¶ Welcome And Guest Introductions
The Feudal Future Podcast.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Feudal Future Podcast. I'm Marshall Taplansky. I'm Joel Codkin. And today we are delighted to have Becky Malobo and Larry Yanakone here. Both are scholars at Chapman University. Larry is professor of economics and co-director of the Institute for the Study of Religion Economics and Society at Chapman.
And Becky is a distinguished almost alum from the master's program in behavioral and computational economics, and also is a partner at Franz Kognier's private client advisory service in South Africa. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us. Well, and today we're going to talk about a topic that you have both written about, you both study.
¶ The Surprise Trend In Who Believes
Joel has also recently uh written about it, which is the notion of a religious revival, not just in America, but globally. Joel, you want to start us off?
Sure. In the report which I I wrote with Becky, um, one of the things that I think the most interesting finding, and maybe this would be a good place to start, is historically we always thought of the religious as being kind of adults, you know, the people that you know they they're ignorant, it's you know, not well educated, not very sophisticated.
And what seems to have happened um as religion itself has declined in the overall society, the people who are embracing religion are better educated, doing better. And this is also true uh in other countries, particularly in Africa. So I think the the the question is what what's changed? What what happened between these two different paradigms discussing religion? You know, the sort of the idea of the religious as being sort of the quasi-retarded to actually being doing better.
Yeah. Oh, there's a controversial way to start off anything. All right, who wants to start off with that?
I can go first. Go ahead. And before I make the point, I think it's also important for the audience to understand what has been my analytical experience here in America. I come from South Africa and have been here in the United States for just nearly two years now. And my first experience being here in America is actually meeting with evangelical Christians. Like this was like the first week that I when I came here to America in August of 2024.
And I got invited to churches, and what was quite remarkable for me is to notice that churches, particularly here in Orange County, about 20 minutes driving distance apart. And these churches was quite an interesting thing to see. And I was interested to see, and then speaking with you, Joel, to see if this would be reflected at a macro
¶ Secularization Theory Meets New Data
level. The thinking that has dominated sort of the academia since the 1920s is that as nations become more successful, uh, the living conditions of citizens through access to education, through access to job opportunities, leads to them to have a higher level of wealth. And out of that, they take a serve religious belief. This is sort of called the sexualization, right? As religion is seen, particularly amongst these papers, as a cognitive drag.
In other words, the more educated you are, the less likely the thinking was for you to go to a church. And the less educated you are, the more likely that you are to attend a church service.
However, if we started to look at this data, particularly a corporative election study by Harvard, where it looked at about 85,000 US citizens between 2022 and 2023, showed actually an opposite trend, particularly here in America, is that the less educated you are, particularly people that only have a high school certificate, they attend church about 20% of people that have a high school certificate attain church on a weekly basis.
And then you scale that up to individuals that have a post-degree as well as a bachelor's degree, those numbers increase from about 20% to 30%. The ones that have a post-degree, 30% that have a bachelor's degree. So if you have a bachelor's degree as well as a PhD level kind of qualification, you are more likely to be attaining church. And that's fascinating, which exactly which is that and Larry, you've been studying this for a very long time.
Yes. Um is this resonating with you? Does it seem different from what's going on in the past? Uh parts yes and parts no.
Let me clarify. Uh the you asked earlier, you know, what change to change the secularization debate? Uh, and I would say the most important thing that changed going back to the 1950s and 60s, and then even more in the 70s and 80s, is that we got good data.
And we were able to discover something that had been true probably all along, but uh the intellectual climate uh in academia, uh, and ironically, especially in the social sciences, was so imbued with this notion that religion was a throwback, uh an activism, you know, the the domain of the ignorant or oppressed, the opiate of the masses. Uh really going back 200 years past now, the dominant thinking among academics and intellectuals was just turned out to be wrong.
And uh you could and what you're we've started to start to see is that, especially in America, that religiosity as a and religious activity, especially membership in churches, was positively associated with income and education. Now, I I also have to caution, you know, there's always this issue of what what is cause and what is effect.
Um, but the most important insight, uh, I think is that it has that this notion was always at least two parts out of four, or maybe five parts out of six, uh an exaggeration, okay, an extreme exaggeration. Um in and then the question is well, what about recent times? Are
¶ Faith And Science As False Rivals
we seeing a change or more of the same? And I'm an agnostic.
The question that comes in my mind, what I'm hearing both of you uh talk about is what I would think of as a framing of empiricism and science, scientific method versus faith. Yeah, right, versus the two notions, the provable or allegedly observable versus uh intuitive uh duck feel. That's always good at tension, right, between um between people who are in the academic world and and people who are in the faith world. Are we seeing a convergence of the two? Is there an acceptance?
I mean, is there, or is it just always a same it's been we just have better data?
Uh you know, I think that humans are in some ways faith-based creatures. I think human society depends on believing things that cannot be proved. Uh really, and and starting with moral issues, but also the kind of beliefs that hold together small cultures, tribes, societies, families. If you don't have any of these imperatives that transcend just the calculation of my benefit versus yours, societies fall apart.
