RYAN BURGE | The Nones of America (Ep. 264)

0:00 [Music]

0:18 This is Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.

0:23 All right guys today I've got a special guest on the podcast. His name is Ryan Burge.

0:27 So Ryan is a pastor, writer, and he has his PhD in political science and he is a professor

0:32 at Eastern Illinois University. He's also a pastor of a small Baptist church in that

0:36 area as well. But he wrote this amazing book called The Nuns, where they came from, who

0:41 they are and where they are going. And that's Nuns, N-O-N-E-S. And so this book does a deep

0:47 statistical dive into the increasing number of Americans who have no religious affiliation

0:52 whatsoever. So by now you've likely heard of the Nuns. But again, this guy is giving

0:56 a bunch of data and a bunch of graphs in this book to explain where did they come from?

1:01 Where did this trend start? Like how did we get to where we are? What do we do moving

1:05 forward? And this is an interesting perspective because again, he's a social scientist and

1:09 a pastor. So he can see things for what they are biblically and theologically, but he can

1:13 also see them for what they are from a statistical standpoint. And it's really, really interesting

1:17 guys. I really enjoy this conversation with him because we took a lot of quotes out of

1:21 his book. We tried to create a narrative here for kind of, hey, how did we get to the point

1:25 where we are right now? Because a lot of people are lamenting the fact that there's a tremendous

1:30 rise of a religiously unaffiliated people in the United States, but they don't know how

1:33 that happened. And they certainly don't know what to do about it. So we dig into that on

1:37 this podcast, you're going to make sure you stick around to the end where we get into

1:40 some other really interesting subjects in terms of what we're talking about here. But

1:43 guys, I'm not going to keep them from you any longer. So without further ado, let's get

1:47 into it.

1:48 Ryan Burds, welcome done Dawn to the Life of Man's podcast. Thanks so much for having

1:52 me.

1:53 I'm going to talk to you. I mean, you've done some really, really interesting work that

1:55 we're going to dig into here in just a second. But the, the, I guess the best place to start

1:59 would be you're both a pastor and a polycyte professor. Okay. So the world of faith in the

2:05 world of academia, can you just briefly briefly give me an idea of how the heck that happened?

2:09 I don't even know at this point. You know, like everyone goes, that's so weird. But if

2:13 you, if you've lived it your entire life, it's not weird. It's just normal for you. Right?

2:17 So I was when I was an undergraduate, I needed a job. And so I took a job as a youth pastor

2:23 at a church about half an hour from where I grew up because I basically just needed income

2:27 for the summer, the summer three month internship turned into a three year thing. So I was a

2:31 youth pastor for three years there. And then when I went on to graduate school, I needed

2:35 a job again.

2:36 And I thought, well, the pastoring thing is there's jobs there to be had. And so I started

2:39 at one church for a year and then I quit that job. And then a church called me and asked

2:44 me if I'd come there and I've been there for 15 years now. So it's just always been part

2:48 of my, ever since I was 20 years old, it's always just been part of what I do. And it

2:51 just seems very normal to me. And, you know, it actually helps. I think being a social

2:55 scientist helps the pastoring side. I think being a pastor helps the social science side.

2:58 I think they both compliment each other. I think they're very, very similar in a lot

3:01 of ways because your job is to talk and be interesting and encourage people and all those

3:05 things. So, you know, it's, it's, I don't know anything else. So for me, it just seems

3:09 like day to day life.

3:10 Yeah, I think it's a bit of an issue too. When people think that the world of faith in the

3:13 world of academia can't mix, obviously, the same thing with the world of faith in the

3:16 world of science can't mix. That doesn't make a lot of sense if you spend any time thinking

3:19 about it. But the main thing that I want to spend the bulk of our time talking about

3:22 today is a book that you wrote called The Nuns, where they came from, who they are and where

3:26 they are going. And that's Nuns, N-O-N-E-S, everyone has to spell it every time they talk

3:30 about it. So, two part question to really kick this off, who are the Nuns? And I guess

3:35 for you personally, why did you find it so interesting to write an entire book about

3:39 them?

3:40 Yeah, so the Nuns for me are people when we ask them what their religion is, they say

3:42 they're atheist agnostic or nothing in particular. Basically, they say they're, they're not. They

3:46 don't have any religious affiliation. They're not Jewish Hindu, Buddhist, Mormon Protestant

3:49 Catholic or anything like that. They say they have no religious affiliation. And the genesis

3:54 of the book, which in the, in the introduction, I talk about this tweet I sent. And in 2019,

4:00 the General Social Survey just come out with their newest data from 2018. And everyone,

4:04 all my friends were running all these numbers, posting all these graphs. And I was like, I

4:07 know the graph I want to post. It's about religion. And luckily, I have all this code

4:12 because I'm at the keeper of the code for all this stuff, for whatever silly reason.

4:15 So I got home, I run this graph and I see this, this, this shift. And I see that the Nuns

4:20 now are the largest or the same size as eight as Catholics or evangelicals. So they're

4:25 tied for the largest religious group in America for the first time. And I send this tweet

4:29 out thinking it's going to get like two, two likes and it's just going to disappear in

4:33 the internet ether as things do. And you know, 15 minutes later, I looked down at my phone

4:37 and I've had like 35 retweets and then an hour later was 100. And then the next morning

4:41 it was 300. And then eventually it gets retweeted like 1500 times. And everyone wants to talk

4:46 to me about it. Every news outlet in America, it seems like call me in the next, you know,

4:50 week or 10 days, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Mail, the New

4:54 York Post. I was on C-SPAN on Easter morning. I mean, it just went on and on and on. And

5:00 all of a sudden, you know, it was like, you know, oh, the front page of Reddit, it made

5:03 the front page of Reddit got 71,000 of votes. So it was just everywhere. I had people from

5:07 high school who hadn't talked to in 20 years, like, I saw you on this thing or that thing.

5:11 So, you know, it became like this, this thing. And I was like, wow, if I want to write a book,

5:16 why would I write a book about something that I care about? Why would I not write a book

5:19 about what other people care about? And obviously, you know, the demand was there and the interest

5:23 was there. And I know that I have a specific set of skills in terms of translating data

5:27 into, you know, understandable ways for the average person. So I thought, well, why not

5:32 take an idea? People are already interested. Why not use the tools I already have in my

5:34 toolbox? And why not just write a book about that? Because that's obviously what people

5:37 want to talk about.

5:38 Yeah, I think that's really important as well. And guys, just as a quick aside, you're gonna

5:42 have to get a copy of this book. It's in the show notes, you can kind of dig into it yourself

5:45 because you do a lot of kind of data driven stuff. There's a lot of graphs. We're not going

5:48 to be able to get into everything. But you do kind of look at this narrative where you're

5:52 digging in to who the nuns are, where they've come from. And you spend some time talking

5:56 about the general social survey, which you actually just mentioned, which is basically

5:59 a survey, which correct me if I'm wrong, it hasn't changed since the 70s. It's been the

6:03 same survey since that time period. So it was a very reliable source. Is that kind of the

6:07 gist of the GSS? Yes, until 2021, then they had to go online and the numbers are all screwed

6:12 up. So that's a whole different story. But the number of Protestants dropped 10% in three

6:16 years somehow because they went from in person online. But from 1972 to 2018, they asked the

6:21 exact same questions in the exact same way. So it's really the only way that we have to

6:25 track religion in America over a long period of time. And now it's a whole different story.

6:30 Right. It's a little bit better than a snap hole on Twitter. So in chapter one of the book,

6:35 it's called what does the American religious landscape look like? And there's only, I think,

6:39 five chapters to this book. So you spend a lot of time, there's really, really meaty

6:42 content in each chapter. Now I realize that this question is going to be overly broad.

6:46 But can you at least give us the 30,000 foot view as to what the religious landscape of

6:51 America looks like right now? Yeah, so we break it down to seven groups. Okay, so Christians

6:56 are broken into four different groups, evangelical Protestants, which I think we all know an evangelical

7:00 Protestant is at this point, you know, they're very conservative politically and religiously.

