Why Americans Quit Church

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Collin Hansen
This is Gospelbound, a podcast from The Gospel Coalition for those searching for resolute hope and an anxious age, wherever you’re listening from. Welcome. I’m your host, Collin Hansen. And I’m glad you’re here for today’s conversation.

Collin Hansen
During the last decade, one in 20, Americans has shifted from identifying with their religion, to claiming, quote, nothing in particular. And this group is also the least likely of any position on religion to hold at least a bachelor’s degree. Those are just two of the many findings that jumped from the page in Reinberg, his new book, The nuns, where they came from, who they are, and where they are going, published by fortress press, together with atheists and agnostics. The sociologists though category, categorize this nothing in particular group together as the nuns. Well, today, as many Americans don’t affiliate with any church, as belong to any major religious group. And that’s just a dramatic transformation, we’re talking about, perhaps one of the largest Well, easily the one of the largest religious trends in the last 40 years. Burgess books seeks to explain how these so called nuns grew from statistically irrelevant to around one quarter of the entire American population. Berger is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, and he’s also been a pastor in the same American Baptist Church for the last 13 years. So his work goes beyond the descriptive into the prescriptive. For example, He observes that among the nuns, Christians should focus on this nothing in particular group, which is open to returning to religion. Ryan joins me on gospel bound to discuss the implications of his findings for evangelicals, for black Protestants for the mainline and for politics. And I’ll ask him why so many Americans left the church between 1991 and 1996. And it’s best to guess at the most significant cause behind this trend. Ryan, thank you for joining me on gospel bound.

Ryan Burge
Thanks Collin, my pleasure to be here.

Collin Hansen
All right, let’s just start off with evangelicals. That’s going to be most of the people listening here. I’m sure many would assume that evangelicals have declined as a share of the population due to the rise of the nuns true or false

Ryan Burge
False, actually, my new book 20 myths about religion politics in America coming out in March 2022. Myth number one is that evangelicals are in decline, they are not in decline. And I had a I had an op ed in New York Times last week, where I describe why I think that’s happening for two reasons. One, that more and more non attending Protestants are grabbing on to the evangelical label, right, because they’re seeing it as a cultural identifier as much as as a theological identifier. But also, we’re seeing a lot more non Protestant evangelicals. So Jews, Catholics, Hindus, Muslims, are all saying in larger proportion today that they are Evangelical when they were five or 10 years ago, and it’s a combination of factors for them. One is they go to services a lot. The other is their Republican. So there’s kind of melding this idea in their mind that to be evangelical means to be religiously, active and devout, but also to be conservative, theologically and politically. So if you check all those boxes, you check the evangelical box, whether you believe in Jesus or Muhammad or whatever else. So evangelicalism is not declining, but it’s becoming less focused on Jesus Christ and more focused on the politics and the culture of the 21st century.

Collin Hansen
So Ryan, that is an argument that has not gone over well, with some evangelicals. Let’s try to anticipate some of those objections. Is there any other plausible way to look at the data that you’re trying to you’re trying to synthesize and explain for us like, is there any other explanation for why this could be happening?

Ryan Burge
Yeah, so a lot of people just say it’s like measurement error. So people just like mashing buttons when they take the survey. And they’re like, Wow, evangelical, looks cool. Let’s hit that button. The problem is, if it’s a random error, then in every way with a survey, it should look different, right? Because if it’s random, then it should look random in the data. However, in every single survey year, the same factors predict that evangelical identification every single time so it’s happening, if it’s an error, it’s happening systematically, which in my mind means it’s not an error. It’s people are choosing it for a very specific reason. The pushback I’m seeing more than anything else is that people are having a hard time wrapping their head around the fact that evangelical is not a theological term anymore. You know, no one owns the language. I think that’s something I’ve had to learn the hard way. No one gets to tell me what a word means when I give it to a survey response. They get to tell me what the word means not the other way around. And so someone says, (inaudible) says people show you who they are, believe them. If you tell me you’re an Evangelical, why should I not believe you? I can’t come in and say, Wait, you’re a Hindu. You can’t be an evangelical. Maybe we should dig beyond that and say, but what are you really trying to tell me when you say that you’re in evangelical? And what does that tell me about American religion, American politics, American society and culture, which I think is actually in some ways more profound than by not asking them the question and just going on the fact you cannot be an evangelical Muslim, which I don’t think is true.

Collin Hansen
We I remember, Ryan, here speaking with the editor in chief of the gospel coalition, and one of the reasons that we exist, is because of the very problem that you’re identifying here is the the loss of the integrity of the term to be able to have connotations of historical confessional ism, theology, I guess. But I don’t see what you’re saying, as being inconsistent with that, like we can, both at the gospel coalition be focused on trying to change that reality. But that can still be the reality that after 40 years of being told, that if you’re religiously observant, and you vote Republican, that means in some way, you are an evangelical. And if you care about these issues, it seems as though many people have nodded their heads and said, get something out of angelical, then

Ryan Burge
I think it’s brilliant branding. If you sit back and think about it. I mean, going back for 40 years, evangelicalism told us, you know, to be really religious, not just lukewarm, but really on fire for what you know, for God, let’s use God the more non sectarian term, right? If you’re on fire for God, and you’re a conservative, that means to be an evangelical. And so I think it would be surprising if we did not find that people are picking up the term who are non Christians, because they’re, they’re learning that branding means a certain thing. And let’s be honest, our world and your listeners world is not the world, right? Like we all live in these bubbles. Like where if you’re, you know, if you’re listening this podcast, you’re probably swimming in evangelical circles. You’re reading evangelical magazines and websites, and Twitter feeds and all that kind of stuff. The average person thinks about religion probably 1%, as much as you do as the audience. So it tells you what what that 1% Looks like for them, what they’re sampling and what it’s actually sticking in their head. And they hear that word, evangelical, and it sticks deeply in their craw. And it says, Okay, I know what that means to be really religious and to be Republican is to be an Evangelical, which, you know, I mean, if that’s what they think it is, I’m not to be the one to tell them it’s not. But we need to think about what the implications are from a survey perspective, but also a theological and cultural perspective, because I think it changes everything. When it comes, we think about all those topics.

Collin Hansen
It’s not your job to tell them that they’re wrong, but it is my job to tell them that. Well, I might actually reverse the order of what you’re talking about there. Because I’m, I’m not sure it was. If you’re religious and you care about these issues, then you’re an Evangelical, I think it was more of, if you’re, if you care about these issues, and you’re religious, then you’re a Republican. And we there have been so much emphasis on CO belligerents of what my mentor and Timothy George and others would describe as CO belligerents have focused on these social issues on abortion, and gay marriage and religious liberty, things like that. And those are really the issues that animate a lot of evangelicals. And so it’s almost as if the theological concerns that divide us have taken a backseat to these pressing social issues. So it’s almost like, if you’re religious, then you’ll be a Republican. And as we know, religious Republicans are categorized as evangelicalism.

