transcript

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[00:40] Hello, and welcome to Jesuitical, a podcast from America Media for Saints and Sinners. You can join us each week for honest conversations about the Catholic Church and our world today, sometimes over drinks. I'm Ashley McKinless, and I'm joined again by Zac Davis.

Speaker 3:
[00:54] It's great to be back, Ashley. What a slow news week while it's gone.

Speaker 2:
[00:57] Yeah, you didn't miss much. Did that news reach Rome and the rest of Italy? I imagine it would.

Speaker 3:
[01:04] It did. I mean, it's crazy. I feel like I time my vacations quite well.

Speaker 2:
[01:10] If you don't want to work.

Speaker 3:
[01:11] Yeah, if you don't want to work. We'll get into some of my takes later on the whole Pope Leo versus President Trump thing. But yeah, I was just watching that unfold and absolutely nuts. But I had a much bigger or more hopeful Pope Leo encounter while I was gone.

Speaker 2:
[01:27] We mentioned it last week, but please do tell more.

Speaker 3:
[01:30] I went with my family for Easter Mass in St. Peter's Square. And the end of it is, my daughter got blessed by the Pope in the Popemobile. And lots of people have asked what strings did I pull to make that happen? The answer is absolutely zero.

Speaker 2:
[01:47] No, you're just a charmed individual.

Speaker 3:
[01:49] Yeah, that's true. Things just kind of happened. No, the truth is, I have a pretty good idea for where to stand at events like this when we went on our Jesuitical pilgrimage. A couple of years back, I also got people. We didn't have any cute babies with us, but people did get pretty good photos with their phones. So if you do have a baby, though, go to Rome. It's a very high chance that the Pope is going to bless it. He is looking for opportunities to bless babies. If you have any questions about that, just shoot us an email and I'll give you the inside scoop.

Speaker 2:
[02:18] Did she cry less and sleep more after being blessed by the Pope?

Speaker 3:
[02:21] Yeah, she sleeps 12 hours a night. She's chanting in Latin now, which is weird. She doesn't say any other words, but no, it was a really cool moment. And the thing I appreciated was Pope Leo actually, after blessing Madeline, took a moment to kind of locate where the parents were and did give us like a...

Speaker 2:
[02:39] So you got a...

Speaker 3:
[02:40] Yeah, like, hey, like, good job.

Speaker 2:
[02:42] Thanks for having a baby.

Speaker 3:
[02:44] Which I appreciated.

Speaker 2:
[02:45] That's so awesome. Very happy for you and Amanda and Madeline.

Speaker 3:
[02:48] Mostly, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[02:49] Yeah. All right, but moving on to this week's show, we have a great one with our friend, Ryan Burge. He's been on the show before to talk about his passion, which are statistics and religion. He has a sub-stack called Graphs about Religion, which has exactly what you would expect from a sub-stack with such a name. But he also has a new book out called The Vanishing Church, How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us.

Speaker 3:
[03:18] That's right. So one of the big themes that Ryan is picking up on in his book is that Christianity really in the United States has become coded for politically conservative. So not only are moderates leaving Christian churches, but liberals are also in the political sense of the word. And so Ryan digs into a little bit. He's not really saying necessarily like, it's bad to be conservative and Christian. That's not really what he's saying at all. But it is sort of isolating us and contributing to polarization the way things have shaken out in a way that is both bad for the country and bad for the church.

Speaker 2:
[03:54] Yeah. And then in the second part of our conversation, we get to something that's making a lot of headlines over the last few months, which is this idea of a religious revival in the Catholic Church, that young people, especially Gen Z men, are flocking to Catholic masses and record numbers of baptism and that sort of thing and this very hopeful narrative that we've contributed to and talked to here at America. And Ryan, there's a little bit of cold water on that.

Speaker 3:
[04:19] A lot of cold water, I would say.

Speaker 2:
[04:21] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[04:22] And not the baptizing kind.

Speaker 2:
[04:23] Yeah. But he comes with the graphs, he comes with the stats, he comes with his own personal experience being a pastor of a church that had to close down because there just weren't enough people anymore. So he knows what he's talking about. And I think it's a good balance to some of the conversations other folks are having about this.

Speaker 3:
[04:41] Yeah, absolutely right. You know, it is hopeful when even one person converts, I think. And so we're not trying to say, like, don't be excited about people converting to Catholicism. But it should be a gut check. This is something Bishop Michael Martin said when we talked to him from the Diocese of Charlotte, is when someone converts, it's a very public act. When someone disaffiliates, it's very private. You could not notice it if you're not paying attention. So we're just trying to keep both these things in tension. And Ryan does a great job of giving us a whole perspective on the show.

Speaker 2:
[05:09] All right. So stick around for that conversation. But first, we have Signs of the Times, the part of our show where we sift through the Catholic news of the week so you don't have to. As we mentioned before, it's been a very busy couple of weeks for the Catholic Church. But before we jump into that Pope first president drama, we want to draw attention to what Pope Leo actually wants us to be talking about, which is his 11-day trip to four countries in Africa. So we left last Monday going to Algeria, then he went to Cameroon, Angola, and just today on Tuesday, he touched down in Equatorial Guinea. We're not going to give a whole overview of the trip. For that, you can go to our friend Colleen Dully at Inside the Vatican. Her co-host Jerry is on the ground in Africa, so he won't be on the show this week. But we just wanted to highlight a few of the stops on the trip that jumped out to us.

Speaker 3:
[05:57] Yeah, I think initially the big headline is, it's a ton of travel. I mean, it's four countries, but he's also traveling within the countries, so it is like, it is-

Speaker 2:
[06:07] It's something like 14 plane rides within this.

Speaker 3:
[06:09] Yeah, it's just crazy. So I mean, I think part of this story just goes to show this is what having a young, energetic pope can do. Francis also like traveled a ton, but you can imagine what, especially towards the end, this would have been very difficult for him to pull off. And so I think one, that's kind of amazing in and of itself. But going to Algeria, I think is such an important move in something that Leo clearly had an interest in. The country is 99 percent Muslim, so there's an outreach element there to Muslim faith. But also this is the place where Augustine, he of course comes from the Augustinian order. This is where Augustine served as bishop.

Speaker 2:
[06:48] Yeah. So on his second full day in Algeria, he made a trip to what was the ancient city, the ancient Roman city of Hippo, where St. Augustine served as bishop for almost 30 years or more than 30 years. It's now a city called Anaba, and there's these ancient Christian ruins where the Basilica, where Augustine would have preached, still sits. He would have visited that, laid down a wreath calling for peace. Then he celebrated Mass at a new Basilica that was built in the 1930s that overlooks these ancient ruins, and there was able to have what was clearly a very powerful spiritual moment for him coming back in the foots of St. Augustine to a place he actually has been twice before when he was superior general of the Augustinians.

Speaker 3:
[07:36] Yeah, and there he described Augustine as a bridge builder, which should be our inspiration for Catholic-Muslim dialogue today. I will say, have you ever seen the movie of Gods and Men?

Speaker 2:
[07:45] I have not.

Speaker 3:
[07:45] Oh man, it's so good.

Speaker 2:
[07:47] This is about the martyrs.

Speaker 3:
[07:48] Algerian Martyrs. Yeah, it's such an incredible film. So give it a watch, listeners, if you haven't seen it yet, very worth your time. After Algeria, he moved on to Cameroon, is that correct?