7:05 Believe Jesus Christ is on a God, literal reading of the Bible, you know, Turner burn, you know,

7:09 Hellfire and brimstone, those kind of people, they're about 22, 23% of the population. The

7:13 other kind of Protestant we don't talk about as much as called mainline Protestant. Those

7:16 are United Methodist Episcopalians and I church of Christ. Those people who are like, yeah,

7:20 we would live in Jesus, but I'm not really sure about heaven and hell. And you know, much

7:23 more modern, they have female pastors, a lot of them are open and affirming to LGBT people.

7:28 They used to be 30% of America in 1975 and now they're 10% of America. So like that,

7:33 that flavor of American Christianity is basically going to die in the next 10, 15, 20 years.

7:38 And then there's black Protestants. And we put those in a separate category because they're

7:41 just so fundamentally different than like white evangelicals. Interestingly enough,

7:45 black Protestants have very similar views of the Bible as white evangelicals do, but

7:50 their view of politics could not be more different. 90% of black Protestants vote for the Democrat,

7:54 80% of white evangelicals vote for the Republican. So they're just politically,

7:58 completely different. And then there's Catholics. Catholics are relatively stable,

8:02 share the population between 20 and 25%. The issue with Catholics is it's become a cultural

8:07 identifier more than it's become a religious identifiers. And in 1972, 55% of Catholics

8:12 said they went to mass every week. And today is 25%. So you know, the numbers,

8:16 the top line number looks fine, but underneath the surface, there's a lot of things changing

8:20 for Catholics. They're just not as devout as they used to be. And then we have a couple

8:23 different groups at the bottom. We have Jews. We have other religious groups, which are everything

8:27 from Jedi's to Muslims to Buddhist, the groups are so small that are hard to really get a good

8:31 number on. And then obviously the nuns. And like we talked about the nuns were 20, you know,

8:35 they were 5% of America. Now they're 21, 22% of America. And actually by some estimates are

8:40 even higher than that, probably 30 or 35% of America. So those are the big seven groups.

8:45 Really, the only change over time is mainline Protestants have gone from 30% to 10%. And then

8:49 the nuns have gone from 5% to 25%. Everything else has been relatively stable over the last 40 years.

8:55 Well, I want to talk a little bit about that because you talk about from, you know, 1972

8:59 to 2018, you talk about the nuns going from around 5% to around 25%. But you say in your book that

9:05 there is, you kind of ask yourself the easy question, which is, so where have all the nuns come from?

9:09 And the easy answer is mainline Protestant Christianity. I want to get your idea. And again,

9:13 I know you like to deal in data, not quite as much in conjecture, but I still kind of why that is

9:18 because from the outside looking in, because I'm not a mainline Protestant Christian,

9:21 it's almost because like when you keep reading cultural things into scripture,

9:25 as opposed to just reading scripture, maybe that doesn't do very well. At least that would be,

9:29 you know, what the Reformed Baptist would say. But if you had to say, why has there been such a

9:33 stark decline over the last several decades in mainline Protestantism?

9:38 That's a great question. That's actually the million dollar question in my world. And so like,

9:42 the second I have another book coming out in March called 20 Miss about religion of politics

9:45 America. But my third book is really going to be trying to understand like what happened in the

9:49 middle of American religion, like what happened to moderate Christians in America. And you know,

9:53 really book about religious polarization that kind of couples with all the political polarization

9:57 stuff that we talk about. I think we forget the fact that religion has also been polarized.

10:01 I think for a lot of it, it was a push in a pull factor. You know, if you grew up mainline,

10:05 all your evangelical friends told you you weren't a real Christian because you didn't believe in

10:08 all the things that they did. And so for a lot of them, you're like, well, if I'm not a real Christian,

10:12 I'm not going to go with it. You know, like, I'm sick of being kind of criticized and ridiculed

10:16 for not believing everything you believe. But on the other side, the nuns see you as still being

10:20 too conservative for them, right? You still believe in, you know, sky fairy and Jesus and all that

10:24 kind of stuff. So you're too liberal for your evangelical friends, you're too conservative

10:29 for your nun friends. So at some point, you feel like compelled to pick a side. And obviously,

10:34 for most of them, the side was the nuns because the nuns don't require you to do anything, right?

10:39 And for a lot of mainline Protestants, they don't really, they don't really accede to that kind of

10:42 very conservative theology and very conservative worldview politically. So the nuns were more liberal.

10:47 And so they're like, well, I'm more like a nun politically and socially. So I'm going to be a

10:51 come and none. Because just honestly, it's easier to be a nun than being evangelical in the 21st

10:55 century, especially. Right. The subject of politics has already come up so much in the first eight

11:00 or nine minutes of the show. We'll get more into that here in just a second. But I did want to dig

11:03 into something that you did in chapter two that I felt was really interesting. You give us some ideas

11:06 as to why the data are trending the way that they are. And so you talk about secularization,

11:11 social desirability bias, the internet, politics, socialization, loss of trust and changes in family

11:17 structure. But you point to three kind of main one secularization politics and the internet as

11:22 the main reasons. So I want to dig into secularization real quick because in chapter two, you show this

11:26 graph with this quote below it. And here's the quote, notice that the trend line is high on the left

11:30 side and the graph of the left side of the graph and low on the right side, which indicates a clear

11:35 negative relationship between GDP and the importance of religion said another way as a country becomes

11:41 more economically prosperous, it is less religious. Now, the knee jerk reaction for me Ryan is because

11:48 if you're not having to pray, give us this day our daily bread. If you're not having to do that,

11:53 if you're not worried about a tribe on the other side of the hill coming over and taking all your

11:58 women and horses, it makes things a lot easier. And you don't feel like you have to rely on this

12:02 deity of any kind. That's kind of my initial, again, like I said, knee jerk reaction to it.

12:06 But why do you think that is that there is that negative relationship between GDP and the importance

12:11 of religion? Yeah, so I talk about Max Weber in the book, who's this German sociologist,

12:16 probably the most important social scientist to ever live. And he talks about secularization theory.

12:20 And he actually uses this term called use a German term because he's German, but you can translate

12:24 this demagication, which I think is a really great translation. Right. So Weber says the more

12:28 science you have, the less magic you need. Right. So like think about the 1800s, if it doesn't rain

12:32 for a year and all your crops die and you, you know, you die a starvation, you're like,

12:35 why is it not raining? Well, because God's mad at us. Or your wife gets sick,

12:39 costs twice and die three days later. Why, you know, why do my wife die? Because God's mad at us.

12:43 Everything becomes cosmic, right? I think it becomes spiritual. With science, you understand why

12:48 your wife died, you got infection, you understand why it's not raining because of weather patterns,

12:51 climatology, all those things. So what Weber says is the more science you have, the less God you need.

12:56 So as a country becomes more educated and more economically prosperous, it's going to find

13:00 natural explanations for things that do not require the supernatural explanations for things.

13:05 So, but the thing is, the United States is a huge outlier on this, you know, in that graph,

13:10 if a United States was on the trend line, zero percent of Americans would say religion is very

13:14 important. Zero percent. And instead, it's like 48 percent. So we are still, even though we're

13:20 less religious, say than we were 30 or 40 years ago, we're still much more religious than we should be

13:25 if we follow the model, let's say in Western Europe. When I think as well, one thing that you hear a

13:29 lot about trends is in sub-Saharan Africa, how Christianity is exploding. But it's almost from

13:34 these cultures where things like magical things, otherworldly things, they're like, oh, someone was

13:39 raised from the dead. Yeah, totally makes sense. Whereas like, you know, skeptical American intellectual

13:43 is going to be like, yeah, that's not going to happen because of science and all these different

13:46 explanations that they can give. But politics, I feel like, is a main through point of this book.

