, Westrola is a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: women with our lead to Guadalupe statues with nine children
Speaker 1: running around, and that's not the way it is and
Speaker 1: has hasn't been for quite sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of Pentecostalism, Yeah, a.
Speaker 1: Lot of just secular people who don't have kids anymore.
Speaker 1: Mexico as well below the birth rate. Most of Latin
Speaker 1: America is way below the earth. So I think that
Speaker 1: that says a lot about who is If everything in
Speaker 1: culture and everything in society it's as easy as possible
Speaker 1: to be secular, and pop culture more or less mocks
Speaker 1: religion more often than it celebrates it. What would make
Speaker 1: a young person or a younger person gravitate towards faith?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: Is it just saying, hey, look I'm Christian, therefore I'm
Speaker 1: not woke or is it something deeper going on? A
Speaker 1: lot of young people, a lot of like zoomers especially,
Speaker 1: really crave an authentic relationship with something all the time.
Speaker 1: They're always searching authenticity. Do you see that? Do you
Speaker 1: think that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean certainly in my time as
Speaker 3: a college teacher kind of watching over the last ten years,
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say I'm definitely seeing greater identification
Speaker 3: with religiosity as a form of identity, but definitely political.
Speaker 3: These are a lot of the same young men and
Speaker 3: women that are part of the MAGA movement. The other
Speaker 3: thing I kind of want to mention is like, and
Speaker 3: I don't even know have I don't have a name
Speaker 3: for it, but it seems to go along with this,
Speaker 3: which is kind of these more traditional or sort of
Speaker 3: throwback forms of religion which do seem sort of like
Speaker 3: they're not doing what like we need to be more
Speaker 3: granular when we talk about religion rates sort of like
Speaker 3: we know what's happening with the sort of mainline Protestant churches.
Speaker 3: They're all like super woke and progressive, right, and then
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: You got are all like they have like you know,
Speaker 1: Jesus was like a black trans feminist. Like that's the
Speaker 1: sign that they have outside.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and you're like, that's not going to be the
Speaker 3: future of your church as it, you know. But I
Speaker 3: would say, like in my church and the Catholic Church,
Speaker 3: you know that you've got these sort of I mean
Speaker 3: so called trad Catholics. That wasn't even a name tech
Speaker 3: we didn't have a name for that ten years ago.
Speaker 3: It was like, oh, there seems to be like Latin
Speaker 3: Mass people. But actually it's much bigger what people call
Speaker 3: trad Catholic stuff today. It's a lot bigger than Latin
Speaker 3: Mass stuff. It's like young people that want to veil
Speaker 3: and they want like older they smell them bets Catholicism.
Speaker 3: They want to sort of like that, and that seems
Speaker 3: to be broad. It seems like there's a lot of Orthodoxy.
Speaker 3: I know literally no people older than zoomers that are
Speaker 3: like becoming Orthodox Christians.
Speaker 2: I know Orthodox Christians too, that's like all new.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I know, well, there's two things that come
Speaker 1: to mind. One is that people have this perception, like
Speaker 1: the Obama perception that religions for lower income people who
Speaker 1: cling to their guns and their bibles, when in fact
Speaker 1: religious church attendance is higher among college educated people than
Speaker 1: non college educated religion is really, if you're an active
Speaker 1: participant in a church a physical building, you are more
Speaker 1: likely to be middle class or upper middle class. It
Speaker 1: is a bougie thing to belong to religion. Really, why
Speaker 1: do you think that is? Is religion something that you
Speaker 1: just have to have a lot of money in time
Speaker 1: to sit there and be a participant in because the
Speaker 1: cultural forces of that would make someone go to church
Speaker 1: aren't there anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I definitely think that. I mean, religion is
Speaker 3: always engaged the idea of the intellectual virtue. I mean,
Speaker 3: religion has always been a part of kind of the
Speaker 3: academic or the intellectual sphere. There are religious groups that
Speaker 3: are popping up and protected on all all the college campuses.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is another piece of this right, Like,
Speaker 3: compared to when I was a student, it's much easier
Speaker 3: to be part of a religious group on a secular
Speaker 3: campus than it used to be. Like when I was
Speaker 3: a student, was like you couldn't even find other Christians.