Speaker 2:
[07:58] Yes, and his main message there, as it has been throughout much of his papacy, was calling for peace. Cameroon is a country where there's been what he described or what others have described as one of the most forgotten conflicts in the world. Over the past decade, there's been a separatist movement in the English-speaking parts of Cameroon that are trying to break off from the francophone, French-speaking central government. Over the past 10 years, over 6,500 people have been killed in this conflict, hundreds of thousands have been displaced. Pope Leo really went to the heart of this conflict to make his pitch for peace.

Speaker 3:
[08:36] The most astonishing thing about this whole trip to me is the fact that the Anglophone Separatist announced a temporary ceasefire to give safe passage to the Pope and civilians. Because, you know, thousands of people are coming out to see the Pope. And I just think it's such a powerful witness and example that the vicar of Christ can literally show up to a war zone and create a ceasefire. I think that's such a powerful statement and an action. It has real consequences on a conflict. And I know that is not lost on Leo himself.

Speaker 2:
[09:08] Yeah. And he heard from people who were directly affected by this conflict. I think five people gave testimonies before Pope Leo spoke, including a religious sister who had been kidnapped just a few months ago and held in the bush by separatists for a few days before being released. He heard from the father of a family who's been displaced and lost neighbors to this war, as well as an imam whose mosque had been attacked by separatists. So all these people really driving home the human dimension of this conflict. And in response, he gave a really strong speech against those who would wage war. We'll read a couple of quotes because I think they're worth repeating. So one is, quote, The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multiple of supportive brothers and sisters.

Speaker 4:
[09:56] And then he said, quote, Woe to those who manipulate religion in the very name of God for their own military, economic or political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.

Speaker 3:
[10:11] Yeah, extremely strong words from the Pope. Once again, those words will come back in our next story. But before we move on, we just want to, again, we've got extensive coverage of this trip to Africa, a historic trip. Again, our colleague Jerry O'Connell is on the ground, on the paper plane. So please head over to americanmagazine.org and also the podcast feed Inside the Vatican for more on that story. What are we going to talk about next?

Speaker 2:
[10:37] Yeah. So now we'll turn to the news that you didn't get to discuss here on Jesuitical last week, which is of course the ongoing back and forth between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo. So we did kind of the play by play of the initial social media posts and Pope Leo's response on the flight to Algeria. But since then, Vice President JD. Vance has also weighed in with some interesting comments in one interview with Fox News that he said, in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of what's going on in the Catholic Church. And then he was at a Turning Points USA gathering and actually went back and watched the full video. But here's a bit of what he said.

Speaker 5:
[11:22] I like it when the Pope comments on questions of immigration. I like it when the Pope talks about abortion. I like it when the Pope talks about matters of war and peace because I think that at the very least it invites a conversation. And look, there are certainly things that the Pope has said the last few months that I disagree with. Let me just take one very concrete example related to this conflict in Iran. So the Pope said something where he said, and I'm going to try to remember the exact quote, he said that, God is never on the side of those who wield the sword. Again, I like that the Pope is an advocate for peace. I think that's certainly one of his roles. On the other hand, how can you say that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated France from the Nazis? Was God on the side of the Americans who liberated Holocaust camps? When the Pope says that God is never on the side of those who wield the sword, there is a thousand year, more than a thousand year tradition of just war theory, okay? Now we can of course have disagreements about whether this or that conflict is just, but I think that it's important, in the same way that it's important for the Vice President of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it's very, very important for the Pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology.

Speaker 3:
[12:44] You know, I think this is really interesting because the Vice President is in an interesting position as someone who is pretty publicly Catholic and is writing a book about their conversion and is someone who has weighed in on matters of theology and how they intersect with politics before. If you remember, he was weighing in on the Ordo Amoris, the order of loves is a way to talk about why we should love the people closest to us and immigrants further down that order, in which he was publicly rebuked by the late Pope Francis in a letter. So it's kind of, I don't know, to tell the Pope, the new American Pope, who is from the order of St. Augustine, that he has to be careful when talking about matters of theology, particularly when just war tradition is something that sort of flows. Obviously, he's been developed since St. Augustine, but it really started with that. Hoodspa is a word that comes to mind.

Speaker 2:
[13:45] Yes, no, for sure. And I would agree. I think this was Mr. Vance stepping a bit out of line. But I will say, it reminds me of the times when Catholics would be like, Pope Francis should really be more precise when he's talking about moral things related to morality. So it's not completely unprecedented for people to rebuke the Pope and be like, hey, be a little bit more precise and careful.

Speaker 3:
[14:07] Also, it's just like the discourse just detracts or distracts from the actual issue at heart, right? The actual issue is not where the Pope is speaking imprudently. It's whether or not we're in an unjust war at the moment.

Speaker 2:
[14:21] Like, I don't know, a lot of people who've been defending President Trump after he said that tonight, the whole civilization of Iran is going to die. They'll be like, oh, well, he didn't mean all the people, he just meant the regime. It's like, oh, he should probably be more careful because he's actually the one with nuclear weapons.

Speaker 3:
[14:41] Yeah. When you talk about being precise with your words, I mean, that's unbelievable. This is all happening while Pope Leo was on this trip, as we mentioned. So on the flight from Cameroon to Angola over the weekend on Saturday, Pope Leo pushed back on the media framing of the story, pitting him against President Trump. He said, quote, there has been a certain narrative that has not been accurate in all its aspects. And he gave an example of the talk that we referenced earlier in Cameroon, where he uses the words like tyrants and woe to those who use religion to wage war. Some people interpreted that as being directed at the United States. Clearly, he gave that talk in Cameroon, and he said it was a talk that had been prepared weeks before. And so he was pushing back on the idea that this was sort of like an escalation on his part in the back and forth with President Trump, and she said he is not interested in debating the president at all. However, if I could take a leaf out of J. D. Vance's book and push back on Pope Leo a little bit here, it's not a narrative that President Trump is attacking Pope Leo. That just happened, right? The media did not create this back and forth, right? President Trump of his own volition decided to tweet a rant about Pope Leo being weak on crime. That is not a media story. It's just news. We're going to cover it. And also, even if Pope Leo is talking in Cameroon to Cameroonians about these issues, is it not also true that the world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants yet is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters? Can we apply that? Could we apply that globally? Like the line itself has global framing. Isn't it also true that woe to those who manipulate region in the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain? We've seen that happen in this country, you know, especially from the Secretary of Defense, talking using Christian imagery to talk about warfare and waging warfare. If I see a priest accuse, like tell someone to stop cheating on their wife, and I'm cheating on my wife, I can't say, oh, well, he was talking to that person. That's context-specific. I'm good to do that over here. You know, I think sometimes there's almost this like pushback to the narrative where people are like, oh, the Pope, the US is not the center of attention. Like the Pope's not always focusing on that. It's true. The Pope is clearly directing all these comments in a very specific context. But that does not mean that the messages contained within there somehow don't apply to us at all.