13:51 And so you talk about that in this chapter as well. And you know, you point this out in your book,

13:55 but a lot of hay has been made. And people made a good amount of money writing scathing books about

13:59 the fact that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016 during the presidential

14:03 election time period. They're ignoring some of the obvious reasons for that. The most basic data

14:08 showed that, you know, the exact same percentage essentially voted for Romney and McCain in the

14:12 previous election cycles. And those two didn't have the moral issues that Trump did as far as we can

14:17 tell. But there's a key quote from this section that I wanted to get you to give me a little bit more,

14:21 a little bit more context around a liberal is twice as likely as a moderate and four times

14:27 more likely than a political conservative to be unaffiliated. And you're talking about being

14:32 religiously unaffiliated. Now, I try to make sure to take away all the boogeyman stuff where it's

14:38 like, Oh, all liberals are this or all atheists think this way. Because obviously there's a whole

14:43 lot of color and I don't mean that, you know, in terms of race, there's a whole lot of color

14:46 to who a person is and how they got to be the way that they are. But help me understand,

14:50 because it seems in my head, I'm like, well, of course, a liberal is twice as likely as a moderate

14:55 and four times more likely than a politically conservative to be unaffiliated. But why do you

14:59 think it is? And it's because we were searching for a unified self, I think is the answer, right?

15:04 We're looking what we're trying to do is figure out how to get everything in our identity to a line

15:09 with a central cause. So, you know, we used to see people what we call cross pressured, where they

15:14 had like some things that pushed them to the right and some things that pushed them to the left,

15:17 right? Let's say that you're, you know, you're an environmentalist, but you're also a hunter.

15:21 So, you know, you're strong to a, but you're also strong on the environment. Like, what do you

15:25 do? Who do you vote for? Because the parties are obviously opposed on those kind of issues,

15:28 right? Let's say you're, and this actually is becoming less of a thing, but union membership

15:32 used to make you a Democrat, because Democrats support unions very strongly. Let's say you live

15:35 in rural America, which is very white, very, you know, very conservative now. We were seeing people,

15:40 they're throwing off these cross pressured identities now, and they're lining up behind

15:45 the same identity. And so what we're seeing is, and actually had a piece, I wrote a piece of the

15:49 New York Times a couple of weeks ago, the headline was, you know, the top line finding is evangelicals

15:55 are actually growing, but that's actually probably bad news for evangelicals. Because if you dig

15:59 into the data, what you see is the share of Americans who identify as evangelicals as going up,

16:04 but there are two reasons why it's going up. One is it's because people who are conservative

16:08 politically, but never go to church or identify as an evangelical now, because they like the

16:13 fusion of the two ideas. But the other thing that's really surprising is we're seeing the rise of

16:18 evangelical Jews, evangelical Muslims, evangelical Catholics, they're taking on that moniker too,

16:23 because they're very religious and they're politically conservative. So what they see is the word

16:27 evangelical now is not a specific type of theology. It's encompassing of a conservative, I'm very

16:33 religious and I'm politically conservative. That's how people are seeing it in the world now. So what

16:38 we're seeing is now if I'm a liberal and I go to a conservative church, what we see in the data is

16:42 more and more people are leaving their church based on their politics. So now they're not going to be

16:47 going to a church anymore because they understand that church is going to be much more right-wing.

16:52 Reality is, people are really good at this. They sort themselves out insanely well when it

16:57 comes to their friends, their church, the organizations they're a part of, where they live geographically,

17:02 right? Whether it be urban, suburban, rural, people know where their people are and want to associate

17:07 with those people. And so they create this unified and unfortunately they're unifying behind a political

17:12 identity on both sides, as opposed to maybe an other identity in terms of religious identity.

17:17 So now we're seeing this sorting mechanism happen. And now to be conservative is to be religious,

17:23 to be liberal is to be not religious. And it didn't used to be that way 30 or 40 years ago,

17:27 but today it's definitely that way. Well, I'm busting up my interview a little bit here,

17:30 but I want to make sure I was going to ask this later, but I want to ask this now because I think

17:33 it's pertinent to something that you said. One thing that I see in my read of people that are

17:38 liberally minded, and again, I'm not saying classically liberal, maybe I mean more so leftist,

17:43 like more so on that side where everything is politics, is that they're trading in the altar

17:48 of God for the altar of politics. And we can talk about conservatives doing the same,

17:52 but you know, you made the point about liberals being way more likely to be unaffiliated.

17:56 It's like, okay, you can leave that behind, but you're going to make a religion out of supporting

18:01 Bernie Sanders or supporting the squad or supporting whatever your issue is being pro-choice or being

18:07 open borders immigration. Is that what what's happened? Is that just kind of the nefarious

18:12 underbelly of this that we're now or I say we, a lot of people are worshiping at the altar of

18:16 religion or sorry, politics. Yeah, no, I think I think you're right. If you look at the most

18:21 politically active group in America, they're atheists and agnostics are right behind them.

18:25 They're incredibly politically, for instance, in 2020, half of atheists donated money to a

18:29 candidate or campaign, which is insane because in the general population, it's never the more

18:32 than 20%. So they are very, I think for a lot of atheists, politics becomes their thing that

18:38 ties them together and becomes their purpose and their meaning. And if you actually look at

18:42 politics, a lot of things that we do politically actually come from religious backgrounds, like

18:46 conventions come back from denominational meetings, right? Stumps, beaches, or sermons. So there's

18:51 so much that you can tie those two things together. It's just that atheists agnostics are going to

18:55 strip all the religiosity off of it, but kept all the other stuff because they like the meetings.

18:59 They like the rallies. They like the raw raw and the feel good and the donating money, right? You

19:03 donate to a church. You donate to a candidate. There's not a whole lot of difference between

19:06 those two things. Really, if you think about it, what we're seeing is that people are trying to

19:09 make meaning out of their lives. And unfortunately, for many of them, politics is how they make

19:15 meaning. And I think we can all admit that that's probably a bad way to make meaning because politics

19:19 is irredeemable. I think we all can recognize there's no salvation to be found in politics.

19:24 I never feel good about politics anymore. I only feel bad or worse depending on what's going on.

19:29 And I think the reality is that now, one caveat to that though, there's a third group of nuns,

19:34 there's atheists agnostics, there's a third group called nothing in particular, okay? Three and five

19:39 nuns are nothing in particular. 22% of Americans are nothing in particular. And they are not atheists

19:44 and they are not agnostics because they do not engage in politics hardly at all below the national

19:50 average. So they're just floating in social, cultural, religious, and political space. They've

19:56 got nothing to kind of guide them like atheists and agnostics do. So when I think about the nuns,

20:00 I'm not as worried about atheists and agnostics because I mean nothing in particular group for a

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20:34 Yeah, and you talk about later in the book how the nothing in particular is that's the fastest

20:40 growing religious group in the United States, which is funny to say because they're

20:43 irreligious. But again, I think we're we're not on to something people have been talking about

20:47 this forever. They're worshiping at the altar of politics. We typically left leaning politics,

20:51 but also the altar of sports, celebrity, entertainment, drugs, alcohol, video games,

20:56 Netflix, like they're just they're they're worshiping at the altars of these other things,

21:00 they're worshiping at the altar of what's the next show that I'm going to binge watch. But

21:04 I'm going to get back on track here because we talked about secularization, politics,

21:07 and the other thing we talked about was the internet. And you used a phrase that I had never

21:10 heard before called the spiral of silence. Now you explained it well. So I obviously understood

21:14 what it was, but what is the spiral of silence? And I guess why is that pertinent to the discussion

21:19 of the nuns? Yeah, so the spiral of silence is the idea that if you're in a group of people who

21:23 have a different viewpoint than you do, your natural inclination is just shut up because you

21:28 don't want to be it goes back to like evolutionary biology, right? Like you don't want to be singled

21:32 out in a pack because you're singled out, you're going to die, right? You need that pack to protect

21:35 you. Let's say you're out in a tundra, you know, 10,000 years ago. So what we do, we still do it

21:40 naturally. You're in a group of people, they all start talking about politics. Let's say they say

21:42 things that are very maybe extremely left wing or extremely right wing. And you're not that way.

21:46 You're not going to challenge that because you don't want to go against the dominant viewpoint.

21:50 And so what people understand is that silence is complicity. So if you're not challenging them,

21:55 they assume that you agree with them. And it just makes it the spiral gets tighter and tighter and

22:00 tighter and worse and worse, because the more crazy things they say, the less willing you are to

22:03 speak up. So the more marginalized you are. So in reality, what happens in that situation is you

22:08 don't stick around because you realize you're not with your people, you're going to leave.

