WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Daniel Gullotta: Witches Are Back. Why?

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Daniel Gullotta is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Mississippi. He joined WRFH to discuss a recent essay at The Bulwark examining the widening spiritual divide in the United States between women and men.From 11/06/24.

This is Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Sophia Mant and with me today is Daniel Golata. And he wrote an article on Substack titled, Witches Are Back, Why, the widening spiritual divide in the United States between women and men. And was this also published within the bulwark? Yes, the bulwark published it. they run for sub-sac. Okay. Thank you.

A very interesting article you've written. I loved reading it. And it talks about how there's becoming a divide between men and women in the religious sense with some men returning to the church, whereas on average, it seems from trends, women are leaving the church and turning to other forms of spirituality such as that found in Wiccan or pagan traditions. And I guess my first question for you is, do you think that the rise in female witches or pagans maybe stems from a desire to

gain a more individualized and personal sense of the feminine in a world where I think increasingly traditional gender roles are kind of becoming more and more fractured because it's like on one hand, people that are very, very, return, want to return to a traditional understanding, and then you have kind of the extreme opposite. Do you think maybe this is kind of another form of it? Well, first of all, thank you so much for inviting me on to be interviewed. Love talking to Radio Free Hillsdale. To your question, absolutely, there definitely seems to be a female-focused drive with the women who are exploring what we might describe as the occult or new age spirituality, Wiccan.

I mean, part of the problem is even pinning down and describing what is being explored. Just to be clear, this is not a majority of women by any stretch of the affirmation, much like it's not a majority of men that are returning to some form of Christian church attendance. but there are these trends within Gen Z and millennial women that there's a not insignificant amount that is exploring this. The research is pretty clear that definitely some of this appeal has to do with the celebration of femininity. Many women see that these spiritual pathways or religious lifestyles or even just the religious

culture around them celebrates womanhood. celebrates things that are typically viewed as feminine. You can see this in some of the practices. Beyond that as well, there's also a lot of feminine chic around this as well, from music to fashion to video games. So they're very much as an I Am Woman, He and me Roar, going on there as well. You've also kind of studied these things from a perspective of you you teach history and religion at Ashland University as an archer fellow. And then it said in your description, in fall 2024, you'll join the University of Mississippi as a postdoctoral research associate. Has this happened yet?

Yes, yes. I've been an old miss for a few months now. But yes, just been here for a while. So then another question I have is that. as a female who sometimes is on the internet, I was actually surprised by some of the statistics you brought up for women becoming intrigued and kind of pagan practices. Like there seemed a surprisingly small amount of actual practicing, which is as opposed to the amount I see online.

Does this maybe reflect either a disparity between the internet and the real world or kind of, as you mentioned, like the idea that those forms of that religion are inherently a bit more disorganized. Yeah, that's a really good point that you bring up. There's a lot of ways to take this. First and foremost, to your point about the data, sociologists of religion who do focus on neo-paganism or witchcraft have debated for a very long time what the numbers are. Sometimes, you know, depending what decade we're talking about, in the 80s, it was viewed as like, well, maybe 50,000 to 100,000. Trinity College did a very famous study that only had about 8,000 in the early 90s. But then that Trinity College did the survey again in 2008 and found over 300,000 self-identified.

And then other people like the religious landscape argued that there's probably about 1,000. that use the term Wiccan or pagan in America. So, you know, that is, it is difficult to go with, as all this research data is. Partly because of trying to find these people and also survey them, as you can imagine, this takes time and money. And unless one of the reasons what we know so much about evangelical Christians, a lot of people don't realize this, is evangelical Christians spend a lot of money to get data information about church attendance, about people going. So until the Wiccans pony up were kind of

limited in some of our research. But to your point, though, about being a woman who's sometimes on the internet, this is why I pointed out in the article that a lot of this is also vibes or just witchy practices or what you might call cultural witchcraft. So for example, Lana Del Rey does not describe herself as a witch, has never described herself as Wiccan, has never described yourself as neo-pagan, but she participated in a public hex on former president, this is back in 2016, on former president, soon to be president again, Donald Trump, you know, even though she never called herself that. Florence on the Machine, who is a very famous singer in a very famous. But if you look at her lyrics, the way she dresses, like so many of her songs are about