Speaker 2:
[17:21] That is all fair. But I think Leo has been very careful when he has commented in response to journalist questions about Trump's comments. He's been very careful to make the point that this is not me versus the president. I am doing my job as Pope, proclaiming the gospel to the entire world, which includes Trump. That said, he didn't have to comment at all. He could have said no comment. That would have been very well within precedent for Popes to knock it into it. So it is interesting that when a very divisive and very attention-grabbing president drew the Pope in, he decided to not remain completely silent. But his point again and again has been, I am just proclaiming peace because that is my job as the Pope, and people can apply it as they will. Hopefully, they will listen.

Speaker 3:
[18:15] Totally, and that is kind of my thing. If the Pope is calling for peace, wherever it is, it should ask us, even in the context of our own homes, if we are building peace. To just say that it is only specifically to this group of people is ironically kind of relativism that I don't think most people are interested in in the church. I am curious what you think the overall takeaway from this is going to be because President Trump did not apologize for the way he spoke about Pope Leo despite there were calls and questions for him to do so. Do you think that this affects his or Pope Leo's standing among American Catholic voters in particular?

Speaker 2:
[18:57] I tend not to think so. I do think in the moment it was heartening to see American Catholics from across the political spectrum kind of unite around the Pope, say, hey, I voted for you, Trump, but this is not cool, you should apologize. So there was this unifying moment. So that I don't think Trump's comments are in any way turning Catholics, American Catholics against Leo. I think maybe in the short term, some Catholics are feeling a little queasy about their support for Trump. But if the past 10 years have been any indication, I don't see a permanent break from his base because they're a little upset that he went toe to toe with the Pope.

Speaker 3:
[19:43] That's probably right. I think what's interesting here is that I think there was a miscalculation on behalf of President Trump, if there's any calculation at all. Pope Leo is still on his honeymoon period. I think popes by and large enjoy pretty high approval ratings, especially among Catholics. I think there is just a miscalculation on how this was going to land from purely political point of view. But secondly, Catholics just love the pope, usually. They were pretty loyal to him. I think especially when the attacks were as baseless and deranged as they were, I think most people of Goodwill were like, that's crazy.

Speaker 2:
[20:25] Log off.

Speaker 3:
[20:25] Yeah, log off. Stop tweeting.

Speaker 2:
[20:28] That actually brings us to our next story, which is that Pope Leo was named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people of the year.

Speaker 3:
[20:38] I'm glad he could crack the top 100.

Speaker 2:
[20:41] I should hope.

Speaker 3:
[20:42] Yeah. But I think this is, Pope Leo, he's making an impact on the world leader stage. This is the part of the job he said he was going to have the biggest learning curve about is being a world leader. I think you're seeing him finding his footing against this larger than life figure in President Donald Trump. I would be shocked if this was somehow the last chapter in their relationship.

Speaker 2:
[21:06] For sure. Finally, we wanted to turn to the one-year anniversary of Pope Francis' death, which we're recording on Tuesday, April 21st. It was exactly one year ago today that Pope Francis passed away early in the morning after having his final Easter in St. Peter's Square, which was just such a moving thing to watch. He had been in the hospital for weeks, but really, really did not want to die there and made an effort to come back to Casa Santa Marta and then to get in the Pope Mobile and greet the crowds after Sunday Easter mass as his final gesture as a Pope who desperately wanted to be close to his people.

Speaker 3:
[21:50] Yeah, and I missed this when it happened last year, but it's also kind of poetic. It's on the anniversary of the founding of Rome, the city. It's also April 21st. I did not know that. I don't know if that means anything necessarily, but kind of fitting that the city's bishop, who loved its people so much, and was so devoted to an icon of Mary, the Salus Papilli Romani, and wanted to be buried next to it, also died on the anniversary of the city's founding. There have been tributes pouring in from across the world on this, but there was some news around his tomb and the church that he's buried in, which is Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

Speaker 2:
[22:29] Yeah, there was a new plaque unveiled today in St. Mary Major, and it says, quote, Francis Supreme Pontiff, who paused 126 times in devout prayer at the feet of Salus Papilli Romani. According to his will, rest in this papal basilica. So that's written in Latin near there. You unfortunately just missed this.

Speaker 3:
[22:53] I missed the plaque, but I did get the chance to pray at Francis' tomb, and went to Mass in that chapel with Salus Papilli Romani. So I'll have more to say about that during the face sharing segment of the show. But thank you again, Pope Francis, and hope you're praying for us up there.

Speaker 2:
[23:09] Now stick around for our conversation with Ryan Burge about our polarized church in the United States and whether or not there is a religious revival. Joining us from Mount Vernon, Illinois, is Ryan Burge. Ryan is a professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of the substack, Graphs about Religion. His new book is The Vanishing Church, How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us. Welcome back to Jesuitical, Ryan.

Speaker 6:
[23:46] Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3:
[23:48] No, always a pleasure to talk to, and we're excited to talk to you about the new book and also really get into whether or not this religious revival that we're hearing so much about has any truth in reality.

Speaker 2:
[24:00] Yeah, but we're going to start with the book. It's called The Vanishing Church. One thing I appreciate about your headlines is they really do tell you what you're going to get. Graphs about Religion is exactly what it sounds like, and The Vanishing Church is about kind of the vanishing of moderate Christianity in the United States. We're at a point where religion is becoming, or Christianity at least, is Republican coded. This is true, including in the younger generations, and that's a major shift. Can you just lay out for us what you've seen happening to congregations that would be considered moderate or progressive in the US right now?

Speaker 6:
[24:41] Yeah, well, the first thing I'll say is we've got to define what a moderate congregation is not where everyone's a moderate. OK, let's be clear about that. What I mean by moderate is basically the liberals and the conservatives cancel each other out, and it aggregates up to moderate. So you can have far left and far right, but for every one and two on a 10-point scale, you've got a nine and 10, right? And fours balance out sixes. And American Christianity used to be a lot like that. I mean, the data is very clear on this. Even through the mid-1990s, among white evangelicals, it was a 50-50 denomination, Democrats and Republicans. And actually before that, a majority of white evangelicals were Democrats back in the 1970s. The White Catholic Church was very much 50-50 for a very long time. Mainline churches, Episcopalians, Methodists, United Church of Christ, those churches have always been sort of politically diverse. And those kind of churches have sort of become extinct or growing extinct over the last 30 years or so. And white Christianity by and large now is as a conservative endeavor. Whether it be evangelicals or Catholics especially, a lot of those denominations are much more politically unified behind the Republican Party now. And I just think that's driving polarization in a very real way in this country. It's making us harder to govern ourselves, which I think is the most important part of the whole book. This is not just like, oh, religion's doing this and religious people should care. It's religion is polarizing and it's affecting all of us. It's actually making us harder to govern ourselves. And I think that's the bigger impact here. It's not just about a religious book for religious people. I wrote it as a religious book for about everybody and how it affects democracy.

Speaker 3:
[26:19] In terms of cause and effect, did the liberals leave church or were they pushed out?