22:12 And then the people that are left over are just an echo chamber reinforcing the crazy on both sides

22:17 without anyone walking and going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's too far. Don't believe that.

22:21 Don't say that. We can't do that. And I think what's happening in American life is people sort of

22:24 themselves out in such a way that now all we have left are echo chambers on every side. And no one

22:30 comes in and checks you and says, wait, what about this other side? So now what you do is you

22:34 demonize the other side, you look at the worst version of the other side, not the real version of

22:39 the other side, and it just makes the divides between us and them even larger. Well, you're

22:43 straw manning these other sides, but aside from the the actual reason, which is personal cowardice,

22:49 why most people don't actually stand up and say things, I did an episode a few weeks ago,

22:54 talking about cancel culture, like real cancel culture, where it's like, okay, I'm going to get

22:57 your business, you know, out of here, I'm going to run you out of town, like actual cancel culture,

23:02 we're going to kick you off social media. Is that the main reason why you think people,

23:05 especially on the right, are unwilling to kind of speak their mind? Because I feel like,

23:09 especially if you're a gospel believing conservative, let's say, and you feel like you've got the truth

23:14 because you have the gospel, like you have the end of the story, right? Why would you not want

23:18 to say that? Why would you not want to speak that into culture? But I think people are actually

23:22 terrified, especially if you're a conservative Christian who's really nice, and you kind of go

23:26 along to get along, you don't like to ruffle feathers, right? That you're just going to kind of let it

23:30 bull over you at some point. Is that kind of a good way to think about it?

23:34 I think if evangelicals are in a tough spot, right? Because they believe you don't believe

23:37 what they believe. You're going to hell. Exactly. Like there's no there's no all their alternative,

23:42 but they also understand and I think they instinctually understand a lot of things they believe are way

23:46 out of the mainstream culture in terms of, you know, sinfulness and sexuality and gender identity

23:51 and all those things and women leadership way out of step on those things from the general public.

23:56 So they're always walking this line right between like, I want to preach the gospel and fidelity to

23:59 my understanding of the Bible, but also understanding if I do do that, it's going to further isolate me

24:03 from the rest of society. So evangelicals have this difficult thing. I think actually think it's

24:07 getting worse because their views of sexuality and gender identity have not changed over time,

24:12 yet culture has shifted fairly, I mean, incredibly significantly to the left over the last 10 or 15.

24:18 Think about this. In 2004, there were 13 ballot initiatives in 13 different states to make

24:23 marriage between one man and one woman. They passed in all 13 states, including Oregon.

24:28 The liberal fashion of Oregon is still passed. 12 years later, gay marriage is the law of the land,

24:33 right? So things shifted so quickly on that. And evangelicals are sort of reeling from that,

24:36 I think still, because they still want to engage the culture, but where they've staked out a position

24:41 has not moved, but the culture has moved further away from them. So their ability to evangelize is

24:46 getting more and more difficult. So now they have two choices. One, they can change their views,

24:51 which a lot of them won't because they want fidelity to their understanding of scripture.

24:54 Or they can say, okay, we're a happy remnant over here, right? We're going to just keep our little

25:01 insular culture over here and not try to evangelize anymore. I think actually a lot of the battles

25:05 you see in religion is how open you want to be versus how closed you want to be. And I think

25:09 evangelicals are fighting that fight right now, because a lot of them are thinking, who am I

25:13 talking to when I go on social media? Am I talking to my people or am I talking to those people?

25:17 And I think no one really agrees on who they're talking to at this point.

25:20 Right. And I think they're ignoring Jesus's words when he's talking about being salt and light,

25:25 because salt can't preserve anything if it's lost to saltiness. But I feel like a lot of

25:28 churches as well became obsessed with relevance. They wanted to be relevant. There's even a stupid

25:34 Christian magazine called relevant, like basically all they want to do, they want the clothes that

25:39 they're worship pastors to where to be relevant. They want all the graphics to be relevant. And this

25:43 is not, you know, commercial for people making sure that their church service is ugly and people

25:47 wear, you know, ill fitting suits. But it's just like when you worship at the altar of relevance and

25:51 not godliness, it kind of creates a little bit of this issue. I'm sure we could spend the rest of

25:54 our time talking about that. But we've got a lot more stuff to cover. One thing that you talked

25:58 about that I find was that I found very interesting is that the highest percentage of the religiously

26:02 unaffiliated groups are people with postgraduate educations. Okay. And as soon as I read that

26:06 section of the book, it reminded me of this Malcolm Muggerage quote, you know, he was

26:10 an agnostic for most of his life until it became a Christian later in life. So this, this quotes,

26:14 you know, it's a few sentences long, but I want to read it to you because I think it goes into our

26:17 conversation. This is a quote from Malcolm Muggerage. So the final conclusion would surely be that

26:21 whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without,

26:26 ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers as its own educational

26:31 institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far

26:36 and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western man decide to abolish himself,

26:41 creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength,

26:46 his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls

26:51 of his city tumbling down and having convinced himself that he too, or he was too numerous,

26:57 labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. This is the key quote of the quote.

27:02 Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility and polluted and drugged himself

27:08 into stupefication, he kneeled over a wary battered old brontosaurus and became extinct.

27:14 As soon as I read about that, that high, you know, postgraduate degree, which I have and most of these

27:19 people being being that I thought having educated themselves into imbecility. Is this like what

27:24 you were talking about earlier, Ryan, where these modern cultures, they have scientific explanations

27:28 for seemingly everything that we're just basically, it's the scientific God of the gaps, if you will,

27:33 that we can explain everything with evolution and science. We don't actually need anything

27:37 ethereal. I think that's, that's the issue is people thought that science would solve all our

27:41 problems. You know, there's this great boat by Karen Armstrong called the case for God.

27:44 And in 1900, science was convinced we solve the exact 10 or 12 problems. We would solve all the

27:48 problems of the universe, like we would have it all figured out. We're 100 years later, we've

27:52 solved none of those problems and we actually have less meaning in some ways, right? I think the

27:56 problem is, is that we think that science and, and religion are in conflict with each other.

28:01 And I think they're obviously, I painted that way oftentimes, right? Like, you either believe

28:04 with the Earth's created in six days, you believe in evolution. Like, listen, you can believe

28:08 in both things that God exists, but also the evolution exists at the same time. They don't

28:11 contradict each other that much. I think what we try to do is we try to make science

28:16 explain spiritual problems, and we try to make God explain science problems, right? There are

28:20 two different ways to understand this world. And what you actually see among the educated

28:24 people is the educated people are actually going to church, but they're doing it for early

28:28 interesting reason. They're doing it more for the social reason than they are for the theological

28:32 reason, which I think that's something that people who don't have as much education, I think

28:36 forget is they're falling behind American life because they're not social. They're not joining

28:40 clubs and groups. A story I love to tell is I was at church one time, very liturgical old-school

28:44 church did what's called prayers of the people, which is where the pastor will come up and say,

28:48 you know, who has a prayer quest and we'll all bow our heads and someone will just say something

28:51 from the audience. Like, can you please pray for me? I have cancer and we all say, Lord,

28:55 your mercy, hear our prayer. Well, this 21 year old kid in the back, he's there with his wife and

28:59 his kid and he said, can you all pray for me? I lost my job and I don't know how I'm going to pay

29:02 my rent at the end of the month. We said, Lord, your mercy, hear our prayer. Well, after the

29:07 service is over, one of the older guys in the congregation owns a small business comes up to

29:10 the young man and says, son, you need a job, I can get you a job. And he went and worked for that

29:14 guy at his small business, right? I think what we forget about religion is, sure, we can talk about,

29:19 like, you know, ontology and epistemology and all those things. At the end of the day,

29:23 it's a bunch of people hanging out and supporting each other through the best and the worst of their

29:26 lives. And I think that's the thing that education has taught me as a social scientist is the value

29:30 of church. I used to think was all vertical, but now I understand now vertical still matters,

29:36 don't get me wrong. But the horizontal may be just as important and by cutting ourselves off

29:41 from those social ties, we're actually hurting ourselves emotionally, financially, spiritually,

29:45 and emotionally in every possible way. And we don't see what we don't have. Therefore,

29:50 we don't know what we're missing. When there's these atheist groups that have tried to create these

29:54 non religious churches, I'm sure you've heard about them. And they've basically all failed. I say

29:59 all, a lot of them have failed, because there's nothing actually holding them together, right?