Speaker 3: You'd look around. I went to Harvard for grad school
Speaker 3: upin undergrad deeply secular places, very very secular places, not.
Speaker 1: A community college robout like myself.
Speaker 3: But you know, no, I honestly like, at this point,
Speaker 3: I'm like, despite having gone to ivy like schools, I'm
Speaker 3: still like a decent person. That's like, it's almost an
Speaker 3: embarrassing thing on my vita at this point. But I mean,
Speaker 3: for sure, like you would look around and be like,
Speaker 3: those look like cheerful Asian students over there, they're probably Christian,
Speaker 3: which is a funny sort of stereotype, but it was
Speaker 3: it was kind of true at the time, and you'd
Speaker 3: have to guess looking at people, like maybe they're Christian
Speaker 3: and maybe they're religious. There was no like chat groups,
Speaker 3: there was no way to find people today like that's
Speaker 3: that's one of these things that's been enabled. So there's
Speaker 3: a lot of that. But I did want to get
Speaker 3: to that point that I think religion, the great religions
Speaker 3: of the world, have always been engaged with the kind
Speaker 3: of proposition about faith and reason.
Speaker 2: And so I think it is kind of natural.
Speaker 3: That that there we would see this reflected in the
Speaker 3: sort of educated classes. That's a complete answer to your question.
Speaker 3: But you you reminded me of something else, Like I
Speaker 3: know that ARC Forum was in London last week? Was
Speaker 3: it ARC? This like alliance? It's like Peterson's gig. It's
Speaker 3: this alliance responsible sitisitions. There's all these people that want
Speaker 3: to protect Western civilization. I mean, I would think of
Speaker 3: it as like a political cultural thing. It has nothing
Speaker 3: officially to do with religion. But the first ARC forum
Speaker 3: that they had, like eighteen months ago, one of the
Speaker 3: speakers was like, so organized religion, it's important raise your
Speaker 3: hand in this group if you belong to an organized
Speaker 3: religion unless you're just like Peterson, like spiritual, and you know,
Speaker 3: like the hands went up, And so there is some
Speaker 3: kind of story here about kind of whatever it is
Speaker 3: that organized religion is providing in the wake of sort
Speaker 3: of like the rest of it all fell apart, right,
Speaker 3: like the old belief that like liberal like whatever the
Speaker 3: old consensus about like liberal institutions will save us, Like
Speaker 3: we'll all just kind of march towards this happy religious, happy.
Speaker 1: Cour It's like the neoliberalism will all have Donald's.
Speaker 2: In every box.
Speaker 3: Yes, that clearly fell apart, right, And yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there's three different bosses to it. I think
Speaker 1: that there is like the people who are motivated by influencers,
Speaker 1: whether they be like the whole crisis King, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this is what I'm signaling, or whether it
Speaker 1: be like the trad wife movements on Instagram. You see
Speaker 1: those women who like they've got makeup and their milk
Speaker 1: and cow and they have fourteen kids running around.
Speaker 2: And then you have they're millionaires.
Speaker 1: You're millionaires, right, They're just millionaires.
Speaker 2: Models and millionaires, I know.
Speaker 1: And then you have people who have real crave towards
Speaker 1: towards authenticity where you I mean, I go to I've
Speaker 1: gone to a lad of miss I'm Catholic too, so
Speaker 1: I've gone a lot of mass several times in my life.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of young people and they do
Speaker 1: tend to sit there within the veils. And then I
Speaker 1: think the third bucket are people who are defenders of
Speaker 1: Western civilization or just see that the culture is rotted,
Speaker 1: so they sit there and say, like, look, the West
Speaker 1: is worth defending, and it's not in the terms of
Speaker 1: like the post World War two neoliberal philosophy, like the
Speaker 1: real West of what it means to be a West Journey.
Speaker 1: I think that's more of like like a sense Trump thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just going to say, like, when you
Speaker 3: put that together, I'm thinking of like, you know, how
Speaker 3: appealing JD. Vance was to so many or is to
Speaker 3: so many, like my students and so on, that kind
Speaker 3: of like he's religious. He sort of rejects that old
Speaker 3: liberal consensus, you know, right, I mean he's like, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like we're going to deal with western.