Speaker 6:
[26:26] Oh boy, this is like the million dollar question, right? I think a lot of them left, I think to be honest with you, over time. The reason they left was because what's happened in American Christianity is conservativism, like American religion, white American religion, is basically coded as conservative now. My students don't have any concept of religion that's not right wing. Because you think about the religious right is the dominant political religious movement of our era. It has been for 40 years now, right? So if you were born in 1980 or later, you don't know anything else about religion and politics except the religious right. They don't have any concept of like the abolitionist movement, and the civil rights movement, the social gospel movement, you know, movements that were all driven by people of faith, but were progressive, you know, in their orientation and try to move politics to the left side of the spectrum. So I think a lot of young people, and a lot of people just generally speaking, think that religion, especially white Christianity, is incompatible with liberalism. You just can't be those two things. You cannot be a liberal white Christian. Now, there's liberal Jews, for instance, but there's just not that many Jews in America, right? There's liberal Muslims in America, but there's just not that many Muslims. I'm talking about Protestants and Catholics specifically. Those kind of churches, and I wrote a post for my sub-sac a couple of years ago called The Coming Extinction of the White Christian Democrat. And the data is really clear on this. Less than 20% of Americans are white Christian Democrats now when it used to be 45% of Americans. So yes, I think there's definitely a movement of people leaving the church. But I also think younger generations just follow the lead of their parents. And if their parents were liberal people who left church, they just kind of grow up going, yeah, Christianity is not for me, because I'm a liberal person.

Speaker 2:
[28:08] How much of this is just not, liberals not reproducing both like, like literally like liberal people having less kids and then, but also people who, you know, maybe are Christians like yourself who are more moderate, just like aren't able to pass that down to the kids that they do have.

Speaker 6:
[28:27] Yeah, that's the bazillion-dollar question is like, how, why is religion decline? And I can tell you the empirical answer is because every generation is less religious than the prior generation. And the harder question there is why? You know, like why have we been so bad at inculcating religious belief to our kids and grandkids? You know, it's not, it's not we become less religious as we age. It's our kids are less religious than we are, and then we die and are replaced by less religious people. There's just something that we've been bad at, and that is convincing our kids that religion is important. That's one part of it. The other part of it is, we're not having as many kids. I mean, let's be clear, like across the board, fertility is falling among every religious group in America, not just, you know, sort of concert, just liberal groups, not just... Now, the data does say that atheists have fewer kids than anybody else, but the difference is not like a chasm. You know what I mean? It's like evangelicals have two and a half kids, and atheists have one and a half kids.

Speaker 2:
[29:18] But are liberals worse than conservatives at passing it down?

Speaker 6:
[29:22] Yep. Liberals have fewer kids. Liberals get married later. Liberals are much less likely to get married. For instance, half of atheists aren't married by their 40th birthday. I mean, it's just... They don't want to follow the traditional path in life. You know, like, they sort of like... They see it as a Christian, patriarchal, old-fashioned path. And guess what? That has real impacts, you know, on the future of America in terms of fertility and demography and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 3:
[29:46] Is there something about political conservatives having more certainty in their beliefs and those being the right beliefs for maybe the entire country, religious or otherwise, and therefore a higher propensity to pass on beliefs to a next generation where maybe you have someone who is more politically liberal, who maybe wants to respect sort of like liberalism and down to the most individual level and to let their next generation sort of chart their own path? Is there anything to this sort of scenario that I've cooked up here?

Speaker 6:
[30:21] Oh, I think there's a lot to... I mean, if you are sure of what you believe, then your willingness to share your beliefs with other people is obviously very high, right? Because it's like, if you don't believe in Jesus, you're going to go to hell. And if you really believe that to be true, then you are going to evangelize because you do not want your friends and family to go to hell. A lot of Christians aren't so black and white with their thinking though, right? They want to believe these things, but there's a lot of doubt that sort of shot through all that stuff. And it's like, Americans, I think, our generic posture in America is live and let live, right? Like, if it works for you, cool, but it's not going to work for me. And if you're not 100% sure what you believe is true, then you're not going to try to convince someone else. And I think, honestly, this is sort of the mainline success in American life, is like treating everyone like individual rights and freedom of religion and plurality and pluralism, all those things. I think that actually has made America less evangelical, not in the sense of evangelicals as a movement, but evangelicals as like evangelizing other people. Like we're less evangelical because we don't want to be shunned. We don't want to be seen as weirdos. And we pass this faith down to our kids, it's kind of hard to say, hey, we really want you to believe in this stuff, even though we're not sure we believe in this stuff very much either. You know, that's a hard message to sell. Evangelicals have always been better at that. But to take a step back from all that, I'm not entirely sure that most Americans can think in black and white ways, you know, can have that certainty. And the question I have for my evangelical friends is, well, how do you deal with those people? You know what I mean? Like, how do you evangelize those people when they're never going to believe as much as you do? You know, what's the approach there? And I don't think I've ever gotten a satisfactory answer to that question.

Speaker 2:
[32:04] Well, if there are a lot of people like that, like you, who would be attracted to a Christianity that's less black and white, less certain, is this just like a market failure where the demand is there and churches aren't responding? Because if there are so many, it would seem like there would be plenty of moderate churches for these people to go to.

Speaker 6:
[32:29] Everyone asks me like, if there are so many people who fit this middle criteria, then why are they not going to these churches who serve that clientele? I think part of it's demographics. I think a lot of my generation grew up evangelical and then left in their 20s and 30s, and then they didn't even know there was an alternative. If they did go to a mainline church, they walked in and saw a bunch of gray-haired grandparents in there and did a Grandpa Simpson thing with the hat. You know, walks in the door and puts his hat on the hunt, and goes, whoop, I'm out of here. Or Homer Simpson receding back into the hedge. I think a lot of young people wanted to do that. It happened in my church, the church I was pastoring at. We had a couple times, there was an instance of a young couple coming to our church who were first Baptist church. They walked in the door, looked around, and were like, can we leave before anyone knows we were here or not? And I always wanted to tap on the show and go, it's okay if you leave, it's just fine. You can leave if you'd like. And you know what, they actually stuck around for a Sunday and then never came back. And guess what, you can't blame them for that because all those mainline churches that should be the kind of like theological posture they're looking for are the ones that have a bunch of old people. And why would you want to hang out with old people? Grandparents are fun, but not all the time.

Speaker 2:
[33:43] I think the conservative critique would be that mainline churches aren't offering anything that they can't get from progressive movements or politics.

Speaker 3:
[33:53] Or like SoulCycle or Horoscopes. I do think there is a demand, but it's showing up in places that are offering some version of spirituality elsewhere in the market.

Speaker 6:
[34:06] Oh, I got a buddy telling me, listen, mainline churches feel like country club with Jesus and I'd rather just go to the country club. And I'm like, yeah, you're not wrong, man. How do you differentiate yourself in a marketplace where evangelicals are clearly differentiated from the average American and mainliners are not differentiated from the average American? I think there's ways to do it. And I think it's a focus on service and community. Like I think that's what drew me to the church I go to now is they have this wonderful program called Angels on Assignment that literally does all these awesome, gives out food and clothes and transportation and after school tutoring and all this stuff to kids. Like I think a lot of people want to give back to the community. They just don't. Actually, the data is very clear on this, by the way. Atheists have just as much, they're just as willing to give money to causes and volunteer as Christians are. But the reason atheists don't do that as much is because they're not asked to do it, and they don't have easy outlets to do so. Well, guess what? A lot of people want to volunteer but don't know how to do it. Churches can help you, plug you into those things. So I think that to me, that's one possible way forward to say, hey, let's just focus on the good community work we do and you can come volunteer for us. And maybe that leads to something. But yeah, I think they're just in a real crisis right now. The data is really clear on this, by the way. The main line is in a lot of trouble, numerically speaking, for a, on basically every angle you can look at the data on the main line, it goes from bad to worse, going from one denomination to another.