30:04 They all kind of dressed as saying they all kind of come from the same background. They all kind of

30:08 believe the same things politically. There's nothing actually tangible outside of those things

30:12 to keep them there to kind of have that. And I thought it was interesting you brought up the

30:16 science and religion thing again, because Eric Metax has wrote a great book here recently called

30:20 Is Atheism Dead? And he spends the overwhelming majority of that book talking about how science

30:24 was trying to disprove God, but it keeps just proving God. And I think that that's really

30:28 important for people to realize. And for a lot of Christians, and you know, I've talked about a

30:31 lot of my show, so I'll say it again, a lot of Christians are intimidated by science because they

30:35 think if they go digging into science, then their entire worldview is going to crumble.

30:40 And I encourage people know the number of people like the number of world class scientists that

30:44 believe in in a creator God that's like, integrally involved in what the going zone of humanity

30:50 is a lot. There's a lot of them. And these people know more than anything. We've got an

30:54 apologist coming on later this year. That's a biologist, but also a Christian apologist. And

30:58 you're like, how could that possibly happen? But it happens all the time. One thing I did

31:02 want to go into Ryan in chapter three or your book, you say that you say actually this quote here,

31:07 "Thus both genders are walking away from organized religion, but men are doing so at even higher

31:13 rates." Okay, so this is a man's podcast, you know, overwhelming majority of our listeners are men.

31:19 There's a lot of reasons for this, right? There's a lot of reasons why people think

31:22 this is happening. One of the things that I've said, and I've said even recently on a debate

31:26 that I did on the Unbelievable podcast over in the UK is that men will go where they're needed.

31:31 And if they go to church and they realize that they're not needed, then they're going to go wherever

31:36 they want to, right? They're going to go wherever they feel like they can give value. And so that

31:40 may be to their shop, that may be to the shooting range, to the golf course, to the wherever. But

31:44 from what you've seen and what you've experienced as a pastor and a social scientist, why do you

31:48 think men are leaving at higher rates than women? Yeah, I think it's because I think the problem

31:53 with religion, it makes you feel things, you know, like a good religious service is going to make

31:57 you feel things. And men are culturally trained to not feel things, right? Like we've all been,

32:02 I was raised in the 80s where it's like, boys don't cry, right? Boys don't feel emotion. It's odd

32:06 when a man cries, you just kind of turn your eyes avert your gaze. To be spiritual is to be

32:10 emotionally open, right? To be emotionally available and to work on yourself and understand you don't

32:14 have it all figured out. Things that men, by and large, culturally are not to our least when I was

32:19 growing up were not taught to do. The other part is men are not social or less social. We know this

32:24 social scientifically that men are just less social than women are. They don't hang out with other

32:28 other men as much as women hang out with other women. And church is basically a social activity.

32:32 I know my dad is probably one of the least social people I've ever met. And when he does go to church,

32:36 he goes, he comes in right before it starts. He sits for the service. And as soon as it's over,

32:42 he's literally the first person out the back door walking to the parking lot. He does not want to

32:46 engage with anyone, not have no conversation with anyone, does not want to be involved with anyone.

32:50 But so I've done some subsequent analysis looking at like age, like what age men are more likely to

32:55 be, are more likely to be nuns than women. So when men have kids, like in between ages of like 25

33:01 and 45, they're actually just as likely to be religious as women are. But as soon as those kids

33:06 grow up and get out of the house, that's where men sort of drift. Like the 55 year old, 65 year old

33:11 man who's retired, those are the people I really, really worry about because those men don't have a

33:15 lot of purpose in terms of work anymore because they're kind of done with their working life.

33:18 Their kids are out of the house. A lot of them have been married for 30 or 40 or some have been

33:21 divorced. They might be single at that point. What do they really have going for them? A lot of them

33:26 are not choosing to be social in any way. And I think really, if you look at the data, that's a

33:30 really bad outcome for men. We need to understand that being social is okay. You know, being emotional,

33:36 being having friends, it's good to have friends. I don't think men are taught that as much. I think

33:39 women naturally want to have friends and be communicative. Now, obviously, we're speaking in broad

33:43 generality here, but you look at the data, that's what you see. There's a huge gender gap in socialization.

33:47 I think it hurts. It hurts men in a lot of ways. One thing I do want to push back on,

33:51 because I would agree with most of that, and I've said a lot of that on my show already,

33:54 but one thing that I would push back and maybe ask even further questions is a lot of people just

33:58 assume like, oh, men are culturally taught to not have feelings, don't cry. All those things that

34:01 you've said, you know, I was born in the 80s. And so I kind of heard some of the same things.

34:05 But if that were true, though, wouldn't older generations, because I've read books by people that

34:10 linked the, you know, the cultural desire for little boys to be stoic directly to suicide.

34:16 And it's like an egregious thing to go from there to there in such a short period of time.

34:21 And if that were true, suicidality with boomers would be way higher than it would be with modern,

34:26 because I feel like with modern boys, they're constantly being told to share their feelings.

34:30 They're being constantly being told by 98% of their female teachers growing up have emotions,

34:36 but not those emotions. Those ones are scary. Those have too much testosterone.

34:39 But is that really it though? I know that's a univariate analysis and you get into a ton of

34:43 problems when you only use univariate analysis, but it can't just be that because we live in one

34:48 of the most emotional time periods, maybe ever. So I'll tell you the story. My son is fourth grade.

34:53 He, a big part of his class is what's called social emotional learning now. They actually spend

34:59 time every single day on social emotional issues. And last week, he had two days where he came home

35:03 and he was just quiet and bumpy. He's not in these gregarious outgoing kid and he was not those

35:07 things. And we try to figure out what's going on. Well, in class, one of the students said that his

35:12 mom and dad are both in prison. They was not going to see either of them for five or seven years.

35:15 And all the other kids in the class started crying, you know, because they felt so bad for this kid.

35:20 And I was talking to my wife about it. I'm like, we never, we never, in school, we never did that.

35:25 Like, I literally never remember having a moment like that. And then I thought, why are they doing

35:29 that now? Which I love, by the way, I think every school should be doing social emotional

35:31 learning. Why are they doing that? And I realized something. I think part of it is those kind of

35:36 conversations used to happen in church. You know, I can't tell you how many times I cried in youth

35:40 group about God knows what about my girlfriend or my dog or whatever it is. But these kids are

35:44 not going to church anymore, right? They're not going to youth group anymore. So they don't have

35:48 that social emotional outlet. They used to have a church. So now school has become like this all

35:53 encompassing thing where it's like, we're gonna teach you arithmetic and geography and PE. But we're

35:57 also going to teach you how to be a decent human being and have compassion for your fellow man.

36:01 I think that's such an interesting shift that like religion has declined, which used to teach us

36:05 these things. And now we're trying to use other levers to try to bring it back. I'm happy they're

36:10 doing it, but I'm sad they have to do it, you know, well, it, Ryan, it's an interesting shift,

36:14 but I would say potentially a dangerous one. Even here recently, I won't even mention who it was,

36:17 but a prominent business owner here in my city. They were talking about how, you know, their,

36:22 their teenager came back from school and they were, they were talking about the George Floyd case.

36:26 They were talking about all these kinds of, you know, racism topics and all that. And I was like,

36:31 good grief. Like, did they, did they ever learn math that day? Did they learn English that day?

36:36 And so part of my struggle with that is these government employees that are teaching your kids

36:40 that tend to come from one kind of worldview and they're typically feminine, right? Because they're

36:44 female. These individuals are now having discussions with our kids about these macro world topics,

36:51 about LGBTQ issues, about, you know, systemic racism, whatever that is, and about all these

36:55 different things. And, and yet, none of their classes are 100% up to grade level competency.