Ryan Burge
So there’s been this sort of quiet and this academics work quiet and slow moving revolution in social science about religion and politics. So 10 or 20 years ago, most people who did religion in politics, America were actually evangelicalism at Calvin and Wheaton and was like that, right? Yeah, the last 10 years or so that generation is retired and been replaced by a new generation, let’s say that’s less Evangelical, right? are atheists agnostics are sort of in between all those things. And they’ve actually begun to challenge a lot of the assumptions that we used to make in social science. We always used to assume in religion and politics that religion was first. Yeah, and then everything after that was second. So you looked at politics through a religious lens. And in the last five years or so we’ve we’ve really kind of destroyed that whole paradigm. And now we’re starting to see the world put the political lens is really the first lens in our eye, our perspective is framed and shaped deeply by our politics. So we’re looking at religion through a political view, not looking at politics through a theological worldview. And if you think about it that way, it really changes the way that we understand everything that we do in the political world, because people are now reading the Bible looking for political talking points, and I think that that is a huge shift in how we think about social science. And it’s actually going to change how we do social science over the next 20 years, I think it’s going to get closer to how actually people think about the world, not how we thought they used to think about the world.

Collin Hansen
Let me give you one example that may support that thesis and one that may challenge it. One that would support that thesis would be the data on marrying across religion and marrying across politics. Is it not true that people are far more willing these days in America to marry across religion? They don’t see that as much of an issue. In fact, they tend to see that anomalous are analogous to race,

Ryan Burge
as long as they’re not atheist. No,

Collin Hansen
that’s okay. Good point.

Ryan Burge
That’s the caveat. No one wants their kid to wear merit. I’m sorry, atheist listening to this. I don’t know why you’re an atheist. Listen to this, but whatever.

Collin Hansen
Hey, I’m glad you’re an atheist listening to this, but keep going. Yeah, go ahead.

Ryan Burge
But I mean, if you look at the data, people do not I think like 60% of Americans think you have to believe in God to be a good American, like, so atheists are just like, so maligned by every aspect of culture. But beyond that, no, people don’t. People are so my wife’s Catholic, and I’m Baptist. And it works fine. You know, like, it wasn’t an issue for us, I think, for most Americans are like, what is the issue? I don’t see the issue. But politically, no one wants to marry. That’s what

Collin Hansen
I was gonna point out. Yeah, I was gonna say that. But when it comes to marrying across politics, yeah. Those divisions are increasing. Now, from what I’ve seen.

Ryan Burge
Yeah. The data says like when it comes to like marrying someone from a different political party, there’s so much resistance. And by the way, it goes both ways is like one is taller than the other and vice No, no, they both don’t like each other. At this point.

Collin Hansen
Shout out to my shout out to my father in law. First question ever asked me, Are you a Republican? First question, did you fail? I succeeded at the time I did did succeed. But yeah, first question. No, I mean, did not ask me any questions about religion. But did ask me about politics. And now Now here’s a here’s a question. I’m really just working through. So this is not so much a direct challenge. But is this a chicken and egg thing? Is it possible that no, people do think theologically or through religion first, but it’s just all of you academics who don’t understand religion who keep foisting the politics onto us all the time?

Ryan Burge
Listen, first off, I’m a pastor. Okay, so I don’t understand religion. I mean, I probably don’t to be honest with you. I think about that. Do I really understand this? I don’t think I do. But the way we can actually kind of dig into that’s what’s called panel data, which we asked the same people the same questions like at multiple points in time across a long period of time. And you can see which one moves first, right. So you can see like their politics moves or their religion moves. And I’ll give you even some from my own research, because I actually do publish peer reviewed stuff from time to time, I looked at panel data that asked the question, do you identify as evangelical or born again, in 2010 2014, I tried to figure out what the predictors were like, what happens after you become born again? Like, do you change your church attendance? By the way, you don’t really only a third of people attend church more after they become born again? And do you change your political affiliation? The answer is no. Which is really interesting, because in my reviewers push back, how can that be true? We think born again, is Republican. And here’s what I found a huge chunk of people who said they became born again, we’re already strong Republicans before they made the switch. So there’s no where on the right of that question to go to. So it kind of shows you like they were already strong Republicans, and what they’re doing is aligning right, all parts of their social life behind a political identity. So to be a strong Republican is to be a born again, evangelical. And so what they’re trying to do is say, I’m a consistent person, right? I’m not cross pressured. Like, I always think back in the day, like union members who are gun owners were like, What do I know? You know? We don’t do that anymore, right? We try to align everything that we do behind this single ideology, which is political, in my estimation. And so we don’t see that cross pressuring thing anymore. And I think, by the way, we’re only talking about evangelicals. I think it happens on the other side of the spectrum, too, right? People throw off religion, because to be a liberal, political liberal in America today is to not be religious at the same time. So

Collin Hansen
And I, from what I understand from the from this book, and from our other conversations, that is a major thesis for you for why the rise of the nuns

Ryan Burge
Absolutely, I think, I think atheists have a religion and its politics. I mean, I think that’s an underdeveloped thesis, and I’ve been writing about it a little bit. But, you know, I wrote a piece called the most politically active religious group in America days, atheists feel like they’re not in a religious group. And I’m like, well, they pretty much are because they act in a very specific way and in a concerted way. They 50% of atheist gave money to a candidate or campaign in 2020. Like, that’s insane. Like, you got to look at donation rates in the general population. It’s like 20% 25%, and atheists are 50%. And it’s not just education. By the way, if you control for education, they still do more stuff politically at every educational level compared to Protestants and Catholics. Interestingly enough about atheists over the last three years, they see themselves as moving further to the left of the political spectrum. And they see the Democrats moving further towards the middle of the political spectrum, they actually see themselves, the average atheist see themselves to the left of the Democratic Party. And they’re very proud of that fact, like, so that tells you something like there, we always talk about extremism on the right. Atheists are pretty extreme politically on the left at the same time, yet, they don’t get the same sort of, you know, backlash and anger. And I think they’re just as problematic and as non uncompromising in some ways, as evangelicals are on the other side. So really, what we’re seeing is like polar opposites of each other. And what they’re doing, I think, is evangelicals are dragging all other Christian traditions along with them, like in their wake. And I think atheists are doing that on the same side, with the nuns on the left, they’re kind of pulling the agnostics with them, and then nothing particular going with them at the same time. So they’re really driving this whole conversation, in my estimation.