Yeah. Um, so in a sense, I don't think that I think that the whole notion of faith versus empiricism or science versus spirituality is a false dichotomy and a false dilemma.
What do you think? Yeah, uh in two parts, the there's a one important point that you touched on there, which is religious belief in the 1960s. And I just want to give like sort of a big picture micro view of what has been the trend since then. In America, when you're looking at polling data in the 1960s, about 70% of Americans would consider themselves following a religious faith.
That number has declined to less than 50% of Americans present that would consider religion to be a very important aspect of the daily lives. And looking at uh that's just one point I wanted to clarify there. But what we're seeing, particularly the evidence that me and Joe are putting forth, is that we're seeing some of the early indications that some of that clip the uh decline has somewhat level of. Of course, we need further evidence for this to be substantial.
But we're seeing this particularly amongst the young individuals, GMC in particular. And I think that that fundamentally what has driven this is a crisis of meaning for these young individuals. We mentioned in particular here that do you look at the world through natural science, which is looking at scientific methods, or do you look at it from a faith-based uh perspective?
And it does not mean that if I believe in science, which I do, like I I'm doing a master's of science of the qualifications, so I believe in scientific methods to discover the truth, but that doesn't that does not necessarily mean that it excludes my faith or religion. In fact, some individuals, particularly academics, view those going hand in hand. We want to discover the truth fundamentally, and underlying the truth, there is some core, there is some influence that has shaped the university.
That's what some other scientists would believe. No, of course, it's like it's debated and protested and like, but there are fewer scientists and people that follow scientific methods that actually look at those two going hand in hand. I think the reason why we see this very evidence is, of course, a crisis of meaning, but it's because if you remove the church, you remove a community for young individuals. You remove as well a sense of well-being, a sense of human dignity.
They are what is established in biblical scriptures is that humans value, human life as intrinsic value. You are ordained by human dignity, and out of that, each person is supposed to treat you a certain particular way. If you look at, for example, the Ten Commandments or the servant on the mount by Christ. And out of those values, we've established such as things such as that of the rule of law, for example.
You should not, you shall not, thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit thievery, thou shalt not commit adultery. Key institutions that have shaped Western institutions and have led Western nations become quite successful. However, from my experience, what I've noticed, particularly amongst the young here in America, is that they have enjoyed decades of comfortability.
And their families as well, not coming from a religious background, and those values not being passed on, and why they're so important, why has led to the successful Western countries. And there's also led them to not fight for those values for, in particular, be it on public debate or in other means. And out of that has left this huge gulp of a seek for meaning, particularly amongst young men who have been vilified over the past decade.
And I think that's why we've seen some of this early trends of young individuals going back towards religion. It's them trying to discover the truth, particularly through the scientific method, but as well as them finding a crisis of meaning, be it through social networks as well.
Larry and want to go back to Becky.
¶ Gen Z And The Crisis Of Meaning
If we go outside the United States, which has always been considered among the Western countries, an outlier in terms of being more religious, um what um is this a uniquely American thing, or is this something that you see in other countries?
Well, if you go outside of the United States and head off to Europe, you're going to find even stronger trends over time toward declining religion and religiosity. Uh, and throughout most of what we would call the developed world, you're going to see the same thing. So in that sense, the US looks like an outlier.
But once you turn to what is sometimes called the global south, uh, when you look to Latin America, you look to Africa, you look to portions of Southeast Asia, you see a very different image.
And over very long periods of time, and as I was telling Becky before we started this, um, using data that allows us to stretch back about a century or more across the globe, it's it's quite clear that while there is substantial decline over time in the uh in the developed nations, the the global south is showing tremendous stability and in some places clearly in you know the increase in religious affiliation, religious uh, you know, spirituality.
I would like to get your opinion on why that is. Especially with Africa. Yeah, I mean, my my sense of listening to you, right? If you if the prime underlying factor is the search for meaning. Yes. And let's face it, we're living in a world that is more complex, more confusing, more difficult for people to navigate with all the changes that are happening in the world.
I would have thought that that confusion would have been felt more in more complex societies, more more um advanced societies, um, and uh more so in the United States and in Western Europe, but it's obviously not the case. So, what is what is it that's driving that quest for meaning in places like the global south?
Yeah, so when we look at countries such as Western countries that are and compared to African countries, what we find is that, uh, as Professor Larry has stated, sub-Saharan Africa has become becoming the center of Christianity if you look at the global trainings. And the reason for that is that religious traditional countries have higher fertility rates compared to developed countries. Africa's fertility rate is about nearly double of
¶ Global South Religion Versus Europe
that of the US or as well as that of the Europe. And it's expected to maintain that rate up until the 2050s. So they're having more children in Africa, and those children come from a traditional Christian religious basis. But not only that, the thing that's quite important to also touch on that happens in Africa, but is also reflected in American particular, is that the church is a sense of community, but it's also uh a way, an engine in which you can have upward mobility.