37:01 And so that's part of my issue to where it's like, okay, you do emotional learning with this kid.

37:05 That's great. Can he tie his shoes? Can he spell his name in cursive? Like, those are the things

37:10 that I'm worried about, but you're, you're right in a way that where the church has abdicated

37:15 responsibility, the, the vacuum is going to be filled. Like, look what happened in Ireland of all

37:19 places whenever they allowed abortion, the murder of unborn children to be passed in Ireland.

37:24 It was because the Catholic church had completely lost their ability to, to influence people in

37:30 that culture because of, you know, stuff that you talked about with the, with the, you know,

37:33 sexual abuse scandals and things like that. But man, I just got to tell you, Ryan, like,

37:36 that scares me that we have these teachers, these union teachers teaching our kids about

37:41 topics that they should have nothing to do with. Am I crazy?

37:45 I think the problem is it's, we, we, we used to rely on many forms of meaning in life and now the

37:49 government's kind of, you know, taken over what, and listen, I'm not going to blame the government.

37:53 I'm going to blame us. Yeah. They're going to be daddy. They're going to act like daddy when

37:56 we let them, you know, exactly. If you give them that space, they're going to take that space,

38:00 right? Well, rightly or wrongly, but the thing is societies created that space for them to take.

38:04 And I think the issue here that I worry about is, and this is what I talked about in the book,

38:07 is this nothing in particular category scares me to death because, you know, the internet can

38:11 radicalize you overnight, right? Whether it be on the left or the right. And I always want to

38:15 recommend not to, this is a great podcast. I'll recommend another podcast called The Rabbit Hole.

38:19 There's on New York Times. They interviewed this kid who was, you know, he talks about,

38:22 I went to college for a couple of years, dropped out because I got in a fight, you know, went home,

38:26 didn't have much going on for me, worked at Dairy Queen as a manager, started watching Steph

38:30 on Molyneux videos on YouTube and got completely radicalized being like anti-woman, anti-black,

38:35 you know, become racist. But he goes, here's the most fascinating thing. 18 months later,

38:39 I was a hardcore Bernie Sanders socialist because I got sucked down the YouTube rabbit hole the

38:42 other direction, right? So if you don't have any guardrails up, you don't have those educational

38:47 guardrails, which in college, we like, I try to teach you how to think, right? Like show you both

38:51 sides and say, let's think about this rationally. Let's think about this logically, right? If we

38:54 don't have those guardrails, and then your pastor, your priest, your rabbi can say to you, listen,

38:58 as a Jew, a Christian, here's what we believe about the world. Here's our broad view of humanity and

39:03 life and everything else. If you don't have those guardrails up, guess what? YouTube and the internet

39:08 can drag you all the way across the spectrum. And no one steps in and says, that's too much.

39:13 That's too far. We don't believe those things here because we believe this thing about people

39:17 or this thing about humanity or race or gender or whatever it is. The problem is,

39:21 in a society with no, with no institutions, the internet pulls us from one side to the other,

39:26 and no one can step in. And I think, unfortunately, I think a lot of times you're seeing radicalization

39:30 on both the left and the right, it's because they have no people in their lives who stand up and say,

39:34 whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't do that. We, this is my hot take. We need more gatekeepers.

39:39 We need more people to stand up and say, that's a radical view. That's too far gone on both sides

39:45 to say, we don't believe those things here, because otherwise, what we get the internet is,

39:49 everyone not only has a voice, they have a megaphone. And unfortunately, the internet,

39:53 the crazy view is what gets the most clicks, likes, retweets, and traffic. The moderate view,

39:59 no one wants to hear about. They want to see the crazy person online, which, don't get me wrong,

40:03 I love to see that too. But it also creates sort of like a car crash culture that we're in,

40:07 where we look at the crazy, not them. And by the way, most people are in the middle.

40:11 Let's not forget that point. Well, Ryan, we like to see it because it's entertaining to us,

40:15 because it's funny. Other people are like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That makes total sense.

40:19 But I think part of it, and we definitely don't have enough time left to talk about postmodernism.

40:23 But I think postmodernism is having a little bit of an issue with that, because if everybody's truth

40:27 is their truth and of equal importance, then for one guy to stand up and say, yeah, that's stupid.

40:33 That's a really, really dumb idea. And we should do that. It's like, are you violating their truth?

40:37 How dare you, you bigot? It's kind of that overwhelming sense that culturally,

40:41 we're going to cancel you because you're telling someone that their lived experience is somehow

40:45 not as valid as what is true and what is valid. But again, like I said, we can't talk about postmodernism.

40:49 We only have time for a few more questions. I definitely want to talk about something that you

40:52 said in chapter five, because you make a statement in chapter five that caught me completely off guard

40:58 and completely odd considering that it came from a passer. So I'm going to read this quote here.

41:03 I think it's helpful for people of faith to think about the rise of the nuns in much the same way

41:07 as globalization. In both cases, the same cold, hard fact is true. We cannot stop it. Both waves

41:14 are only continuing to build and strengthen speed. Any efforts to impede them will be futile.

41:20 Okay, so it seems like you're not really leaving any room for the power of God to create a revival

41:27 of sorts. You said, you know, unequivocally, it's gaining strength and speed. There's nothing

41:32 that you can do to stop it. Now, there's nothing that I can do to stop it. There's nothing that

41:36 you can do to stop it. But I feel like God could stop it. No, listen, I'm a social scientist. God

41:40 is not a variable, you know, like every time I write, but the thing is like we have to social

41:46 scientists use explainable factors, right? Like we can't add like a God, a God coefficient in there,

41:51 right? So yeah, I'm listen, I'm not opposed to that. We could have a, you know, a third grade

41:55 awakening in America. But I think the reality is, you know, secularization is there's no laws in

42:00 social science, but it's about as close as we get to a law, right? If you look at all these other

42:04 countries, they are much more secular than we are. And I think the reason I wrote that was,

42:09 because for pastors like me, my church was 300 people in the 1960s. It was 95 people in 1996,

42:14 and now it's 15 people, right? Can I look at myself every day in the mirror and go, the

42:19 church is smaller because I suck, right? It's my fault. And I did that for a while, right? I really

42:24 looked at that. If I preach better, if I do what are outreach, if I'm more relevant to you as the

42:28 term we just talked about, if I'm more relevant, my church is going to grow. I did all those things.

42:31 I tried all those things and our church did not grow. At some level, we are all, and this is what

42:35 social sciences, at least political science has become much more institutional over the last 20

42:39 years, which is we argue that institutions matter more than behavior does, because institutions shape

42:44 behavior. And I think for us institutionalization means secularization, right? We tried to stop

42:49 globalization for the last 30 or 40 years and what have we got? Nothing. More globalization.

42:54 More globalization. That's all we got is more globalization. I mean, I talked in the book about

42:57 Trump went to that plant in Indiana, Maytag plant and tried to say, we'll give you incentives to stay.

43:01 They took the incentives. They sent everyone to Mexico and now they're building robots with the

43:04 incentive money. So it's like, you cannot stop this thing. Secularization. Now, what I do think

43:09 about secularization that's interesting is I'm not sure it's people actually leaving religion.

43:12 I think it's just people more willing to say what they are on surveys, which we didn't even

43:15 talk about, which I think people have been lying on surveys for decades now. And secularization has

43:19 given them permission to say what they really think on a survey, which is they're not

43:23 religious. So what you're really seeing is those people are really just declaring what they already

43:27 were as opposed to people leaving religion entirely. I think that number is actually a lot

43:31 smaller than we think it is. So we're going to be left with is a core of people who are

43:34 still very religious in America. So secularization is going to wash over them, but not push them

43:39 out to see, right? They're still they're still there. But the reality is American society is

43:44 changing rapidly. And a lot of things that pastors are doing really won't stem the tide unless it's

43:50 a supernatural thing, which obviously we can all cry out for revival all we want. It's really

43:54 not on our timeline, right? It's on God's timeline. And I think a lot of pastors should maybe try

43:58 to get out of the way a little bit more to allow for God's timeline and to allow for God's providence

44:03 because, you know, I talked about this with John Cooper, the lead senior of skillet because he had

44:06 this, he had this the viral thing from Facebook where he talked about, Hey, let's make pastors

44:11 uncool again, because all these pastors, again, they're trying to be relevant. They're trying to

44:14 be cool. And they're trying to be the point, right? Look at these amazingly rare Jordan's I'm wearing

44:19 and look at this, this great speech that I just gave and they're not really pointing to the father

44:23 anymore. But again, I keep getting on all these tangents. Let's get back into what we're supposed

44:26 to be doing here, Kyle. So here's the thing. And later in chapter five, you had a quote that I

44:30 absolutely loved. And you mentioned it a little bit earlier if people were paying attention,

44:33 but this is a quote. The reality is simply this Americans used to be Christians simply by default,

44:39 not because of their belief in the words of the apostles creed, secularization merely gave

44:44 permission for a lot of people to express who they truly are religiously unaffiliated.