magic and resurrection. She dresses like she has also these like 1970s occult vibes. But interview after interview, she says, I am not a witch. I do not believe in witchcraft. Gwen of Paltero as well, famous actress, probably more famous for Goop these days. You know, she also, when asked about her religiosity, she says that she's not a pagan, she's not a witch. And yet her company sells terror cards and crystals and healing bombs and things like that. So a lot of this raises questions about how do we pin these people down? You know, witch talk is notorious for this. Witch talk is a hashtag on TikTok that gets billions of views. And like obviously there are not billions of witches, but there's probably a lot of women who, for lack of a better word, dig the

vibes. Yeah, it is, it is interesting how there seems to be a cultural kind of or media shift or focus in witches instead of kind of in, you know, older times being kind of like, like portrayed as ugly whereas you have kind of it being seen more as in attractive thing kind of thinking of like you know Harry Potter and witches and wizards and then like Buffy the vampire slayers so do you think that that also has had an effect kind of the in the vibe shift of which is being seen as cool or attractive or powerful oh absolutely like I cannot emphasize like I cannot understay this. Roland Hutton, who is one of the world leading experts on witchcraft, if your listeners are interested, pick up his book, The Witch, a global history of fear, right there on the

subtitle, fear. For the longest time in human history, witches, as they were found across the globe, in European, Asian, African, Christian, Muslim, Chinese, African religions have always been associated, for lack of a better term, with community spiritual terrorism. The only way to describe this trend, it's like one of the greatest real rehabilitation stories in history. If you would go back in time to like 19th century Americans and say that witches would become cool and interesting and sympathetic people in just literature or in movies and video games, Absolutely, people would not believe you.

Like, that it just doesn't make sense. Now, obviously, we've seen this with a lot of other things as well. Anti-heroes have been very big for a very long time ever since, probably Paradise Lost, but we don't need to go down that rabbit hole. But, yeah, I think there definitely has been a shift because witches have been seen as sympathetic side characters. Like a lot of, a lot of this begins where witches, were kind of helpful characters.

Think Wizard of Oz with the good white witch. She's not a main character, but she calls herself a witch, and she's a supportive side character. Until eventually you do get people like Sabrina the teenage witch. And, you know, in the 90s, Sabrina's relatable. She's going through puberty, just like you.

She struggles at school, just like you. She tries to, you know, understand why the boys aren't really interested in her, just like you, girls. And yet she still has magical powers and she faces her pubescent challenges with that unique, unique angle. So absolutely there's been a cultural factor behind this. Yeah, it's very interesting because it reminds me a bit. So I'm studying sociology.

And last semester we read the book American Cosmic by D.W. Pesulka. And that kind of talked about a shift in increasingly more people believing in unidentified aerial phenomena or UFOs, UAPs, and how like this kind of represents a shift in religious values or beliefs when it kind of used to be seen as fringe and now it really isn't. So I'm wondering if, do you think it's possible that, because she argues that that that's This is partially because of technology and the media. So do you just think that the fact that we live in a more modern, different world also, like, and how that filters through the media has to do with witches too? Like there's kind of just this shifting spirituality, it seems. It's funny, actually.

I wrote last year I wrote an article for the bulwark as well about, no, it wasn't last year. Like two years ago, I wrote an article about UFOs. So if you're listening and interested, you can check out my opinions about aliens and religious encounters. But that's beside the point. I think one of the things I try to explore in the piece I wrote is I think the drive that is bringing women to explore these spiritualities is actually not too dissimilar to why men are starting, young men are starting to explore Christianity. I think when you look at, you know, post-modernity with its lack of truth claims and its decentralization about the world, I think there's actually quite a lot of overlap in what these sources talk about. They both appeal to the ancient as a source of authority, whether that's the ancient church fathers or the Bible or the rights and rituals of the Eastern Catholic or English churches, or, you know, ancient gods and goddesses that have been long forgotten by time or magic

that was once practiced supposedly by druids. So both of them appeal to the ancient. Both of them are kind of counter, you know, they're kind of countercultural in a sense, where so much of society, like, no, we don't believe in that superstitious nonsense anymore. It's like the triumph of science. So they climb, say, no, actually, there are something science can't explain. There are some things that technology doesn't satisfy. And both of these religiosityities from men and women are appealing to that.