Speaker 3:
[35:24] Looking at Roman Catholicism, there's an interesting wrinkle there where it seems like we resisted sort of the decline for a long time. And part of that was our ability to, like white Christians were getting more Republican, even within Catholicism, but we have a more racially diverse coalition of Catholics in general, is that right?

Speaker 6:
[35:46] Yeah, largely. The Catholic Church has always been right above 25% of the population, 26, 27, 28% in many surveys, until about 2010. And the data from multiple surveys all points to the fact that the share of American of us Catholic has probably dropped four to five percentage points since 2010. So now it's around 22, 23 ish percent. So a consistent noticeable decline across many instruments. I think part of that is, you know, white Catholicism sort of carried the Catholic Church in America for a long time, and then older white people started dying off. Now they have been replaced at some level by Hispanics, right? Hispanic immigration was a huge boon for the Catholic Church. And about 28% of American Catholics now are non-white, so the Church is becoming more diverse. It's actually, if you compare it to almost any Protestant denomination, it's actually more diverse than almost any Protestant denomination. So there's a lot of success there. But my bigger question is, how many problems does that cause for those Catholic parishes? Because I think it's not an easy... Imagine you're in a small town in the rural Midwest, and all of a sudden you have a significant influx of Hispanic immigrants, you know, and the question of what kind of mass do we have comes up, right? You just say, hey, we're going to stick with one mass, you know, all in English, and they can, you know, even though they understand English, they have to come to this mass. Or do we start a Spanish-speaking mass? But then we have two masses, and there's a lot of people and certain political persuasions who do not like the idea of having, you know, two separate masses. So I think it's a good thing in terms of numbers, but I think it's actually going to make the Catholic Church harder to govern itself and, you know, have authority structures and things with this Hispanic immigration. And also add to that the fact that Hispanic immigration has stopped, you know, significantly in the last 18 months. So that's kind of the thing, it's going to actually cause real harm to the Catholic Church in America in terms of size as baby white baby boomer Catholics die off in large numbers over the next five or ten years are not going to be replaced by really anybody, especially Hispanic immigrants.

Speaker 2:
[37:47] You noted earlier that this is not just like a churchy book for church people, but has implications for all citizens in the United States. So what is this doing to our politics, the fact that religiosity, the middle is hollowing out in the United States?

Speaker 6:
[38:03] I think governing is an act of compromise. I think that sounds like, welcome to civics 101. But we need to be reminded of this very simple fact of, we cannot govern ourselves without compromise. It's very rare in our country at the federal level to have enough of one party in the House, the Senate and the White House to pass bills without the other side. So you've got to find compromise. Where do you learn how to compromise? Where you learn how to find middle ground? It's just by dealing with people who are different than you and learning how to give and take, and when you can ask for too much and not enough, and how do you find that middle ground. Churches are a beautiful place for democratic practices. I don't think people fully realize that. That where do you learn how to do a fundraiser? A lot of people do it in church. How do you learn how to set up an event? Church, how do you learn how to run a meeting or a Bible study? You do that in church.

Speaker 3:
[38:59] Public speaking.

Speaker 6:
[39:01] Yeah, public speaking, even having like Robert's Rules of Order. So I grew up Baptist, and I knew Robert's Rules of Order when I was like 12 years old, because every meeting we had was a first and a second and a discussion and a vote and all that stuff.

Speaker 3:
[39:16] In the context, it's like father, whatever Father Robert says goes.

Speaker 6:
[39:19] Yeah. In the Catholic Church, you got, yeah, we get in the Baptist Church, we all get a vote. Remember, everyone gets a vote on everything, which is too much democracy. That's a whole different story. But when I went to my first faculty meeting at Eastern Illinois, we had Robert's Rules and I already knew the process and procedure. Everyone goes, where do you learn that? I learned it in church. That's just where that whole thing came from. So those democratic processes, they will transfer into the democratic world, the world of government, right? Like we cannot govern ourselves unless we learn how to compromise with each other. And I think what's happening is that we're actually being hardline and being black and white is great in religion, but it's terrible in democracy. And I think we need to have a real conversation about that in America is, is this sort of like fundamentalist religion, no matter what kind it is, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, is that incompatible with a pluralistic democracy?

Speaker 3:
[40:13] When you say it's great for religion, you just mean numbers-wise?

Speaker 6:
[40:16] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, strict religion does well. I mean, evangelicals are the same size today as they were 50 years ago. Meanwhile, the mainline has gone from 30% to 9%. The Catholic Church has gone from 27% to 22%, right? So there's a value in being that strict and people are, you know, John Wesley said, if you set yourself on fire, people will come to watch you burn. And I think like that's what a lot of like hardcore religious people believe. But guess what? That makes it hard to govern yourself. Because like, take abortion, for instance. If you believe that abortion is murder, then why would you even ever vote yes on anything that was not a complete ban on abortion? And if you hold that position, we can't, we are ungovernable in that situation. So I think, you know, the politics of the possible is what we need to talk about a lot more in this country. Not what I want to happen, but what is possible to happen. And I think that's a real question we have to have going forward. Is it more hardliners rise up and get louder and get more platforms? And the end result is we don't have a functioning government. Is that a good outcome? I mean, I would argue it's not.

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Speaker 3:
[41:54] I wanna shift a little bit to talking about this purported religious revival that people anecdotally are talking about all the time. It's real, we hear from different dioceses or Catholic universities that there are unusually large numbers of people coming into the church, preparing for baptism or confirmation. Indiana University, Ashley and Sebastian talked to a pastor at the Newman Center there who said they've got hundreds of people preparing for the sacraments at a college which just wasn't in college that long ago. It seems insane to me to think that there would be that many people preparing for the sacraments of initiation. Do the numbers back up, this trend that we're hearing from places?

Speaker 6:
[42:39] No. I mean, I love the anecdotes because people send them to me all the time because I think they want to try to prove me wrong somehow. Ryan Burge is a prophet of doom and wants the church to go away. I don't want the church to go away. Like, I think the book I just wrote was actually very pro-church. Like, I think it's very pro-church. I'm a mainline pastor. I'm a Christian. I believe in the value of church, and I believe in the value of a belief in Jesus Christ. I just can't not tell the truth about what the numbers say. And the numbers, I think people need to fully conceptualize, like, how much, how many stories like that you would need to actually move the dial in a macro-level way. You know what I mean? Like, I think, like, okay, an extra 100 here is interesting, an extra 150 there is interesting, and we doubled our number of confirmations at Notre Dame. That is certainly interesting. But when you think about how many Catholics are dying every year in America, like, that is the most important number of all the numbers we're talking about, right? Because I don't care how many, like, if your confirmations go from 40 to 80, it's 40 new people, but how many Catholics are gonna leave by the funeral home or just leave the church entirely? So I do this math problem with people all the time, but I want to do it with you guys. 25% of Americans say they're weekly church attenders on most surveys, it's usually what aggregates out. If revival is an increase to 28%, which would be the weakest revival ever, right? A 3% increase, that equals out to 12 million people. 12 million people coming to church in America that were not going six months or a year ago. And there are about 300,000-ish Christian churches in America. So, you know, that means about 35 people per church across the entire country, 35 to 40 people. And the average church in America has about 70 people on a Sunday morning. So you're talking about that 70% church becoming 115% church. And that has to happen on the scale of tens of thousands of churches in America just to move the aggregate number up by 3 percentage points. And again, I don't think 3 percentage points would be... No one's going to write home about, wow, look at that third great awakening, that huge religious revival. So if there was an honest to goodness religious revival, a macro level national religious revival in this country, you would not need me to tell you it was happening. Because you would see it every church in America, not every, but 80% of churches in America say, man, we had 30 more people this Sunday we didn't have six months ago. And that is not the story you're hearing. You're hearing bits and bobs here and there, but that does not aggregate up to a macro level change in the trends.