44:49 Now, I live in Oklahoma. I live in Oklahoma, essentially my entire life, the belt buckle,

44:53 the Bible belt. You are a Christian by dent of birth, right? You were born here in this red clay.

44:59 And so boom, you are a Christian. And a lot of people think that way. They don't believe anything

45:04 about the gospel. They go to church twice a year, Easter and Christmas. And that is it. So to a degree,

45:09 I'm glad about this, because if you are so delusional that you think you're a Christian,

45:14 because you were born in a red state, that's an issue. I think the gospel is going to be,

45:18 it's going to be difficult to penetrate your, your unreality that you have in your brain.

45:23 I would much rather say that they're religiously unaffiliated because I feel like that person

45:26 might be a little bit more logical in terms of the questions that they would ask or the questions

45:30 that they would need answered in order to kind of open up, you know, who they are to who the

45:34 reality of Jesus is. Is that kind of, is that how you feel about the subject as well? Because

45:39 I was actually inspired by that. I wasn't disappointed at all.

45:42 So I was, I was given a talk last week in Atlanta to a bunch of church planters. And I said,

45:46 you know, the main reality is what we're seeing is the real religious landscape,

45:50 not the manufactured or the socially desirable religious land. And they all went, oh, like,

45:54 that you could hear like an audible sigh come across the congregation, right? They're like,

45:57 whoa, like that makes a lot more sense to me. Like, and it really does make a lot. And in the book,

46:01 I talk about like the first step in 12 steps, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous is admits you

46:05 have a problem. And I think for a long time, Christians have kind of floated along on this myth that

46:09 America's a lot more Christian, you know, we're 80% Christian. Our present Christian reality is

46:13 we were never that Christian. We've never been that Christian. We're not that, or not that Christian

46:17 today. We're actually, I think what we're seeing today is actually getting closer to the real number,

46:20 right? Of people who are real true believers. And we're seeing the people who are not culturally

46:24 Christian, I would say, are now saying they're nuns or they're nothing in particular, a lot of

46:28 them. So now we're faced with the reality, as opposed to the, the, the smoke and mirrors that

46:32 we've been seeing for the last 20 or 30 years. But I also think that gives the church a challenge,

46:36 because now, you know, I think it actually makes it easier in some ways though, because now people

46:41 are willing to say, Oh, I'm in nothing in particular. I'm not really religious. When 20 years ago,

46:45 they were said they were a Christian, and you would have just walked on to the next person, right?

46:48 So now you're getting a more honest, transparent answer for them. And when you get a transparent

46:52 answer, I think it's easier to talk to them as a real human being. They're not trying to tell you

46:55 what they want you to hear. They're telling you what they're really feeling. And so I, you know,

47:00 like the internet's been awful, but I think that's one thing internet's done. It's allowed people to

47:03 be more confident in who they really are and say what they really are. And I think we're actually

47:06 getting people to be more honest. Now, don't have this conversation online, because you're gonna

47:10 not it's not gonna be a good conversation. But if you have a face to face conversation with a person,

47:14 I think you are honestly going to get a more real conversation today than at any point in the last

47:18 50 years, which if you're a Christian or a not or not a Christian, I think that's a good that's a

47:23 step forward for us as a society. Well, and Ryan, I don't know if anyone that is vehemently

47:28 nothing in particular, right? Like who who does that to where it's like, I really am neutral on

47:34 pepperoni pizza, right? Like no one like says anything like that before. I can deal with neutral.

47:39 I can deal with lukewarm. So I think about the abortion debate, because I do get into those

47:43 discussions quite often. If someone is like, you know, pink hair, crazy face tattoo, like a pro

47:51 choice like that person, that's a really, really difficult person to bring them to the center and

47:55 say let's have a logical discussion about whether we're actually killing a human being. Where someone

47:59 that's just like, yeah, I mean, I guess a woman should be able to have the right to choose what to

48:03 do with her own body. When I asked that person, Hey, are you sure it's her body or is the entity

48:08 growing inside her someone separate? Oh, like they're more amenable to these things and they're

48:13 more able to be swayed because we're speaking true to them, which really goes nicely into the

48:17 end of your book, because you do a lot of descriptions as to the reality as to what the data say and

48:24 on all those different things. But you do get a little bit into the prescriptions here. So I'm

48:27 going to read this quote from the end of your book. So here's my suggestion. Speak truth to them.

48:32 Preach sound biblical doctrine that cuts across the political spectrum. One of the theological

48:37 principles that shapes the way I view the world dates back to the Old Testament. It's the concept

48:41 of the Amago day, the understanding that every human being is created in the image and likeness

48:45 of God. And because of that, every person on earth is deserving of love and respect. It sounds so

48:49 simple, yet it can be yet it can have profound impact on how we think act and vote. So I talk

48:55 about the Amago day a lot, right? And I talk about it in a myriad of different issues. So like,

49:00 you know, when you're talking about abortion or when you're talking about murder, you're

49:02 talking about someone being raped, it's like, at that moment, you see someone that's being raped on

49:06 a train car, which happened in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, that's not the time to stand up

49:10 and preach scripture to that person. Someone's Amago day, the Amago day is being violated and

49:15 is your job to stop it, right? That's kind of my contention. But the problem, I guess, I, well,

49:19 I don't have a problem with it, is you say the words speak truth to them. But again, Ryan,

49:24 we live in a modern modernity where truth is completely relative. And if you're preaching

49:28 your truth to somebody, you're bigoted for doing so. So I agree with your sentiment. But how do we

49:34 operate? How do we do that in this modern context? We're just doing that makes you bigoted.

49:38 Yeah, no, that's I got asked that the thing last week, right? How do I, how do we, you know,

49:44 churches are being defined by what their view is LGBTQ is not about how they serve people around

49:48 them, right? Because listen, at the end of that, when we talk about car crash mentality,

49:52 it's a car crash mentality, right? We want to look for the example of crazy things happening.

49:56 And even that story that one being raped in the subway in Philadelphia, they're like,

49:59 the initial stories people like watched it happen and didn't do anything about it.

50:01 The reality is that's not what happened at all. That the story was completely wrong from the

50:05 beginning, right? But we pick up on these car crash mentality things. And I think when it comes to

50:10 church, when you see a church discriminate against someone for being gay or transgender or whatever

50:13 it is, that's what makes the headlines. Unfortunately, and I think this is something that we are completely

50:18 unaware of is how much social safety net in America is perpetuated by church and by religion

50:23 of all stripes rather be closed clauses, food pantries, prison ministries, all those things.

50:27 I think the reality is, and this is like my like my doomsday warning thing is in the next 30 years,

50:33 a lot of that safety net is going to crumble away as these churches close. And no one's going to

50:38 realize that until it's too late, how much the church actually did for their local community.