And finally, as well, I think what's really interesting is they're also very aesthetically driven and aesthetically interesting. You know, whether it's men embracing icons and bells and smells and, you know, men in beautiful vestments and priests and things like that, you know, women are embracing your crystals and tarot cards, tattoos. So I think that, you know, we often talk about a horseshoe theory of politics. I do wonder if we're looking at a horseshoe theory of religiosity. As I had mentioned earlier, and you had another, obviously, a huge point of the article is kind of the shifting differences and religion between men and women. And you also mentioned in the article how this is also like,

more men being supportive of Donald Trump as opposed to a farmer woman supporting Kamala Harris. And to me that has some maybe pretty disturbing implications, you know, kind of like battle or separation between the sexes. Could you maybe speak some thoughts on that? Oh, absolutely. Speaking as a college professor, it does concern me looking at my students. or student people, particularly at my previous university at Ashland, where, because it was a small campus, and I'm sure you guys have that at Hillsdale, you really get to know the students quite intimately.

You get to be a part of their lives in a very special way. And when you hear about like the fact that these guys are dating each other and a lot of it has to do with politics, not because of, you know, not because of something else where it's like, no, I don't want to date X, Y, Z. because XYZ is a Republican or a Democrat, that's like, to me, that's kind of a concerning thing. And I'm a pastor in training. So that also concerns me from a church leadership position.

But to your point, like, we just had the election last night. And we're starting to get a clearer picture of the exit polls. A lot of the exit polls, a lot of the, sorry, not exit polls, a lot of the data was suggesting that this was going to be an incredibly divisive election by gender when you look at Gen Z. It wasn't as dramatic as some institutions and pollsters thought it was. But it's still, if you look at these exit polls, it's still pretty dramatic. Like, Gen Z men and Gen Z women did break quite definitively for Harris versus Trump. So, and this is, besides, that, something else I touched on the article. So, you know, we're getting very clear data that

Gen Z men and women are not just dividing over their politics. They're also dividing over their digital spaces. Just the amount of spaces that men and women use differently is incredibly different. Like, we talk about ecosystems. Men spend so much more time on Twitter slash X, Reddit and YouTube, and women spend so much more time on TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest. So, like, not only are they not sharing their politics and not sharing their religion, they're also not even sharing their digital ecosystems. Like, the gaps in what it means to interact with one another is getting lesser and lesser and lesser.

And I'm very worried about that. I don't know if that answers your question, but it is something on my mind a lot lately. This is Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm Sophia Mant and I'm talking with Daniel Golata. So I guess another question I have then is, so I guess you've studied religion. So it's, is it true then that we used to be less kind of fractured and in all these kind of different spaces, both online and in person? Like this, is that an accurate thought to have? Oh, I mean, for sure.

Yeah, this is stuff that people like Robert Putnam at Harvard University has been talking about for ages. With his book Bowling Alone, for example, which talks about the decline of institutions. Tim Carney has written about this extensively about how there's a growing division between people with children, people without children. the big sort as well, the fact that more and more Democrats, you know, back in the day, if you studied somebody's zip code, you would see a pretty even or somewhat lopsided disparity of Republicans and Democrats living in the same zip code. Now, if you study that zip code as of the 2000s, basically Republicans live with Republicans and Democrats live with Democrats, Democrats live with Democrats, religion's a bit more tricky.

And by religion, I'm mainly focusing on Christianity. So, for example, what a, like, let's just say, let's just say you're a Methodist young woman. Back in the day, if you were a Methodist young woman, well, you would go to your local Methodist college if you were going to pursue higher education. You would, you know, if you were Catholic, you would go to St. So-and-so's college or try to go to Notre Dame. That doesn't really happen anymore. At Ashland University, where I previously taught, was a Breverin University, an Anabaptist tradition, and I'm Anglican, and I'm a professor. You know, none of the religion professors were Breverin. When I taught the Reformation class in that

I think about one third was Roman Catholic, and then others were present. Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, and then quite a few students were not religious or even atheists. And this was at a supposedly Christian university. I'm sure Hillsdale has a simply, even though Hillsdale is a Christian university, it doesn't have a denominational affiliation. So I'm sure there are many students who go to all different kinds of churches. And rather than going to a university with their previous affiliation, they're going to Hillsdale. that in like church shopping, for example, the idea a few decades ago, if you did move and people moved a heck of a lot less, you know, if I'm Catholic and I went to St. Joseph's when I lived in, you know, X region of the country and I've got a new job and I'm now going to go to St. Thomas's. That's pretty true for Catholics. But for Protestants, you know, people will be like, oh, you should come to this church, the preachings. good. Come to this church, the child care is good. Come to this church because the music's good.