Speaker 2:
[45:16] Well, I think, so you're poo pooing 3%. And I think maybe it's just because the context people are in are, you know, two decades of a story being declined, declined, declined, the rise of the nuns. So like even a flatlining would feel better than what we've been going through. So like a 3% increase would feel, you know, like would be a sign of hope or would just make people excited that, you know, it's not just inevitable decline until we're extinct.

Speaker 6:
[45:48] And I think that's, you know, it's like it's like water in the desert, right? Like you're just looking for anything to, like, you know, satisfy your thirst for it. And I do believe, like I believe that the reason this revival narrative has taken so much, it has so much momentum as two reasons. One, because Christians are always praying for revival. They're always looking for stories of revival. They want to be optimistic. And that's certainly part of it. But I think the media also is looking for stories like this because they're tired of telling the same old story about American religion, which is down, down, down, decline, decline, decline. So there, I think in many ways, even like the secular, quote unquote, media is actually incentivized to find a revival narrative when maybe one doesn't exist because they want to get clicks like everyone else does. So I think the incentive structure here, and I will be clear about this, the share of Americans who are Christians today is 63%. It was 63% five years ago. The share of Americans who are non-religious is about 30%. It was 30% five years ago. So yes, there has been some stasis in American religion the last five years, but Gen Z is 45% non-religious, and millennials are around 40% non-religious. So guess what? Unless both those generations find Jesus in a massive way in the next decade, the number is going to go up. The aggregate number of non-religious people will rise, and the sharehood of Christians will decline because generational replacement. So, you know, I just think we need to be realistic about what it would take numerically speaking just to see that number not go up in 10 years. There's just no way mathematically speaking that the share of Americans who are non-religious will not rise in a significant way in the next 15 to 20 years with the death of the boomers. Unless something supernatural happens that we've never seen nor heard in modern American history, I'm not saying it can happen, I'm just saying we've never seen it happen before. I would love to see that by the way, because I would love to see the graph go back up for once in my life. But I just don't see it in the data.

Speaker 3:
[47:42] You know, at a parish level, all you have to do is ask any pastor, how many funerals did you do this year? And then compare it to how many baptisms. And I think they'll tell you. But when a funeral happens, you don't actually think of that as like a data point in the way when like there's, you know, all the baptisms happening at once in a Catholic context on Easter Vigil. And in a college context, you're not really doing funerals at all, hopefully. And so all you're seeing is the increase. And so I think that probably adds to some of the stories we're hearing about colleges. It's like, oh, all we have is increase. We don't see any decrease other than when we graduate people.

Speaker 6:
[48:18] But also the math on that too, it's not just for every funeral you need a baptism. You need a baptism that leads to first communion, what leads to confirmation, what leads to a lifetime commitment. So even then it's not one to one. It's actually, in the Catholic Church, it's probably retention is around 65%. And by the way, that's not to grow your church. That's just to keep it level. Like that's the not decrease. So I think people need to be fully aware of like, a church growing is really a mathematical miracle in many ways because of all the downward pressure they're facing right now. So any church is growing really is doing something amazing. But, and I've written about this a lot and gotten in a lot of trouble talking about this. Man, the boomers are propping up American religion right now in a way that we've never seen before in the demographic history. And they will not be able to do that in 15 years because most of them will be dead or in the nursing home, not coming to church. And there's nothing in the data that says that Gen X millennials or Gen Z are going to fill in the gap that are left by the baby boomers as they exit the stage. So the picture is not good right now. And that's just math. That's just simple math, demographic future of a country.

Speaker 2:
[49:19] Going back to the the anic data, the anecdotes of the universities and the, you know, there's a guy here in New York who rates churches on Instagram and will like go to St. Joe's downtown and it's packed in its standing room only. I wonder if that could be reconciled with something you point out in your book about religion being where people who are college educated and wealthier are now going. So like we're only seeing the anecdotes from colleges and from cities like New York. And so maybe there is like a real uptick in those places, but that's being overwhelmed by the exodus in other demographics and parts of the country.

Speaker 6:
[50:01] No one's writing a story that goes viral about, hey, rural Lutheran church in Wisconsin had 80 people 10 years ago. They've got 60 now. You know what I mean? But that's the norm. Like if I make a scatterplot, right, with all these points on it, all over the scatterplot, and most of them are clumped toward the middle, because that's what happens in a scatterplot is most people were toward the middle. And there's one point in the top left and one point in the bottom right. Guess what everyone wants to ask me about in the comments? The outliers. We are obsessed. We are, we don't want to think we're average. Like as human beings, we want to think we're above average or really below average on certain things. So we're obsessed with the edges of the graph. But my job as a demographer is to say, no, no, no, no, let me tell you what the normal church is, or the normal Christian looks like. The middle, the median person, not the edge person. And I think there's something about our brains that we don't think about statistics very well. We think about anecdotes have more power to persuade us than statistics ever thought about having. And I think that's the problem that I face every day is, I'll give you an example during COVID. How many people got the COVID vaccine and did not die? Almost everyone. And then you heard one story about one dude in Florida getting the COVID vaccine, having anaphylactic shock and dying. And now everyone says the COVID vaccine is dangerous. But 99.9999% of us got the vaccine and nothing bad happened. But that one story will carry more empirical weight in our brains than every other study that we do. And there's something about that. I don't fully understand how our brains work, but my job is to try to make the statistics compelling and help ground people in empirical reality. And I mean, I don't know, I feel like I'm swimming upstream a lot of times.

Speaker 3:
[51:39] I wonder if there's any way that something like this would show up in the data where you, because you have this hollowing out and this exodus, the people that are choosing to go, you know, they're going to walk into a church, not see a lot of people, have a whole pew to themselves, not go back to that church. They're going to repeat that process until they find a place where people are kind of gathering. And so you'll have some winner churches where they're kind of, it'll be like this almost winner takes all scenario. It's something I've seen at least in urban environments where it's very easy to pair a shop or church shop. I don't know exactly how that's going to work in more rural parts of the country, but how would something like that even show up in the data? Is that a feasible future we're looking at?