Collin Hansen
That was one of the problems you run into Ryan with the with your analysis that you’re speaking in terms of the normative, like, this is what people say, this is the aggregate here, you’re trying to draw conclusions. Seems like the challenge is that whenever somebody whenever you’re talking with somebody, they can always point out exceptions to it. And so for example, when you talk about people aligning in their lives, I sit there and say, Yeah, my mom was a Democrat her whole life, and then she became born again, and then she shifted the Republican Party. Okay, so that’s an example. So that’s contrary to your thesis. But it can both still be true that that’s the case of what I’ve seen in my life. But that’s not how most people behave.

Unknown Speaker
Let me give you a 32nd graduate methods lecture on this, okay, there’s a great book called suicide by Emile Durkheim. Right? It’s the really the first piece of quantitative social science that really exists. And Durkheim was interested in why people kill themselves. So he went around to all the morgues around Paris, all the different districts and got all the death records, which they used to collect really cool death records and like age, gender, race, religion, all this stuff, right? Trying to figure out what were the social determinants of suicide, and if there’s a pattern that can be seen, and I’ll never forget my very first semester in grad school, our professor said, listen, Durkheim was not interested in why Bob committed suicide. He was interested in why people like Bob committed suicide. Hmm. And I always think about that, right? Like, if this sounds awful, as a pastor, especially saying this, I’m less concerned about why you came forward on a Sunday morning, then why people like you come forward on a Sunday morning, right? What are the we have to overgeneralize as social scientists, otherwise, we’re kind of spinning our wheels, and we can tell you nothing good. We have to nuance and caveat and do all that kind of stuff. I can tell you sort of the main streams of what caused these things. But there’s always going to be exceptions. And I love hearing from exceptions. Don’t get me wrong, but I also have to say to them, You do realize you’re a unicorn, right? Like, your experience is not typical. Here’s what’s typical. And I think for a lot of you want to do these talks, they kind of get that the light in their eyes lights up. They’re like, Oh, wow, that that was me or like, at least that explains part of the journey that I was on in a way that I did not understand wasn’t just happening to me, it was happening to literally millions of people at the same time, and we just didn’t realize it.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, let’s add a little bit of social psychology to the mix here and say that the reasons people may give you as in me, a pastor or you pastor for why they did something may not actually may not be the actual reason they did it. That may have been the rational explanation that they give because it’s defensible. But there may have been any number of other intuitional tribal factors that led to that your social science is helping us to see those tribal markers. Now let’s talk about African Americans. I’m interested to know how their trends differ from the majority white population. And I’ll just go ahead and toss the stat out there. This was staggering. From 17.7% nuns, among African American 2008 to 32.1% in 2018, now, there’s a kind of a big world historical event that happened between 2008 and 2018. That I think has something to do with this, but why don’t you go ahead and explain a little bit of where you’re coming from, ya know, why that map because that’s that’s it that is an anomalous jump. Is it not?

Ryan Burge
For sure, but can I just give a little caveat to that? Yeah, do it if you look at the the breakdown of the type of nuns amongst African Americans in particular 88% Okay. Yeah. Which is way different than white people like white who were like, I’m atheist. I’m here for it. By the way. 48% of atheists are white dudes. 48% are white dudes like and they hate me telling that but I’ll just put it out there again, like there’s so white male dominated it’s incredibly problematic for a whole bunch of you know, they they’re all like liberal and like, we’re all about being woke and having all these different voices. Go look at the atheist books, top 20 books on Amazon right now. And 21 of the 25 are written by white dudes. I mean, it’s a problem for them. But going back to African Americans, I do think the Obama election was actually really interesting for them. Because Obama, so Obama went to a church. And if you read his book, his biography, autobiography, they just came out, he kind of says, like, yeah, like church, and I wish I would have gone more. And it used to do some stuff for me, but he really kind of has like a mainline, you know, sort of view of church, which is like, it was fine. And it was social and had a good time. But I just sort of drifted away over time. I think in some ways that gave oddly permission for a lot of black Protestants to be like, wait a minute, Obama’s black Protestant, and he went to a black church, which he did go to one of the most historic black churches, and you can see, yes, UCC Church, which is like, you know, it’s like steeped in tradition. And Jeremiah, we talk about Jeremiah, right, and all that kind of jazz, but whatever. But I think what he did was gave permission to a lot of black Protestants to go wait a minute, I don’t have to go to church that much, because Obama doesn’t go to the church that much. But here’s the other thing he was going on. America was secularizing rapidly between 2008 and 2018. And I don’t think it’d be folly for us to assume that any racial group would somehow be immune to that secularization, because it just it’s like a wave and it crests on every shore. Right. And that’s, I think, in the book, I try to make this point. You don’t people think secularization is like young, white liberal, you know, college students. It is not it is every demographic. Now. It is every racial group. It’s every income spectrum, education spectrum. And you know, African Americans, by the way, interesting backlash we’re seeing in the African American community, they actually were more pro Trump in 2020. They were 2016. They were more pro Trump in 2016. They were pro Romney in 2012, rushing the trend to the right. And what we’re seeing is that, especially amongst and this is really interesting combination, young African Americans who go to church weekly, are becoming more Republican every year. Because I think what they’re doing is they’re seeing like, wait, I’m a real, you know, I’m a real Evangelical, I’m a real black Protestant, right. So I want to hitch my wagon to the Republican Party, because they speak for me. I’ve always thought the Democrats have a huge problem on their hands, which is they got the atheists right over here, right, woke left is atheist. On the other side, they got the black church ladies, right, who are like, I don’t know about the gay people, and I’m not cool with abortion and all this kind of stuff. Like, how do you square that circle and keep both those groups happy? So like, you know, the, the the Equality Act, it was kind of bouncing around, right? That was to me, Biden did the right thing that was poisonous to his coalition? Because if he pushes that the nuns love it. Every Christian group hates. So it’s Democrats, Republicans have it easy on that, because they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s terrible. Biden does not have that choice. He’s in a much more difficult situation. But I do think that Obama had sort of a, a polling effect, but I don’t know how much it was Obama versus just how much the culture overall was shifting away from religion and what you can blame Obama for and not.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, so that’s what makes this conversation and reading your book, so fascinating, because you give the data, you give your you give your interpretation of that data, and even some application of it. But there’s plenty of room for debate within both the interpretation and the application of that data. And so one of the things I thought about between 2008 and 2018 was, it depends on which story you want to tell. Because you could concoct a story where you say, Well, what happened between 2008 and 2018? Well, it’s the ubiquity of smartphones, smartphones, and the rise of violence, initiated by police against African Americans and the spread of those videos. And the response of Republicans or white evangelicalism to those videos, may have been something that pushed a number of African Americans out of the church because I didn’t want to be associated with that at all. Or you can tell a different story, the story can be first black president, proud moment for the country in many different ways. Also transformative when it comes to attitude on sexual issues, and especially on gay marriage. And so that tension begins to grow of the traditional Christian beliefs on these topics, but also the pride in identification with this candidate. And so some African American views begin to shift, as you point out, almost everybody’s views shifted during that time. But perhaps it was one of those things that, you know, President Obama being the vocal spokesman on that issue and changing his mind, while he changed his mind to run for president first and then changed his mind again to run for president second time. But then his but it’s sort of using that bully pulpit to push that issue lighting up the White House, everything like that, that might have created more of a separation. I mean, those are probably both plausible surmises, I suppose. Right? But there’s no way of knowing.