So we see a lot more denominational switching based on all sorts of things than we didn't see before. So there's that division as well. So there's all sorts of reasons driving that as well. Then of course there is the million dollar question about cultural Christianity. So even if even if people didn't go to church, it's pretty easy to say that a lot of normy Americans had a kind of normative cultural Christianity that, you know, they would go to, they would go to church at least at Christmas and Easter, or if they would do a bit more, you know, they put some money in the, in the plates and sing some hymns. But, you know, they were somewhat Christian. They weren't really, they're not the type of person that's going to, you know, get into a theological debate

about the nature of the Holy Trinity, but they were not, you know, they were normally Christian. Those people are a dying Greek now. The sociologists have started to call this the great de-churching. Pretty much COVID, pretty much picked off a lot of the last cultural Christians where people who went to church for more cultural reasons or friendship reasons or just to hang out and have community, like those people, a lot of them, the data is showing I've just stopped going to church. There's all other things driving that as well. So this raises something that many of us in the field of religious studies and American Christianity are debating, what does the future of Christianity look like?

One theory that I'm toying with, this is not my own theory, is, are we going to see less Christians in America, but more intense Christians? That's one possibility. Yeah, that's very interesting. So another thing that I really stood out to me, I was reading this, was a quote you had where from, is it pronounced, it's from Stansford University's She wrote Tanya Lurman. Lerman, yes. Good old, yeah, Tanya Lerman. Thank you.

In her 1989 book, Persuages of the Witch's Craft, she argues that it's, it centers, paganism centers often on a female deity in contrast to patriarchal religious traditions like Christianity. And they see it as the only spirituality in which women are proud to menstruate, to make love, and to give birth,

celebrating aspects of womanhood that other traditions may stigmatize or ignore. But while I was reading that, I found it very interesting because, so I personally am Christian and it may be wonder if maybe the part of this kind of focus is because the way that a lot of the times women have been presented in churches is poor, or maybe there's a misunderstanding of how important, in my view, women actually are in scripture, such as, you know, Mary being called blessed and, you know, having being chosen to have Jesus or women being the first to really see Jesus after

he was resurrected. So you think that there might be something to there being a lack of focus on the beauty and power of womanhood depicted in the Bible in some sense or a misunderstanding of it? Oh, I mean, look, I can switch between my academic hat and my pastoral hat. So to stick with the academic one for a bit, you know, the data is clear, particularly the American Enterprise Institute, their survey of American life. It's very clear. Christianity is hemorrhaging women at an alarming rate. If you are interested in the preservation of Christianity in this country, you're going to need women back in the pews. And they're leaving. Why they're leaving is full. is, you know, I don't believe a monocausal explanations, but there is some clear stuff driving it. Some say it's to do with women's leadership.

The denomination I belong to, we are quite divided over women's leadership. We allow diocese to basically vote and bishops to decide on whether or not to have women deacons and priests. So, you know, because of that division in my denomination, that might turn some people off. The SPC, the Southern Baptist Convention. They've been embroiled in women leadership issues as well,

the Catholic Church, of course. So, you know, for some women, they cite women's leadership. For other people, it's got to do with purity culture and sexuality. And a lot of the memoirs coming out is very much women were really darn stigmatized for just like even showing, like, the fact that, they were showing a little bit of skin, there are some pretty bad horror stories from the 90s and early 2000s

about like, you're causing your brothers to sin and like you should be ashamed of your body and things like that. Like how normative these stories are across the entire nation is hard to pin down, but enough of these memoirs are coming out. Then, of course, there's the sexual abuse scandals from everything from the Catholic priest scandal

of pedophilia to, you know, know, megastars like Ravi Zacharias, for example. And then, of course, just women point blank or more liberal. Women have been trending in a more liberal political direction. So a lot of this has to do with LGBT issues as well, things like that. So you take all of that data together and shake it around. And you've basically got some problems that churches are going to have to address. And many churches are, many churches are addressing these issues or are trying to address these issues. Of course, to your point, speaking pastorally now, you know, there are avenues for this. You know, speaking to my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, there's a reason why the veneration