Speaker 6:
[52:20] Well, we do know that something like 55% of Americans go to 20% of churches. So this isn't just happening, and it's not just in religion. It's like in everything in life, mergers and acquisitions. It's called the Pareto Principle. 20% of your customers generate 80% of your profits. 20% of the church have 80% of the people. That's just like a natural law in statistics and economics. And I think that's going to be true in American religion, because let's be honest here, which is more economically viable, five churches of 100 people or one church of 500 people? You know, that 500,000 church can provide all kinds of services that those smaller churches cannot provide. And they even have economies of scale, because they can hire a full-time custodian, and their power bill is lower, because it's one building, probably a newer building. You know, they can have more pastors. So I do think, you know, this move toward larger churches is going to be that, that is, it feels almost inevitable in America, that's what the future looks like. And by the way, even in the Catholic faith too, we're seeing, you know, the first instances of Catholic mega churches in California. You know, that's something we've never sort of seen before, because I think they all understand at some level that it's easier to run a big church. And by the way, people are obsessed with size in America. They want to go to that big building with all those pastors and all that cool stuff that they can provide, that the local church can't provide, that local 70 person church. So I just do think that in the future, those smaller churches are going to be swimming more and more upstream, and those bigger churches are going to sort of benefit by sort of, not doing this on purpose, but cannibalizing those smaller churches and being more effective because they're just bigger and can provide more services.

Speaker 2:
[53:57] Yeah. Going back to the non-existent revival among Gen Zs in Catholicism, one of the storylines there that I think might be true is that those who are going to church are attracted to more traditional devotions and liturgies. Is that something you've seen and is that kind of fit in with your vanishing church thesis of, you know, the ones who are going are going to be more conservative, both politically and maybe liturgically?

Speaker 6:
[54:25] The monkey wrench in that whole thing is, the problem is that non-denom is the fastest kind of church is growing in America and they are almost always non-liturgical, right? There's sort of very low church, very evangelical, very Baptist in their orientation. Now, I hear stories all the time about Orthodox Christianity. You know, Greek and Russian, Ukrainian Orthodox are really seeing this influx of young people. And I hear stories, you know, and I hear lots of those stories, but you can't see that mathematically speaking in the data because Orthodox Christianity is 1% of the country. So if there's like, if you say there's a young male Orthodox revival, so now you start with 1% are Orthodox. You cut that in half because it's male and female. So now you're in a half a percent, and you cut down to Gen Z from that. So you're talking about like 0.2% of America we're talking about here. So the thing is like mathematically, you can't do that kind of math. And then you hear stories about the Latin Mass. You know, that's a big thing in the Catholic Church right now. A lot of people are being drawn to the Latin Mass. No one can give me good numbers on Latin Mass attendance. How many parishes are doing that? How many people are going to those masses? So these are cool anecdotes. Don't get me wrong. But I do think that some young people are drawn to Orthodoxy and the Latin Mass because they like the structure and they like the liturgy. And I think some people were pushed away from that stuff. They're drawn to the smoke and mirrors and drums and guitar of the non-denominational too. So that's always been the beauty of American Christianity, by the way. Like whatever you're looking for, we can probably provide it for you. You know, whether it be liturgical or non-liturgical, drums and guitars are organs. You know, long sermons, short sermons, more communion, less communion. Like we can always provide that. I think people are going to, they're going to seek out what makes most sense to them. But I just don't, there's nothing in the data that says that young people are being especially drawn to this, one style of worship or one style of communion or whatever it is. Some are drawn to, you know, very liturgical, traditional, and some are drawn to very contemporary.

Speaker 3:
[56:19] I have a question about the continued hollowing out of politically liberals, from Roman Catholicism in particular. The Trump administration's immigration crackdown has proved wildly unpopular with political liberals, certainly, and even moderates are souring on it. The Catholic Church, at least publicly, has been reasonably visible in standing against that and in opposition to that. Do you see a world where politically liberal leading Catholics are coming back because of this, or can they get their political opposition from anywhere they want? So it's nice that the Church is doing that, but I don't know if that's going to move the needle.

Speaker 6:
[56:58] I don't think it's going to move the needle because I think most Americans will say, yeah, on this one issue, I agree with the Catholic Church, but typically I don't on abortion, on female pastors, on same-sex marriage. Like, I still think that like the average American sees the Catholic institution as a conservative institution. And by the way, the most compelling graphs in the book, when I get the presentation about the book, is the politics and theology of Catholic priests, young Catholic priests are incredibly conservative, theologically and politically. And meanwhile, the congregations are sort of edging towards the right.

Speaker 2:
[57:32] I'm curious if you think the fact that the Catholic Church is universal and has a pope at the top of it, who can change things on the ground? Like, you can have a pope who appoints certain types of bishops, who attract certain types of priests, and it's shifted over the last few decades, and it can always go back to how it was 30 years ago. Does that...

Speaker 3:
[57:54] And the shift takes a lot of time, too.

Speaker 2:
[57:56] It takes time, but do you think that is enough to resist these polarizing forces in the United States?

Speaker 6:
[58:06] I wish it would be, but I don't think it is. You know, I think a lot... Like, think about what kind of young man is drawn to the priesthood right now. And the data is very clear on this. It's a conservative young man. Like, that is what... That's the sort of reason that these young men are being drawn to the priesthood because of these strong stances on life issues, on moral issues of the day. And it used to not be that way. People were drawn to Catholic priesthood, yeah, because of the life issues, but also things like workers' rights and liberation theology and all these sort of left-leaning causes, too. You know, I don't, first off, I don't know many young liberal Catholics, if I'm being dead honest with you. And the ones I do know would definitely not be drawn to the priesthood, because they think that, and I think this is the problem when you have ideological capture of an institution like Catholic seminaries, it almost makes it impossible to reverse course. It's like, if I'm a liberal person, why would I even go to seminary? Because I'm just going to be, you know, derided and made fun of and ostracized from my different viewpoints. And by the way, this is also happening in the main line, just the other direction. Mainline seminaries are incredibly liberal. And I think, and I tell them all the time, I go, why do you think that conservative clergy need not apply for you? And I think this is the same problem, just the other direction. So I just, I don't see it changing in America because young people, whether it be, you know, our current Pope or Pope Francis, I don't think that changed the overall feeling of what American religion was, which is American religion is conservative. End of story. I think that's how literally how simple young people think about the topic is, if you're religious, you're conservative. End. That's just it.

Speaker 3:
[59:38] Ryan, I'm curious, is someone who does not identify as politically conservative and had to go look for a new church, how did you do that and what was that experience like?

Speaker 6:
[59:50] Um, awkward, to be honest with you. So, you know, I live in a community of 15,000 people in a county of 40,000 people. We have the same population today as we had in 1950. So, you know, definitely not a thriving county from that perspective. And there are, so my wife's Catholic, by the way, so I go to Mass with her and my boys, probably 30 Sundays a year. And I say 30 because I go to the back half of Mass because I go to my church before that and catch, which is the part of Mass that doesn't do anything for me because I can't go up and take communion. But you know what? I'll cross my arms and walk up there because I want to be a team player like everyone else. But whenever my church was going to close, I got so many nice emails from pastors in the community who had heard about it and wanted to invite me to their congregation. Of course, I wanted to be magnanimous and go check them out. But I'd walk into some of these and I wish I could do the whole Grandpa Simpson thing to go back to that, right? Like, nope, this is not for me. I walked into an Episcopal Church and I was one of eight people there. I was like, nope, not doing this because I just did that. I just walked away from a church of 12 people. I'm not going to an eight-person church. I went to an Anglican church, which was okay, but it was all the liturgy of the Catholic Church and then a 30-minute homily.

Speaker 3:
[61:03] Not interested.