Ryan Burge
I feel like we’re in a graduate seminar right now, Collin talking about the last 10 years and how maybe This is this doesn’t play well on TV. Maybe this stuff’s complicated. Right? And maybe there’s multiple explanations for things. But I do think that Obama, the Obama transformation on gay marriage is super interesting. Because Biden’s switch first remember that?

Collin Hansen
Yes, of course. Well, in in classic Biden fashion, apparently without any communication with the rest of the administration.

Ryan Burge
He got Yeah, I think he was just talking off the cuff somewhere. And just like,

Collin Hansen
this wasn’t our official policy.

Ryan Burge
He’s like, wait a minute, he probably walked offstage was like, Hey, you guys need to like figure out a way to make that make sense to the rest of the White House now. And I’m sure Obama was like, Why didn’t like lost his mind that day? He was like, well, there goes messaging for the next week. You ruin it, Joe. But you know what, in some ways, in some odd way, you could say like he actually helped but Obama because he kind of drugged him and said, You got to come with me now. Because it’s already out there. We can’t be divided on this issue.

Collin Hansen
Well, and but I think the reluctance was precisely the issue you’re identifying it is the black churches attitudes, on these topics. And I think there was there was that tension. Now, I will say that I don’t think the Democrats are going to run first into the problem with African Americans, it seems and even as we’re recording this episode, in the aftermath of an off year election, it seems as though the bigger issue for Democrats by far is going to be how that hits with with Hispanic voters.

Ryan Burge
Oh spent. That’s to me. Hispanic voters are really the key vote over the next two or three years because, listen, we assumed they were going to stay say where they were in 2016 and 2020. Right. They shifted hard towards Trump. There’s there’s some counties are on the border like in Texas, it was like a 50 point swing towards Trump in 2016 versus 2020. You know, Miami Dade County was the same way Florida would have been a toss up of Miami Dade County would have gone the way it went 2016. And but the thing is, they’re cultural conservatives. A lot of Catholics are they’re Hispanic. They’re Hispanic Catholics, Hispanic evangelicals, right. Social issues matter a lot. But you know, what else matters to them? Things like policing and immigration. Right. And I think Biden Biden’s got this big the Democrats are so gosh, that but the Democrats are never unified on anything. And I think it’s killing them right now. Especially when it comes to things like infrastructure in this whatever, we’re going to build back better plan or whether they want to call it that is the Republic, God love the Republicans, or at least unified on stuff. They’ll vote, they’ll vote as a bloc, Democrats got too many thoughts about things.

Collin Hansen
Well, that’s just kind of what I mean of all these things. Politically, politics, religion, it’s all intertwined in ways that are easy to politicize. And easy to cherry pick, but hard to synthesize. Yep. And so one of the things you talk about in this book is the shift of 5% of Americans disaffiliated from religion just between 1991 and 1996. explained to me why that’s not entirely Pat Buchanan’s fault.

Ryan Burge
I was thinking about Pat Buchanan today, like, What is he up to? He’s like, sitting around cash, book royalty checks, talking about cool speech was a culture war speech in 1988. Or not? Yeah, no, it was 9297. Yes,

Collin Hansen
that’s what I’m getting at. That’s it. That’s exactly what I’m referring to.

Ryan Burge
Man. That’s a cool moment in American history, like no one thought at the time, but like, it’s just hung around. So, you know, I think that the 90s, were this odd. And I’m actually gonna write about this in my third book, I think the 90s when everything changed in American life, like everything possibly changed. 7% of Americans were nuns in 1991. And then it jumped to, you know, like, 12% by the end of the decade, think what was going on, though, right, who gets elected 1984 Contract with America, Newt Gingrich. And what kind of politician was Newt Gingrich? He was a bomb thrower. And I think he’ll tell you that today, like he was not like, the old school like tipo, Neil, George W. Bush, we’re all going to get along kind of politician. He’s like, No, the Democrats are evil, and they’re going to die. And we’re going to beat him. You know, like, he was not there to play nice. And I think people, they latched on to that for whatever reason. But you also got to think about where we were in terms of culture. The summer of Mercy happened in like, 1990 1991, where people were like, laying in front of cars in front of abortion clinics, and like, really like the abortion, anti abortion movement, like hit its all time peak in terms of anger and violence and all and murder, right? In that early 1990s. Period. And that’s when politics became like, we have a different view of abortion to no Abortion is murder. And if you you know, participate in it, you’re a murderer, too. So I think that galvanized everything, but then you got to think about what was going on? Religiously Falwell is that is an absolute peak of power, right in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson is right alongside, which by the way, pat robertson won the Iowa caucus in 1988. And there was discussion he was going to knock Bush off George HW Bush in the primary. So there’s all these factors coming together at one time. But the other thing that’s going on, is I think technology is just starting to creep into American life at the same time. So by the end of the 1990s, internet in the home did not become ubiquitous, but it became something that a lot of people had. And in the book I talk about this fact imagine you’re an atheist born in Mississippi in 1940, you might live and die and never tell a single soul that you don’t believe in God because they would kick you out of the house. Right? But if you are an atheist born in, let’s say, 1985, and Mississippi, now you can go online and google atheists and Mississippi and boy, you got a subreddit and you got a forum and you got all these places to feel like community. So now you are going to say what you are on a survey and other people are going to look at and go that gives me permission to. So I think technology sort of opened the door for something that was always fermenting for a long time, but then just really kind of all came together in the early 1990s.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I would, I probably wouldn’t emphasize the technology piece as much, or maybe just the internet was slower coming to South Dakota during that time. But what I do recall, as a mainline, mainline child in the 1990s was the Southern Baptists and Disney. Oh, and I remember watching Bill Maher in my room, you know, debating against the likes of Josh Harris, on his show. And so I remember this distinct experience of being an evangelical in the 1990s, a new evangelical in a mainline home of just how low hated my religion was. That was the feel that I felt I felt largely alone in that. And I felt like the world just hated me. And a lot of it was the backlash to things like the Southern Baptists and Disney. Yeah. And though they set themselves up for it, though, don’t you think? No, that’s what I’m saying that saying, so I’m not. I’m just saying that this affiliation seems to have been concentrated at a time when there were very high profile, social issues stands from the religious right. That were deeply unpopular.