of the Virgin Mary is such a potent, powerful thing for a lot of Roman Catholic women. They see, the idea that saints inspire us to be godly because they're human like us. So a lot of women turn to the Virgin Mary for inspiration. I know for a lot of Protestants, they love people like Junia, who was called an apostle or Phoebe, a deacon. So the idea that Paul has these incredible women as his co-workers who are helping evangelize the ancient Mediterranean

and travel across the Roman Empire. So, you know, maybe we could devote a few more sermons to them. And maybe, you know, we could do better at leading Bible studies to highlight. Like, no, guys, you don't realize. Like, women were the backbone of the ancient church. In fact, Rodney Stark, rest in peace, was a Baylor sociologist. And he wrote a phenomenal book about the rise of ancient Christianity. And he basically credits so much of it to ancient Christian women that,

A, they're having a lot more babies than their pagan neighbors are having. But B, like, a lot of it is, you know, if the wife or the mother of the household converts, she basically converts all her children and she'll convert her husband. So, like, women converting at such higher rate is a huge part of, like, what helped the ancient church spread across the Mediterranean. And as a Protestant, as an Anglican, you know, we like to focus on Martin Luther and John Calvin, but there's a lot of women in the Reformation. You know, we just celebrated Reformation Day.

And I think it was awesome. I did this myself. You know, we shared a lot of images of Martin Luther. Maybe we should have shared some images of women reformers as well, who were a key part of the Reformation as well. So, yeah, I think you've got a point there for sure. This is Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. I'm Sophia Mant and I'm talking with Daniel Golata. So you also mention more specifically the rise in prominence of so-called Theo Bros.

who are, you know, as you say, hyper online, ultra-conservative pastors, theologians and come commentators, popular on certain social media platforms and they don't just want to influence, you know, Christian beliefs. but also national politics. And you mentioned figures like Douglas Wilson, Stefan Wolf and Joel Webbin. And you speak on Christian nationalism and how you argue it perverts traditional Christianity. So could you maybe speak more on kind of this rising movement

and maybe some of the negative effects it has, I guess, both from your findings and maybe also as one in the theological sphere? Yeah, for sure. I mean, like what I will say, as I say a little bit later in the article, is I agree with my colleague, Dr. Mark David Hall, where I think that while there are these Christian nationalist thinkers and movers and shakers out there, I think their prominence is incredibly overplayed. And usually it's highlighted more by liberals for political gain. And that a lot of the time, like when any, when any time, a Christian does anything political. Lately, it's being cast as, oh, that's Christian nationalism. You know, Martin Luther King Jr. would have been called a Christian nationalist by some of the standards these authors talk about.

So I think we got to take this with, you know, a real bit of cynicism. That and as the old saying goes, you know, the internet is not always real life. And just because a bunch of Theo bros are debating political theology on Twitter doesn't mean they're going to have all sorts of influence in the real world. Having said that though, having said that though,

they do have significant social media followings on various outlets. Their podcasts are gaining popularity. I would argue what scares me about them is

some of them are implicit, some of them are explicit about this, but they're much more more keen in getting back to a kind of cultural Christendom, cultural Christianity by force of law. And I, A, as a, as an historian, I would tell you that's not a good, that's usually not a good recipe. Look at the walls of religion across Europe. Forcing Protestants to be Catholic and forcing Catholics to be Protestant by pain of death isn't really a recipe for social cohesion. So I say that as an historian. But speaking as a minister in training,

I also don't think that's what advanced the gospel in a healthy way. So I don't think that's, that is not how I would talk about it. I think we have to show, we have to show, you know, as the hymn goes and as the gospel of John says in a hybrid form, you know, they'll know we're Christians by our love. So I think our love of neighbor and love of God will win more people to Christ. and trying to implement all of a Cromwell 2.0. Yes, thank you.

Well, also in kind of in response to that as well, you mentioned Dr. Samuel Perry, who actually recently visited and I was able to hear him speak at our college, which is great. And he talked about this. Yes, we talked about this. He says you guys were excellent and bright, and he really enjoyed his time at Hillsdale.