Speaker 2: North Carolina and their problems before we do other things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right now, I worked for JD. And I think
Speaker 1: JD I fill out a lot of you know things.
Speaker 1: Where as a kid, I don't think he went to
Speaker 1: church very often. They read the Bible a lot, but
Speaker 1: they didn't go to church. They weren't part of an
Speaker 1: organized religion, which is a story of a lot of
Speaker 1: people in lower income communities. And that conversion towards being
Speaker 1: a practicing Catholic came once he had college degree and money,
Speaker 1: and it's and I think marriage to that story is
Speaker 1: something that is more common than people. Now, hey, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back after this. The last question I want
Speaker 1: to get to you, and you've written about this for
Speaker 1: Hannah's Children, which is a really good book. I want
Speaker 1: to emphasize that to my listeners. You bring up a
Speaker 1: lot of times these women who have a lot of kids,
Speaker 1: but we are seeing a big gender divide when it
Speaker 1: comes to women and men. Women are more likely to
Speaker 1: leave faith than not for the first time. Young men
Speaker 1: are more likely to belong to a church than young women.
Speaker 1: What is going on with young women? I hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but yeah.
Speaker 3: That's great, Like, don't give me an easy question to answered. Man,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I'm inclined a little bit
Speaker 3: towards the direction of the thesis that you know, people
Speaker 3: people like Alibastucky talk about where you know, just you know,
Speaker 3: as a kind of a class of explanations. I mean,
Speaker 3: to some extent other commentators where you know, you look
Speaker 3: at young women who are kind of they are other focused.
Speaker 3: They're empathetic, they want to do good, they want to
Speaker 3: help people.
Speaker 2: That's all.
Speaker 3: We kind of associate that with with a female charism,
Speaker 3: if you will, And and they just are applying it
Speaker 3: to the world, right, you know, like they want to
Speaker 3: take care of stuff and mother things, but they want
Speaker 3: to do that, you know, you know, so they kind
Speaker 3: of take like, don't be nice, and then they sort
Speaker 3: of spread that out. So it's like, I mean, the
Speaker 3: thesis is it's like a misapplication of your desire to
Speaker 3: take care of stuff.
Speaker 1: Is it also like a girl boss thing of like
Speaker 1: rejecting things that seem oppressive? Is that because the religions
Speaker 1: you know, allegedly oppressed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I don't know, I don't know where we
Speaker 3: are with the girl boss stuff. It seems like that
Speaker 3: bubbles burst a little bit. I think that women don't
Speaker 3: like to be mean, and so they don't associate with
Speaker 3: politics that seems mean, and they don't associate with religion
Speaker 3: that seems mean, right, And I think that's.
Speaker 2: Like a really big point. That's a really way to
Speaker 2: put it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why traditional things or like Republican politics
Speaker 1: would seem too mean.
Speaker 3: For Republican politics seems evil. And you know, certain kinds
Speaker 3: of traditional religion seems kind of mean too, right, Like
Speaker 3: you don't accept all that love is love, and so
Speaker 3: it looks kind of mean. That's the explanation out favor.
Speaker 3: But we are seeing too, like once women get married
Speaker 3: and have kids, like they tend to move way closer
Speaker 3: to their to the to the men in the same
Speaker 3: age range.
Speaker 1: I think what you could see is this really different
Speaker 1: two different americas that people live in. You know, I
Speaker 1: said earlier in the show that if you look at
Speaker 1: like Mormons, for example, church going Mormons between eighteen and
Speaker 1: forty seventy percent have kids, and if you look at
Speaker 1: atheists in the same age range, like thirty eight percent
Speaker 1: have kids, and the numbers just drop immensely among those
Speaker 1: who are church going. Those are not going from doing
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I guess are very sacrificial.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of big sacrifice to have children, It's
Speaker 1: a big sacrifice to sit there and do a lot
Speaker 1: of things. You don't have as much freedom as you
Speaker 1: would and there's no incentive to demand it. And so
Speaker 1: I think that that is that you I think if
Speaker 1: there is a fuel of religion and it marries with
Speaker 1: political lines, you're talking at two immensely different life experiences
Speaker 1: that kind of infused.