Ryan Burge
That’s right. But I think that’s evangelicals liked to play that us versus them game, right. They really liked to create in versus out. And I think that’s really good. And I was talking about this that’s really good for keeping people in. But it’s not really good for bringing new people in, right, because it creates this wall between evangelical culture and the rest of culture. And I think the taller you build that wall, you’re along as your your people are making kids and they’re keeping them in the in the camp, you’re fine. What we understand though, is that evangelicalism has become a leakier boat as the time has passed. And so you can’t just keep be happy building the tallest walls you possibly can. If evangelicals want to grow and not, by the way, not evangelicals I talked about earlier, like real evangelicals, you know, the ones are prized, and you’ve got to bring new people in. And the more you set yourself apart from culture, honestly, the harder it is to do that. So it’s always a dance, right? It’s social dance. So how you play that game?

Collin Hansen
Well, I think I would argue biblically, theologically, and also historically that you you do need those barriers. I guess I’m a little bit of a Rodney Stark folk when it comes to this or Larry Hurtado, or others. But I would say that that’s a different argument that I’m making there from the argument of when you’re talking to somebody who’s not an Evangelical, they assume that that also means or even primarily means they need to love Donald Trump. They need to have this view on immigration. Okay, well, that’s a barrier that is a totally different deal, as far as I’m concerned, as opposed to the barrier of Jesus saying, you know, you gotta die to yourself, if you’re going to live. For me. That’s a barrier to but that’s an actual biblical one.

Ryan Burge
No, I agree. But I don’t think people see it as just a biblical Oh, no,

Collin Hansen
No, that’s the problem. So I think you’re describing barriers that I was just talking with a group of campus ministers last week, and the barriers you’re describing are the barriers that they are struggling against in their evangelism every single day. I’m saying, let’s get back to the barriers that are actually in the Bible. Oh, no, plenty of them.

Ryan Burge
No, I agree. Like, it’s hard enough to be a Christian as it is. But when you add the layers of politics and culture on top of that, I think that’s, but I think the thing is, like the Southern Baptist Convention is lurks hard to the right over the last, you know, five or 10 years. And don’t tell me that has nothing to do with the fact that they’re losing people like I don’t think that you can separate those two things together. And I think, and this is what evangelicals tell me, well, good. Some people say, well, good, because now the real Christians are the ones that are left. I think that’s a toxic worldview. Can I just say that, like, I think that’s a toxic way to think about things. Like, I want people who are who are really the true believers who are left my you know, I’m an Evangelical, and that I think that people should come to church, whether they’re there for the right reasons or the wrong reasons, and they’ll stay for the right reasons, eventually. Like, I don’t want to be in a situation where the only people they’re the people who believe 100% have been Christians, when they’re eight years old, got baptized in a river, you know, back to the farm. There gonna be people there who are marginally attached, it’ll go hey, I’m willing to listen to the message at least today. You know, even though I don’t believe any of this stuff, and I’m here because we’re having free barbecue afterwards. That’s cool. Like, that’s, that’s my whole perspective is you get people in the door for whatever reason, you can and then if the message sticks it does, but get them in the door, you know,

Collin Hansen
So I suppose, I suppose the dividing point there and I see where you’re coming from, and I want to translate that into terms that I think make a lot of sense, at least for me, which would be, what’s your attitude toward Christmas and Easter Christians? In other words, if you’re a pastor, and you say, what an opportunity, yep, these folks, they may not be here for the right reasons, or they’re going on Mother’s Day, because their wife just told him, All I want is for you to not complain about coming to church today. Okay, or, you know, this is just what we do as a family for Christmas or Easter, we get dressed up, we take the family photo, and we do that your attitude can either be to be warm and inviting and welcoming, and say, this is an opportunity to teach them something, and maybe something will click, maybe the spirit will work in their lives, or this is an opportunity for me to shame them for the fact that they obviously don’t care enough, otherwise, they would come the rest of the year, as well. I can see why a lot of pastors are frustrated about that. I guess my attitude would be to see it more as the opportunity for evangelism. Is that a little bit of where you’re coming from

Ryan Burge
And you operationalize that so well Collin, that’s really it. I mean, he, like I think so many pastors like to like, look at those people and chastise them, like you should be here next Sunday. And it’s like they should be near next Sunday. But don’t tell them that you should. The work happened. When they got dressed, and they got they got in the car, and they drove the church on a cold December night to come, you know, to come to a Christmas Eve service. They made the effort. And I think we need to honor the effort that they may don’t chastise them. They’re not there every Sunday. And guess what you chastise them for not being there. I don’t think that turns anyone on. I think it turns a lot more people off to say, well, I don’t want to go back and get yelled at at least not this Sunday. It’s Easter, for goodness sakes, like, you know, be nice to me on this Sunday. Let them come, let them enjoy. And if they find it to be welcoming, and enlightening and inspiring. They’re gonna come back. I mean, that’s, I guess that’s my two main line, I guess in my approach to your

Collin Hansen
You’re too American Baptist, Southern Baptist. We need to explore the role of shame in Southern Baptist life. I think that’s another podcast we need to talk about. I got so many other questions, I gotta keep going on this. Give me the one top reason for mainline Protestants declining from 30% to 10%. And for decades,

Ryan Burge
Oh, my goodness, because they were too close to the nuns, they really didn’t believe anything in the first place. And so it is easy to kind of go one step to the left, and I’m out of church entirely. Right. So it doesn’t, if it’s not life changing, then what is it in for a lot of it wasn’t life changing? It was just cultural. Right? Culture has shifted, you know, societally, you know, we’ve shifted away from religion. And so it’s easier, because remember, we talked about the walls. I think the mainline walls were really small, right? Like one brick tall. And it was easy to take a one little step and go to the left and become a nun because you know, to go to church on Sunday, then and that’s cool. Like that means one less thing you have to do on the weekend. So I think theologically that’s an answer. But can I just say also demographically, they were a bunch of old white people and all white people live for a while, but they die. Yeah. And a lot of it was like people are dying off. That’s actually I think what killed them? This, to me, there’s two ways the mainline decline. The first one was for like 1975, like 1995. And that was the one I was just telling you about. A lot of became nuns because they’re like, Yeah, whatever. The the second wave is just demographic decline, because the people who were left were old people who are just going to die and their kids weren’t part of the church anymore. They weren’t being replaced,