He's a dear friend and he had nothing but good things to say about Hillsdale. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, I loved listening to him. And he also argues that, well, you know, it's true. And this kind of goes with you're saying that there's some churches that can serve as breeding grounds for hate or propaganda. The majority do not. And he also pointed to sociological research, which shows that both marriage and church involvement tends to have a civilizing effect on young men, encouraging them to become more responsible citizens and more thoughtful. partners. So could you maybe oh yeah being a positive thing. Yeah, no, I mean, this is where Brad Wilcox's data has been completely

eye-opening for a lot of people, just like Christian men who, I mean, this kind of goes to the point as well that I mentioned earlier that there might be less people in the pews and that's for all sorts of reasons, but the

people who are there are, they seem to be a lot more intentional and a lot more devout and a lot more mindful. So for example, where a few decades ago, you might have an evangelical Christian who is like, look, you know, like Jesus will forgive me if I look at porn, you know, like it's not that bad. Like we might be heading to a future where, I mean, and I think the data is showing this. We're like, no, like, this is not good for my soul. It's not good for my marriage. And I've got to do something about it. I've got to be intentional about this. You know, we, there's also, you know, men who, men and women who are, who attend the same church regularly, the data is really clear that their marriages are a heck of a lot happier than,

than couples who don't go to church or even worse, go to different churches, which can be problematic. You know, men who have children and the children see their fathers participate in religious services, whether that's like getting up in the pulpit and like, you know, they're assigned the readings or maybe they're a deacon at their Presbyterian church and they get to pass the plate around, especially like young boys, young boys getting involved and watching like and replicating and modeling what their father's clear. The data is really clear that that has really positive reinforcement, both for the boys and for the fathers. So there's all sorts of things going on. You know, men, men who attend

church regularly and far more intentionally, the date is clear that they don't cheat on their wives in the same degree as the rest of the nation. Obviously, it still happens. But, you know, this is where Dr. Perry's research is very insightful that, like, I mean, even like, just to change tracks a little bit, Jonathan Haidt in his book that just came out about the anxious generation, about Gen Z and self-old. Jonathan Haidt is an atheist, and he has a whole chapter about the mental health benefits of attending a church or synagogue and that he's just, he wants to come up with like an atheistic secular way to kind of act the brain to do religious stuff because it's so good for your mental well-being, your cultural well-being, your social

well-being, your communal well-being. Now, obviously, as a Christian, I would say, or you could just go a church and be open to the gospel and Jesus and the Holy Spirit will work on you. But it's interesting that even people like Jonathan Haidt and Sam Harris, open atheists, acknowledge the benefits of religion. Well, I'm wondering if on a positive note that could be a cultural shift, because I also was able to read in my social psychology class recently, the righteous mind, why good people are divided by politics and religion. And in that book, Haidt, I think somewhat famously, argues that a lot of the people who came up out of the new atheist movement don't really fully understand, like, the religious systems that they're criticizing or how people are drawn to it. So do you think that you maybe notice this kind of shift away from blatant, like maybe atheism being kind of a popular thing? Or do you think that you maybe? you think it's maybe still prevalent in some sense? That's a really complicated question, particularly when you look at the data.

So, for example, I talked about this early in the article, and the books and articles and debates about the nuns, and that's not N-U-N, that's N-O-N-E. The people who identify as no religion or religion dot none or not affiliated, now, Now, you might hear that and say, oh, they're atheists. But the problem is often in these survey data, atheists or agnostic is an option that these people could tick, but they don't tick it. They tick none instead. So this raises all sorts of issues about who are these people and what do they believe or

don't believe. So for example, some describe themselves as spiritual but not religious. So that's why they don't pick the tick. That's why they pick the tick none. some people, even more frustrating is some Christians pick that because they're like, oh, Christianity is not a religion, it's a relationship. So they tick that box. Then there are people who tick the box and like they believe in reincarnation or they believe

in some kind of cosmic karma. So it's like, are they religious or not? How on earth do we pin these people down? So that's like one, like that's like one issue. historically speaking like atheism outright atheism is growing but much to the annoyance of the new atheist it's just it's growing at a snail's pace compared to the nuns so this is raising the question like why is that there's a few reasons why one am i allowed to say asshole yeah i mean you might have cut that out, but you can't at least...

Well, well, some people think there is an asshole effect where for a long time, like, to be affiliated with atheism basically meant you were a jerk. So even people who psychologically, philosophically, culturally, culturally were atheists, they didn't want to use the term because it meant like, atheists equals jerk who mocks people. So they don't want to be affiliated with that. Like, that's one, that's one area. other people, they don't just, they just don't understand the term so they don't even know that they're atheists. There's all sorts of problems getting into this.