50:42 I saw I think a lot of what we have to do when we talk about speaking truth is saying to people

50:46 like, listen, I know you want to define us by this belief and that position and this thing over here,

50:51 but I want you to know that this is all the other things that we do in the community, right? I'm a

50:55 big believer in churches need to be better at PR. They need to say like, listen, we're feeding

50:59 kids, we're clothing kids, we're doing prison ministry, all those things. Now listen, you can

51:03 disagree with us on views of Jesus and abortion and whatever else, but you cannot disagree with

51:08 us that there are hungry kids in our community. That that's what we need to fix, right? So we

51:11 focus over here. Now listen, there are people who are never going to agree with you on those

51:15 things. That's the thing about religion. There's this great article by Richard Ward. He called

51:19 religion as conversation stopper. That's what he calls religion because if you say have a conversation

51:24 where they say, well, why do you believe that? And if you say, well, God told me so, or the Bible

51:28 says so, where do you go with the rest of that conversation if the other person doesn't believe

51:31 in the Bible? You don't go anywhere. It stops the conversation, right? So we have to understand

51:36 there's an inherent thing about religion that's absolute and you, you're probably not going to

51:40 convince the other person to have your worldview. That's okay, but let's focus. We have to, we have

51:46 to focus on what we have in common, not what we have different. And I think the reality is,

51:49 for most people, they have a lot more in common than they realize. Maybe not theologically, but

51:53 infuse of social issues of the world around them. They want the same things you want. They just don't

51:57 worship the same way you worship. When I think the Greg Cocle approach that as you described in the

52:01 book tactics is like, you're not probably going to get that tear-filled crumble to the floor conversion

52:06 experience. Just put a rock in someone's shoe, right? When I've talked to people that are vehemently

52:10 pro-choice to go back to the abortion thing, like I'm done trying to convince them completely

52:15 that what their, their worldview is completely bankrupt. I'm trying to put a rock in their shoe.

52:19 I'm going to ask them a question that no one has ever asked them before. And if they're intellectually

52:22 honest, they're going to have to really reckon with that and deal with it. Now, Ryan, that would

52:25 have been a great place to leave the interview, but I'm selfish here. I got one more quote that I

52:28 want to get a little bit more context for before we got to get you out of here. There was a quote

52:32 from, I think at the beginning part of your book, it was this, just as I wouldn't want one of my

52:37 political science colleagues to try to explain the evolution of Trinitarian thought in Protestant

52:42 Christianity, I don't want pastors to try to explain how Karl Marx thought about religion

52:47 or expound on the implications of internet-based polling. Now, I think the point more so of that

52:52 was you were talking about internet-based polling because you had these pastors that were doing

52:55 univariable analysis, you're looking at a single variable, and then now using it as a jumping off

53:00 point for a sermon. But for me, personally, I want my pastor to explain to me what Karl Marx was

53:06 thinking. I want my pastor to explain to me what Nietzsche's thoughts did to culture. I want my

53:12 pastor to do those things because pastors are supposed to be purveyors of truth. And one of my

53:16 biggest gripes with a lot of pastors in America, and even for churches that I've attended,

53:20 is they won't go into the real cultural issues, and they leave their flocks confused. So when you

53:26 do your little TED talk and you sprinkle in some Bible verses that you've taken out of context,

53:30 that doesn't help me understand how I should think about what happened in Afghanistan when we pulled

53:34 out. That doesn't help me think about whether or not Black Lives Matter is a sentence or an

53:38 organization that we should fear. Those are things that I feel like pastors should get into. Am I

53:43 reading into your quote too far? Is that something that you think pastors should not touch?

53:48 Here's what I was saying with that. I think the problem is they create a straw man out of Karl

53:53 Marx where he's only someone to critique. They don't try to explain the worldview that he was

53:58 operating in, the culture that he wrote, the communist manifesto in, and the issues that he was facing

54:03 in Western Europe in the 1800s. I think you use Karl Marx as a bludgeon. You never really think

54:08 of his ideas worth considering. His ideas, you don't even allow people to consider his ideas.

54:14 So basically he becomes a totem, as Emile Durkheim would say, a totem for all bad things in the world.

54:20 When in reality, Karl Marx, I want my people to know about class consciousness. I want them to

54:25 understand that Karl Marx thought that religion was bad. It was the opening of the people. But

54:28 then I want to say to them, here's why I don't think it's the opium of the people. So he goes

54:33 from being a one dimensional straw man character to a real person who had real thoughts that do

54:38 have value, by the way. Karl Marx thoughts have value and I will still teach him in my class.

54:43 Now, when I'm done, I have my conservative students walk out and go, you know what? You taught me

54:46 more about Karl Marx than I'd ever heard in my entire life and I still think he's an idiot.

54:49 I'm like, totally fine. That's totally great. But my job, I think what pastors do is when they

54:54 hear Karl Marx, they think communism, bad, Stalin, Mao, all those things, really try to understand

55:00 Marx for what he was trying to say. And then he's not just a person to attack. Karl Marx is a

55:05 person to understand. And I think that's what a lot of pastors miss is they don't try to understand

55:10 the social science side of things. They just use him as sort of a thing to attack against.

55:15 And I think that's unfair to your congregation because you're not really teaching them anything.

55:18 You're just teaching them like, you know, I can apologize class. It was always like,

55:21 okay, if they say this, then you say that. Like, that's not the right way to teach, right? Because

55:26 you're not really listening to what they're saying to you. You're just waiting to respond.

55:29 And I think that's what we do a lot of times with these social science characters is we just teach

55:33 them how to respond to people in our churches. We don't really take them to listen to what they

55:37 have to say and think about what they're saying. I think that's what I was trying to say in that

55:41 passage is pastors will make Karl Marx seriously enough.

55:44 It's easy to teach people shorthand. It's hard to teach people a language. And so

55:48 the shorthand is communism bad, which I agree with, you know, Mao Stalin, Lenin bad, right? So I

55:55 agree with all those things. And so that is a message that you can easily get up. It's bumper

55:59 sticker theology for people or bumper sticker philosophy. Those are easy to wrap your minds around.

56:03 But last year, I kind of was feeling that a little bit the same, Ryan, like I read the communist

56:07 manifesto because I was like, all right, I need to make sure I can read this guy, read his thoughts

56:11 and all that in the context in which he wrote it. And you know, you start reading off the beginning,

56:14 you're like, some of this sounds okay. And then you read to the end, you're like, Oh, my gosh,

56:17 this is absolutely crazy town. So this dude is literally, and he's a fruit basket at this point.

56:22 But you know what, we've got a lot of different areas in this podcast, and we might need to come

56:25 back and do one just on Karl Marx, so we can talk a little bit and go tip for Tat on him.

56:29 But Ryan, that's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?

56:32 Read the book, The Nuns, where they came from, who they are, where they're going.

56:35 And I have a new book coming out in March called 20 Miss about religion and politics in America,

56:39 preorder available on Amazon right now. You can follow me on Twitter at Ryan Burge. All I do is

56:44 post graphs all day. Ryan Burge.net is my personal website. You can find all my contact info. It's

56:49 very easily findable online. We're going to have all that information for you in the show notes,

56:53 and we were probably going to have you back on here very, very soon to talk about that next book.

56:56 But Ryan Burge, thank you for coming on on Dante Life, a man's podcast. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

57:02 There you go, guys. I hope you enjoyed my interview with Ryan Burge. Before I let you go,

57:05 we are going to do a quick resilience boost at undaunted life. Our mission is equipping

57:08 men to push back darkness. And specifically, we do that with content like this podcast.

57:12 It helps you forge spiritual mental and physical resilience. So here are the links I've got for

57:16 you today. I've got an Amazon link to his book, The Nuns, where they came from, who they are,

57:20 and where they are going. I've got a link to where you can preorder his new book,

57:23 which we're going to be talking about with him here in a couple of months. It's called 20

57:26 myths about religion and politics in America. I've also got a link to his website and his Twitter

57:31 page. Thank you guys so much for listening to this show. We do appreciate it. Wherever you're

57:34 listening to this, please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive review. If you want to come

57:38 speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email to info@undaunted.life.

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57:50 more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undaunted.life. And we want to also

57:55 thank the band, Argy Springs Red, for allowing us to use their music for our content. The music

57:59 on this podcast is our song, "Cutting the Ties," which is off their 10th anniversary

58:02 re-recording of their album, "Leveler." The links are in the description. I'm your host,

58:07 Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental,

58:13 and physical resilience, keep seeking the lion of Judah.

58:29 If I can't, you will be revived.