Collin Hansen
Well, I’ll give my my quick thesis on this. And I would say that, at least in my understanding of the main line is skin somebody who comes from that background, I would say the last moment of great heroism, that the sort of the hero narrative is connected to civil rights would be a good example of where their liberal inclinations brought them to the correct conclusions, in many cases. And so there’s a heroic narrative of how so many southerners so many of angelical ‘s were not involved, but they remain liners, people like James rebe. Now, he’s kind of beyond even the main line there. But I mean, people like that, on the left of religion, they were the martyrs on the frontlines working with the conservative black Protestants in many cases. The problem after that is that the sexual revolution just wreaks havoc. Yeah, there in terms of the divisions inside the church. Now civil rights was also divisive, but not in the same way as because it could be seen as a southern problem. Whereas all a sudden, this affects the entire country in terms of the sexual revolution, so it seems as though it as though like I just I’ve never seen the mainline be able to recover from the divisions that came out of that lease. That’s my my, you

Ryan Burge
You know what I just thought of something like a cool use. Jim Reeb was a UCC Minister, you know, if you’re lost into the south and got killed, basically trying to you know, help so don’t be a great campaign for like white mainline Protestant churches to run today. Say, like, we were, we were leftist on race stuff, like, you know, 50 years ago before everyone else was on the boat. Like, I don’t think that I bet you 95% of young people have no idea that was actually happening, you know?

Collin Hansen
Well, no, it is it’s kind of a it’s kind of like a Woodstock reunion is what it feels like now it’s where the older people We’ll gather to talk about that. But I would say one of the arguments there is that more or less there was the mainline view is what prevailed politically. And when the mainline view prevailed politically, it took away the religious urgency of the movement, and therefore they lost a purpose. And then what replaced civil rights while the debate over feminism in the debate over abortion law, again, that that really just decimated those ranks from the inside. And those consequences are still being felt today. With with all the denominations having split, the United Methodist being the last and the largest be going through that now.

Ryan Burge
Alright, book reco. About are you interested in? Yeah, John Compton wrote a book called The End of empathy, where he makes this really interesting argument, the main line, like Donald he basically says that reason we have Donald Trump is because the main line collapsed, is used to be the main line be like, we’re not gonna vote for that guy, you know, like the establishment mattered at that point, they would basically tell their membership, like, who was an acceptable candidate and who wasn’t an acceptable candidate. And so they will probably want to elevate it a guy like Rubio or crew, you know, some sort of more establishment candidate. And so when we lose the gatekeepers and the establishment, for competence argument, he basically says Trump is the natural outcome of losing the religious structure, the top down religious structure in America is what leads us to where we are today with this hyper bottom up situation that we’re in for good or for bad, right, cuz I think there’s good and bad to all that. I think it’s a fascinating argument about, you know, what, how the mainline actually helps society? Stay in the middle of the political lane and not near to the edges.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. But then I would turn around and I’d say, Trump, of course, is a mainline or himself. And the more No, yeah. Yeah, converted there. But I would say he’s the very epitome of Norman Vincent peels, sort of mainline Protestantism, right there. So I would, I would argue that he is the fulfillment of all of that, where it’s not about the actual theology, or even the Bible for that matter, but more about self expression. I think he’s the epitome of that, but I’m not going to make you argue with me about

Ryan Burge
Just a two second aside. How the last like think about the last Republican nominee for president right, Trump whose main line in air quotes right, right. And who we got Romney, LDS right, Cain who was not religious in any meaningful way at all. You got Bush who was was United Methodist, but Evangelical United Methodist. Yeah. angelical tinged, yeah, Methodist. Yeah. But then you got HW who was a straight up old school pistol alien mainline, like they’ve not really elected like a nominated a true blue, like dyed in the wool evangelical in 30 years, which I think is fascinating. If you think about it

Collin Hansen
Well, and just look at the Supreme Court nominees, as well all Catholic,

Ryan Burge
If evangelicals run the show, why are they not getting more seats at the table? Like that’s, I don’t get that part.

Collin Hansen
Again, this will be for the next podcast that we do. All right. So if you can identify the most significant reason behind the rise of the nuns again, we’re, I’m trying to limit you to one here, which is not fair. But what would you say? Now we got options. We got abuse in churches, we got political polarization, we got theological liberalism, we got tick tock and read it. We got delayed marriage and childbirth, or same reason, just about every volunteer organization is declined cable television than Netflix, what do you got? I’m gonna

Ryan Burge
I’m gonna go none of the above. I’m gonna say secularization is what I’m gonna say. Secularization.

Collin Hansen
Seems like a cop out that just is like all of that. You just put all of that under the secularization banner.

Ryan Burge
Yeah. But the thing is, like it’s so predictive, though, because it predicted all so if there’s a scatterplot in the, in the book, which I love, which shows like GDP on the X, and like people will say, religion is very important on the Y, and shows like the United States and like a bunch of other like Western European countries, and even some African countries. And then China’s China’s an outlier, obviously, because it should be more religious than it is. But it’s not because communism, America, you know, what percentage of Americans should say religion is very important if it was on the trend line? Zero, right? Yeah, yeah. 0% of Americans kids have how wealthy we are. We’re actually very odd that we are much more religious than we should be. We’re huge outlier. But I really do think that the more education and the more income that your country gets, it’s just going to throw off religion. We were going away of Western Europe post. So post war period in Western Europe, I mean, religion just disappeared, like, rapidly. It’s incredible. If you look back at what happened, like 1948 in like 1960 1965, like, the culture changed completely in Europe and to think that it wasn’t going to come to America, at least at some level. I think what’s more, even more fascinating question is why did it take so long and why did it go so slow? We should be 40% nuns and I think secularization explains all that at the same time.

Collin Hansen
Wow, I did not peg you as an old school secularization thesis.

Ryan Burge
Oh, come on.

Collin Hansen
Okay. I just I just did not have you pegged that way. Well, okay. I guess my without getting into too much. My counter argument would be, I guess you just say Ireland. was the was also slow because Ireland was just poor. The argument there,

Ryan Burge
Catholicism is tough, right? Because it’s cultural as much as it is religious. And on surveys we know people say they’re Catholic, even though they never go to Mass for years and years and years, right.