I think having said that, though, the big debate that's been happening right now, and like, for lack of a better terms, you know, come to Jesus moment. What's interesting is people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are kind of having these interesting come to Jesus moments, particularly Dawkins in the, UK, where, you know, Tom Holland's very famous book, Dominion, has stirred all sorts of controversy where he has basically argued that so much of the things we take for granted, liberal democracy, republicanism, social tolerance, capitalism, academia, like, you name it, is because of Christianity. that like the as a classicist, you know, the idea of like watching people get devoured by lions for sport is a pagan world view. And the reason we get rid of that stuff is not because of secular enlightenment. It's because the Roman Empire becomes Christian and starts to value the dignity of the human person in different ways.

Now, that doesn't mean like Christianity, you know, it's. like a light switch where things get, you know, obviously we can talk about slavery and the crusades. Like, you know, obviously this is a, this is complicated and his book talks about this. But regardless, the point is the idea that I am a human being with intrinsic value and have intrinsic rights in the political, like that, you only get that with Christianity. And the, the big debate that people are having right now is, do you still have those underpinnings? You still have those sentiments without a cultural Christian normativity. Like if people are no longer Christian, can you still appeal to that? Some people like Tom Holland think maybe that's possible,

but he's starting to get more skeptical. Richard Dawkins is starting to say like, oh, like maybe getting rid of cultural Christianity might be a bad thing when he starts to see what's happening in the UK legally. Other people are far more optimistic. Like Sam Harris is, is still pretty like, no, no, no, getting rid of Christianity will lead to enlightenment. But like, this is becoming a very live, you know, what, you know, do you throw the baby out with the bathwater when, you know, huge parts of the world get less and less Christian? So were there things we took for granted in civil society as like lazy, normative, cultural Christians that we're going to miss when they're gone?

What are some ways in this increasingly kind of just crazy world, it seems, that you think can maybe bring back people to Christianity or to the church? That's a really good question. And that's obviously as a pastor in training as somebody who is set to be ordained to the deacconant. And next year, one of my jobs will be to evangelize. I think, I think, I'm. I think it really depends your context. This is where the Apostle Paul can be really helpful, where, you know, Paul presents the gospel in different ways to different people. You know, when he was debating with the Greeks, he uses the statue of the unknown God to, you know, talk about, you know, he uses that as an avenue to talk about Jesus.

But then, you know, when he's talking to the Galatians and the Romans, he has different means as well. same with Jews in Acts the Apostles. So I think, you know, so for example, like, it is pretty clear that, like, young men in particular are lonely, are feeling incredibly isolated and are getting very angry and depressed about the world. I think there are avenues there that, like, we can bring young men together and have, you know, they can start to form friendships and bond. there's when you look at the Bonner group which is an evangelical research group a lot of them a lot of their data on Gen Z is that Gen Z is anxious that science and religion are combative with one another so that means like this isn't for me to do perhaps but this is for people with PhD well I have a PhD but like people with MDs or PhDs and physics or

or nuclear physicists, like the people who happily sing hymns and then still do scientific research, like, you guys might have to step up and say, like, no, actually, I don't have a conflict when it comes to my scientific values and practices and the faith I proclaim. You know, like, there's no limit to this. So I think you have to find your context and reach out to people in that context. The biggest thing that I think implies everybody, young, old, rich, poor, man, woman, regardless of race, gender, I really think the thing that the Christian witness has hurt the most lately really is our reputation has taken a hit. Whether that's sex scandals from leadership, greed and corruption, Christians like,

not really walking the walk and talking the talk. Clearly, that is all, like, you put that all together and clearly it's having effect. So, and that's, and unfortunately, that's the hard part. The hard part is actually living out the faith, you know, picking up the cross daily, not acting like the world, but acting outside of the world, pursuing the kingdom of heaven. Um, like, that's the tough part. And unless we start doing that better, we shouldn't be surprised that Gen Z and Gen Alpha look at us and say, well, you don't even live up to your own value, so why should I? So that's the thing we've really got to do. Well, awesome. Thank you so much for your time and for answering my questions. I really enjoyed hearing about it. So our guest has been Daniel Galata,

and I'm Sophia Mant on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thank you.