Speaker 3: And both exactly. Well. I like this this line about
Speaker 3: you know, sort of sacrifice and hard work. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think I always think like in kind of archetype,
Speaker 3: the universe of archetypes, there's kind of two things that
Speaker 3: a lot of people have with religion. You know, one
Speaker 3: is the sort of the nasty archetype, like it was
Speaker 3: the cause of all the wars. Everybody fights a religion
Speaker 3: and inspires people to do bad stuff. We don't want
Speaker 3: people to be too religious, you know, that's kind of
Speaker 3: a thing people have. But then there's this other part
Speaker 3: of your brain. It's like you forget that part altogether.
Speaker 3: The other part of your brain remembers that. You know,
Speaker 3: every time you find these stories of heroism, the mother Teresa's,
Speaker 3: the people who survive in prison for ages and ages,
Speaker 3: I mean just the ones just released, you know recently,
Speaker 3: you often find these amazing stories of faith that sustained
Speaker 3: people through really difficult things.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you I've never told the story before,
Speaker 1: and I have flashbacks to it once in a while.
Speaker 1: In a I worked in politics in my entire life.
Speaker 1: That's my whole experience, working on campaigns, and I was
Speaker 1: working on I was literally just doing like handing out
Speaker 1: palm cards outside of mailhouse. I met a voting site.
Speaker 1: This was like when I was eighteen years old, like
Speaker 1: one of the very very first things I ever did.
Speaker 1: And there was a woman there running for office as
Speaker 1: a Democrat and someone said something anti Catholic to her,
Speaker 1: and I will never forget this because she shouldn't win.
Speaker 1: I forget what her name was, but she dressed down
Speaker 1: the person who said the anti Catholic thing her because
Speaker 1: she said, I never forget when, like I think, when
Speaker 1: the AIDS epidemic happened, the person the first group of
Speaker 1: people to take care of dying AIDS patients were nuns.
Speaker 1: It was not the government. And she made this big
Speaker 1: defense of none in the religious order, the women's religious
Speaker 1: order that I found extremely well educated, extremely intelligent, and
Speaker 1: coming from a very progressive side, which you would not
Speaker 1: hear nowadays, probably at all. But it's something that was
Speaker 1: really real and I think that obviously that meant a
Speaker 1: lot to her and among religious sec religious liberals like
Speaker 1: the Stephen Colberts of the world, who speak very profoundly
Speaker 1: on faith and very.
Speaker 2: Well educated on faith, Yeah, there.
Speaker 1: Is something there that is just different than those who
Speaker 1: sit there and say it's all hogwash and yeah.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, totally, And that's going to be the
Speaker 3: big thing to unpack.
Speaker 1: It's just a fewer Stephen Colberts and they're used to.
Speaker 3: Being, you know, right, And those are great stories they're
Speaker 3: great stories, and so they're worth nursing our imaginations on them.
Speaker 1: Well, Catherine, thank you for being on a numbers game.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find your book or read
Speaker 1: what you write?
Speaker 3: Give us your plug Amazon. Amazon's a great place to
Speaker 3: get the book and audible. If you like to listen
Speaker 3: to books on tape tape, that's not a thing anymore,
Speaker 3: so Amazon.
Speaker 2: I'm on X.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not as big as you are on X,
Speaker 3: but I'm there. I'm holding my own, you know, God
Speaker 3: willing in the next couple of years, I'll get more
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 1: But well, I hope you write another book because I
Speaker 1: really like Hannah.
Speaker 2: It's coming, it is.
Speaker 3: I'm going to interview the men next, I'm going to
Speaker 3: do the guy.
Speaker 1: Well, that's fair. I really want to talk about that then,
Speaker 1: because that's really really fascinating.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Absolutely good luck on the new book. Thanks. I will
Speaker 1: definitely want I'll definitely pick that up because I'm interested
Speaker 1: in the men's story. The women's story is very good though.
Speaker 1: Get it hannahs Children on Amazon dot com. And thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. It's been great. This podcast
Speaker 1: has been growing. Please like and subscribe wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Give us
Speaker 1: a five star review. It means a lot, and thank
Speaker 1: you again. Come back next week and we will have
Speaker 1: more numbers to break down.