Collin Hansen
Well, I still I still think there’s something to be said for how Ireland was also one of those outliers within Northern and Western Europe, and you can say Catholicism, but then at the same time, you say, Yeah, but what happened? Well, the abuse scandal happened and the Connect that was a clear before and after. And so that’s why I would argue I do think there are some factors that exacerbate it. I mean, I do agree with what you’re saying, overall, the United States is quickly catching up. Probably what I would say the reason why we’ve been delayed is because of the uniqueness of southern history. Specifically, its racial history, its Civil War history, and how closely connected that has been to EV angelical. Religion. That’s the main reason I

Ryan Burge
You know what Stark would say what he would say, pluralism, the fact that America has always been religiously diverse, a strong marketplace. So Tocqueville, so Tocqueville’s argument exactly right, that we’ve all religions always had to fight for its market share, and therefore had to innovate and, you know, move forward and be more attractive to people, right. And Europe, all the religions basically became state churches, and they rested on their laurels. And listen, if you want make something go away, make the government adopt it. And we never did that in America. So I actually think that I think there’s a lot to be said for the fact that religion never Analyt in most parts of the country, you have a diversity of religion, you had a diversity religion for a long time now. And I actually think a lot of people go, Okay, I’ve got all these options, and none is an option. But it’s one of a menu, right of options that I have. And I think that’s actually made religion relatively strong in America, long paddle expiration date,

Collin Hansen
True. Quick point of order, though, we actually did have established religions in America, in New England, in the least religious part of the country. So that thesis could also hold there as well. As the problem, Ryan, we could probably all be right. That’s the problem. We’re all wrong, or all wrong, but it can be all of the above, it can be secularization, and it can be pluralism, and it can be something like all these things can be happening at once. And usually, the way I find we get things wrong is when we say it has to be this one thing overall. So

Ryan Burge
You mean those things on line versus one simple trick that makes everyone mad is not really true?

Collin Hansen
Jim is busting all kinds of myths here. Ryan in 1970s, the modal or most common age of an evangelical was 24. Now it is 58 Shevin. Joke would be worried. Oh, my goodness,

Ryan Burge
Yes. And I’ve written about this a lot like the age of the Southern Baptist Convention should be worrying to like, I think a lot of Evangelicals will look at those gray haired mainline. And I’m like, look in the mirror guys, like five years behind you, really you are like five years behind where they are, if you look where the age distribution is, the fat part of the distribution is like 55 to 65. That is does not portend a very vital future. Because we know like a lot of us who are going to die off in the next 15 to 20 years, and there’s not this huge, you know, crush of evangelical is going to fill in the gap that are left by all these people dying off. And I think, you know, it’s easy to point the mainline say, well, they’re dying, because they are because listen, you see where the mainline is right now that’s where you’re going to be in 10 or 15 or 20 years. And here’s the difference though. A lot of mainline traditions have no people they have a ton of money. A lot of evangelical traditions are not as wealthy. You know, like the Episcopalians have the Wall Street trust. Have you read about this as well in my mind, they they were given land by the Queen in the 1700s, which they still own on Wall Street, and it’s valued. I’ve seen estimates value between six and $10 billion of real estate holdings they own the Episcopal Church, does the Southern Baptist have a lot of money, but I don’t think they have that kind of money, right? And think about nondenominational. Think about the EO G think about all these other little traditions that you know, that are not that big. The Episcopalians can live on life support for years, because they can keep the lights on a lot of evangelical traditions, they start dying off quickly do not have that financial lifeline to keep them around for a long time.

Collin Hansen
That’s the same dynamic within higher education. So a lot of the schools, the private schools that Christians had started in previous generations, obviously, they have the major endowments, the Ivy League, places like them, whereas the other evangelical schools today almost exclusively depend on enrollment. They don’t have the major endowments they’re so same thing. They’re so much more much more quickly affected by these transformations. So the age thing is a major concern for Christian colleges.

Ryan Burge
Absolutely. That’s why I don’t teach the Christian God by the way. Five years of bad enrollment your jobs gone cuz your universities Well, I

Collin Hansen
Gotta, I gotta say, if it’s so bad in Christian colleges that you’re teaching at a public university in Illinois, then it must be really bad.

Ryan Burge
Listen I’ve got health insurance. That’s Cadillac, I’ve got a pension that’s gonna keep me in money for the rest of my life.

Collin Hansen
As a former Illinois resident, I say good luck with that. Ryan,

Ryan Burge
I got, we got a union that I’m not a part of, but whatever. Good luck.

Collin Hansen
All right, is it cause or effect that a woman without kids is almost twice as likely to be a nun? As in no religion? As a woman with kids?

Ryan Burge
I think it’s, I this is just hypothesizing. Okay. I think what it is, is we all understand there’s a traditional conventional way to go through life, right, which is like, you know, go to college, find a guy or lady and get married, and then have kids and then sort of fall in, they have a job in the house and all that stuff in the dog. I think if you veer off that plan, and then by the way, go to church as part of that whole plan to write like, raise your kids and shirts and whole thing. If you veer off that plan in any way, shape, or form, you’re like, I give up, you know, I mean, like, I’m the church, like, you know, who goes to church, nuclear families, now, you’re the ones who go to church and because I maybe I’m a single mother, right, or like, I live with my boyfriend, or you know, something like that. If you veered off that plan, I think that really takes you off the road of religion entirely, and you just never feel like you belong there. And I will, I’m not gonna say churches cause this cuz I don’t think they cause this. It’s just culture around religion causes this. And churches haven’t done a lot to sort of, you know, mend that fence up. But I think it’s more about the worldview of if you do everything right than religious for you. But if you do a few things wrong, or maybe not following that path, then religion is not your thing.

Collin Hansen
This is the nothing in particular group that you’re talking about here as well. Again, I think that’s what’s so confusing. I try to tell people this all the time. It’s the college educated Americans who are far more religious, observant than it is those without college education.

Ryan Burge
What am I missing my new book is that college makes people nuns, there’s actually no evidence of like, it’s insane to me, like how people believe stuff, that’s just factually untrue. The people who are leaving church are the lower education and the lower incomes too high. If I broke the income into quartiles, so top 25, you know, second 25, bottom 25, the people are leaving church, the most of the bottom 25% of the income spectrum. So it’s not it’s not this is a thing. This isn’t like, everyone online like, well, once you get some education, you’re going to leave the church. No, you’re not. The evidence is very clear on this people who are educated are in church as much as anybody.