Speaker 6:
[61:04] Yeah, I ain't got time for this. Hour 20, hour 30? Like, get away from me, man. I'm mainline. I'm in and out. Catholics are the same way. Get me out of here in an hour. Something went wrong, right? You get grumpy when you get past 60 minutes. And then I found... The thing is, here's the problem. In my community, there are four mainline churches left, and three of them have less than 30 people on Sunday morning. So basically, there was one viable mainline congregation in my community, and I went to that one, and I like it. It's a Methodist Church. Now, I don't know if I'll ever join, because I don't like a lot of Methodist bureaucracy nonsense, but I'm happy to be there.

Speaker 3:
[61:38] Well, if you like Methodist bureaucracy, we have plenty in the Catholic Church, too.

Speaker 1:
[61:44] I was Baptist for a reason, guys.

Speaker 6:
[61:46] There's no bureaucracy for us.

Speaker 3:
[61:47] We'd be happy to stick you into that whole thing.

Speaker 6:
[61:50] Oh, no thank you.

Speaker 3:
[61:51] The whole thing. Ryan, thanks so much for joining the show again, and rescheduling a couple of times so I could be here. I really appreciate it. Before we let you go, we do have one final question for you, we asked you last time. If you could canonize one person, living or dead, Catholic or Methodist or Baptist, fictional or real, who would it be and why? Last time you said Anthony Bourdain, so we're looking for a new one.

Speaker 6:
[62:15] Oh, man, I can't say Anthony Bourdain again, huh?

Speaker 3:
[62:18] No.

Speaker 6:
[62:19] Oh, man, that's a good one. This is a great question. I'll give you the most Baptist answer ever, and the answer is Billy Graham.

Speaker 3:
[62:26] All right, give the pitch.

Speaker 6:
[62:28] I mean, Billy Graham was the most transformational evangelist we've had in the last 75 years, right? If you ask people even today to name an evangelical pastor, they're almost certainly going to name Billy Graham. Even though he's been dead now for 10 years and really hasn't been preaching for 25 years, they still run his messages on Christian broadcasting, even today, like classics. And I remember growing up in a Baptist household and my dad would watch those with me and he goes, son, we don't have a pope, but this is as close as we're going to get. You know, like the fact that he was able to sort of unify evangelicalism around some sort of central message and that his ability to preach and teach and speak into people, and not just that, not that he didn't have his foibles, by the way, because he did. He said some things to Richard Nixon on Tate that are completely reprehensible, but he also lived a life of relative integrity. You know, he would never be seen in public with someone who wasn't his wife, because he was worried about living beyond reproach. And I think a lot of those things about like, I want to live a life of character like that was. You know, not that I'm perfect and don't make mistakes, but also that I live a life where if someone accused me of cheating on my, on my spouse or financial impropriety, the first that responds to me, absolutely not. There's no way Ryan ever done that and never would do that because of how I carry myself and how I approach these problems. I think Billy Graham in many ways was an exemplary character there. So not only did he have exemplary gifts, I think he was wise in how he stewarded those gifts and stayed out of trouble as much as you could for a guy at that level of fame. And I just think that's, that to me is, having a lot of talent is great, but having a lot more character is even more important. And you never, you hardly ever see someone who has both, you know, the talent and the character. And I think he had both. So I'll go with Billy Graham.

Speaker 2:
[64:10] All right, St. Pope Billy Graham.

Speaker 6:
[64:13] St. Pope Billy Graham.

Speaker 3:
[64:14] I think candidizing Billy Graham definitely sets off like an alarm bell at the Vatican. So I'm sure we'll get a call after this, but we'll deal with that. Ryan, once more, the book is The Vanishing Church, and it's available wherever you buy books. Thank you so much for joining us. Anything else you want to plug? We've got your substack in the show notes, too. Graphs about Religion.

Speaker 6:
[64:34] Yeah, Graphs about Religion. And buy the book, and I don't know, like and subscribe. Smash that like button, as the kids say. I don't know. Just thanks for having me on. And if you like graphs, follow me, and you'll see a whole bunch of them. Not a lot of words, but a lot of pictures. So if you enjoy that, I'm the guy to follow.

Speaker 3:
[64:52] Awesome. Yeah. And you write more than most people, I think, so.

Speaker 6:
[64:56] 250,000 words last year.

Speaker 3:
[64:58] Yeah, that's a lot of words.

Speaker 6:
[65:00] Awesome, all right.

Speaker 3:
[65:01] Good talking to you, Ryan.

Speaker 6:
[65:03] Thank you.

Speaker 2:
[65:09] And now we have, as one friend speaks to another, the part of our show where we talk about where we're finding God in our lives this week and telling stories of faith from across the Catholic Church. And Zac, you got some faith sharing from Rome?

Speaker 3:
[65:21] I do, yeah. In moving away from my daughter getting blessed by Pope Leo, was also thinking a lot about Pope Francis while I was there because I got the chance to go to St. Mary Major, which is where Francis' tomb is, and a couple of interesting things. Tourism or visits to that church are up a few 100 percent since he's been buried there. And I was struck, there's still lines to get in, in security, which is crazy because I feel like this used to be just kind of like the hipster papal basilica.

Speaker 2:
[65:54] It's kind of hard to get there. You got to go up a hill.

Speaker 3:
[65:56] It's at the highest hill in Rome. It's sort of out by the train station. Most people skip it. But now Francis is there and so it's receiving lots of attention. But I was struck visiting the church. I have a friend who is a priest there and he pointed out to me that John Lorenzo Bernini, Bernini who famously did St. Peter's Colonnade, the baldacino in St. Peter's, and much of Rome is sculpted by Bernini, is also buried in St. Mary Major, which I did not know. Also Napoleon's sister, most people don't know that one. But Bernini's tomb, this is someone who sculpted a number of super opulent Baroque impressive funerary monuments to popes and other figures. He has just this little step on the way up to the altar, off to the side that I didn't see anybody go and look at when I was in there, and it had to be pointed out to me, which I thought was just really interesting because Bernini has the simple tomb. Francis also has the simple tomb. And I kept thinking like after the, if it's been 10 years from now, are there going to be the lines to go see Pope Francis? It's really simple. There's not a lot to see when you get there. In 100 years, are people going to stop and pray here? In 200 years, are they going to stop and pray here? And if I'm being honest, I feel like the answer is probably not. In the same way that Bernini's tomb is mostly ignored right now because there's not much to look at when you get there. And yet, most of Bernini's work is still enjoyed and meditated on and appreciated throughout the city of Rome and beyond. And I couldn't help but thinking that's exactly how Pope Francis would have wanted it. He had no interest in receiving sort of personal adulation or praise and always wanted to direct things out to the peripheries and to the margins. And so I think if his legacy really lives on, it will be in the things and actions and processes that he started, that people will continue to appreciate and live in decades and centuries to come. Which I, that was sort of my prayer in front of the Salus Papillari Romani icon that he loved so much.

Speaker 2:
[68:09] That's fantastic. I'll get us out of here. Jesuitical is made by us, Sebastian Gomes, Will Gualtieri, Kevin Christopher Robles, and Adam Buckmuller. Faith Formation provided by Father Eric Sundrup, SJ. Don't forget to subscribe, follow, or like the show on your favorite platforms. You can support Jesuitical by subscribing to American Magazine at americanmagazine.org. I'm Ashley McKinless with Zac Davis. We'll see you next week.