Collin Hansen
In other words, the problem is not the life of Julia, you remember that all campaign from President Obama. But just when you’re talking about the life pattern that was so interesting, never seen a campaign able to kind of map out its demography, in terms of a new life pattern. But I think it was very instructive, and in many ways accurate of the the the effect of things like delayed marriage and delayed childbearing. The point is, though, that’s not only single women who are going off to do PhDs and then getting married at 35. And having kids at 40. It’s also women who are having, you know, getting pregnant at age 18, or a miscarriage or something like that, and just life begins to fall apart. For them. That’s often why they leave religion there and never get connected into and build a nuclear family. I’m going to jump over this last or the second last question here. Because I just want to point people out in your book, one thing that you close with the advice to preach sound biblical doctrine that cuts across the political spectrum, gives everybody a flavor for what you’re getting at in this book. But the last question, then related to that is, do you think this trend can be reversed?

Ryan Burge
I don’t think it’d be reverse. I could be slowed. I’m much more of a believer, you can take the trend line and curve it down, as opposed to like reversing it, where it’s going the opposite direction. I think it’s inevitable that America is going to be less religious in 20 years than it was today. And then 40 years from there, right. It’s just, we were again, going back to the Max Weber’s secularization, the secularization, yeah, like I think, but here’s what I think, though, and I think this is where we differ from Western Europe. I don’t think we get to a point where majority of Americans are non religious. I just don’t see that in the data. I mean, even amongst Gen Z. The nuns do outnumber the Protestants and Catholics combined, by the way, which is, you know, obviously, 45% of Gen Z are atheist, agnostic, nothing in particular 37% are Protestant or Catholic. So that’s not great. But here’s what I got going for us. Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Hindus, all these other groups together, right kind of mash together and they’re not going away. Right. There’s they’re hanging around and they’re actually there’s not a ton of evidence. They’re growing, but they’re definitely not declining, especially amongst the younger generation and probably growing somewhat. And we know those groups are younger, like the average Muslim is like, the average adult Muslim is 32 years old, like 1818 and the average is 30. Like crazy. Young, they have more kids and they have them younger, all good thing for those traditions in terms of like their future survival. I think we see America in the future where it’s 50% nuns. It’s 50% religious people, but it’s not 50% Christians. It’s probably 3538 40% Christians and then like 10 or 12% of everybody else who are very devout, just obviously in a different way.

Collin Hansen
And the 35% of us will be going to church and Zuckerberg Metaverse so

Ryan Burge
the way that he’ll charge you to go because he has no idea how to do anything.

Collin Hansen
Can I rent a pew and Mark Zuckerberg

Ryan Burge
The thing with the church’s thing they wanted to they wanted to put ads during the stream, and they want people to pay to watch the stream. I’m like, so, you’re worth like $100 billion, dude, you can’t throw a bone to a church where you can watch for free? Like, who who is your ham-fisted PR director is like let’s charge churches for this because we’ve got no money like we’re giving them a you know what I mean? Like it’s so dumb.

Collin Hansen
Probably the same atheist who thinks that taxing churches is a viable political way forward until I point out? How many how many black and Hispanic churches have you been to? And how many of those folks vote democratic and how do you think that’s gonna work in terms of a political coalition?

Ryan Burge
I go, Listen, Joel Olsteen church is going to do just fine if you tax it, because it’ll just go to the people and ask for more money that the storefront church on in light in urban Detroit is going to go under in a week. If you start taxing and you want to hurt, the small churches are going to die and the pictures are going to get bigger. Do you think that’s a good outcome? I don’t I don’t think most people think that’s a good outcome. It’s bad policy. It’s bad politics. It’s never going to happen. People love to talk about on Twitter, apparently,

Collin Hansen
Ryan give a brief blurb for your next book coming out early 2022. Yep.

Ryan Burge
It’s called 20 myths about religion and politics in America. 10 are about religion in politics and the combination. So things like evangelicals did not support Trump in the primary. That’s false. Things like evangelicals vote because of abortion. I don’t think that’s true. I think immigration is just as important as abortion, but other stuff like you know, college makes people secular people get more religious as they age, that’s also false. Black Protestants are liberals not true. They’re moderates politically mainline Protestant are liberals. They’re not they’re moderate politically. So a bunch of little like 2020 500 word chapters with a couple graphs just sort of like knocking out things I see online that are just patently false, wrapped in the veneer of I think if we’re going to move through the polarized time that we’re in right now, empiricism is the only way forward, which is a focus on data and what we know to be true and looking at the data. You know, I think reject rejecting data and rejecting facts is where we get into problems and be willing to change. In the very last chapter, I talked about how I compare Donald Rumsfeld, Robert McNamara, which things are really interesting comparison. Because you know, when McNamara or when Rumsfeld died, not even a couple months ago, there was an obituary in the Atlantic that said that Rumsfeld never changed his mind about Iraq. He could just never, never change. He thought he what they did was exactly right. And if you look, watch McNamara’s life, the Fog of War documentary that he came out in 2005. He was incredibly introspective about his role in the Vietnam campaign, and all the lives that were lost both by the Vietnamese and the Americans in that campaign, and he almost apologized for his role in that whole thing. And I think we need to be a lot more like McNamara and a whole lot less like Rumsfeld. Changing your mind is not a bad thing, if confronted by overwhelming evidence that you’re wrong. And hopefully, in the book, I kind of do that a little bit.

Collin Hansen
Well, check that out. Your point, by the way, on immigration, and abortion is the key one, I believe, to people who are anybody who was confused but Avenue uncle supportive Trump, and for any of us who worked in Republican politics for, say, two decades before Trump came onto the scene, the attitude of Republican voters on immigration did not come as a surprise. It’s kind of a surprise that finally a Republican politician realigned his or her position to the normal Republican voters position on that. But like he said, it gets very confusing when you think, Wait a minute, but even joke was vote because of abortion, like, Well, I mean, some do. But immigration is at least as powerful, if not more powerful, as a

Ryan Burge
Data point about that. 50% of white evangelicals want to reduce legal immigration in this country by 50% 58%. Want to reduce legal immigration by 50% of this country? So I have a hard time with the whole like always wanting to come here legally. No, the majority don’t.

Collin Hansen
And that’s because of angelical identity is very closely tied to a certain view of America. Yes, which is very closely tied to certain racial notions broadly about the composition of America, things that are changing rapidly because of the demographics that you talk about here. So anyway, I think we could have done several more hours of this but you’ve been listening to rainberge talk on gospel abound about his book, The nuns, where they came from, who they are and where they are going, Ryan, what a great interview. Thanks. You

Ryan Burge
Always a pleasure, Collin. Appreciate it.