If you think about it as well, if I'm going to a church service every weekly on a island essentially on Sunday, I come into contact with affluent people that are well established, and there's data that shows that particularly poorer individuals that come from very harsh backgrounds and have association with high affluent individuals, their lifetime earnings, which is the accumulated earnings that they have in a period of life, can increase by 20%.
Just having association of people that are fluent and having access to those resources. And in churches, churches are particularly more charitable to those individuals that give more opportunity. You see this in Africa as well, where you have socioeconomic standings that have stayed mainly for decades as well. Giving that branch for individuals to have output mobility, but as well as that of giving them a sense of community.
That's that's very interesting. So fecundity begets prosperity in that world. Does fecundity also beget epiphany? Does it does it generate uh does it generate a kind of a religious idea in people's minds? Or maybe the need for religion.
What we do observe, and have observed over long periods of time in the US, where we have the best survey data going back to the 40s, uh, is that as people marry and start having children, they very often become more religiously active. And they do it for any number of reasons. One, you could just say it's kind of free babysitting. But the other, I mean, and this is not a trivial matter.
Uh uh studied this with uh a couple of colleagues looking at uh uh Catholic countries and the effect of Vatican II and decline in nuns and priests, and it had a dramatic negative effect, as far as we can tell, on fertility because communities were tied together more effectively when there were a lot of men, and especially women religious, uh, to and and so being a part of a congregation provides you with a lot of social support that uh is hard to find in the modern world.
Even in the white space or at school, for example.
Okay, uh, so that is one that is not a small thing at all. There's also simply the concern of people who may themselves have become kind of religiously disengaged that they're that they want their children socialized into values that they don't see in any very secular world. Yeah, and they may not be in any sense sort of, you know, raving sectarians. They they may be quite mildly religious, but it makes sense to say, you know, I'd like to see my kid go to some Sunday school.
I'd like him to learn a little bit about my traditions. And, you know, maybe he'll end up, he or she will end up deciding not to be very religious. But I but they know that the only way it's ever going to happen at all, in the same way that you're never gonna learn to play the piano if your parents just wait until you really want to do it, yeah, right, is to expose them to that. So there's a lot, there's a very strong tendency uh uh to for people who
¶ Africa’s Fertility And Church Mobility
are having children to become more religiously active.
Go ahead. And um one of the things also is that it it seems to me that that um we're really in a world that's become very nihilistic. Um you know, we we talk about social media and what though what what those messages are and sort of the value systems that uh Hollywood basically um I always notice that you know Hollywood movies, if there's a religious figure, it's almost always a negative. And if he's a white male, he's about to commit a crime. Right.
You know, I mean, as as we know, white males create uh all the crime. But but the but but I I I think that what is beginning to happen is I think people, I think we're we're dividing into almost two different societies. One is what I would the term I invented, I guess, is post-familial, where you no longer, you know, family isn't important. You're an individual and you're a little atom, and you've got your own little world, and your beliefs can constantly change.
You know, you know, it's like um, you know, it's like my daughter who said Sarah Lawrence, you know, she'll say, you know, well, one year there it's anti-apartheid, the next year it's green, the next year it's transgender, the next year it's Gaza. Um, but the that that these people have no essential center in them in their belief system.
And it it it seems to me that that many young people are, particularly those who aspire to get married, aspire to have a family, they need some sort of of uh something other than nihilism. Um I mean that when you you know read uh some of the atheist writings that say, well, the you know, the world is just made up of you know sort of cruel circumstance, you know. And I mean, I I you know I I I'm a father, I I I don't I I don't want to let that.
But isn't that the fundamental draw of religion?
Is any idea that you know there is something beyond what you see in the world that can give you comfort that there is an order there and there's a tradition that's particularly important for Jews because you know, we're basically a tribal religion, and you know, we essentially that that identity. And I'm really glad that both of my daughters went, you know, had some uh um Hebrew education and were exposed at least to these things. Um what do you think of this as a as a trend or a force?
Again, I'm I'm I'm I'm very cautious about about talking about trans hero. What I will say is that religion is always and everywhere a social phenomenon. And you know, people individuals can come up with religious and supernatural ideas, but they have no real stability or grounding apart from groups.
Which it makes it easy for them to go from one. I I had I had a one in my young years, I
¶ Families Drive A Return To Religion
when I uh dating the woman who was the bachelor said, she had literally gone from being a Baptist to being Jewish to being Christian, and that she was working on Baha'i.
Well, she was doing them all at the same time, I would say, as a classic example of versification and orthogonal and average being too. Uh but I would also say that uh the religions that have been doing well or that are and growing in numbers, uh both within a given religious tradition and across traditions are congregationally oriented.
And uh I think that one of the stories in Africa and and Latin America is that the congregationally oriented religions, and those most especially we're talking about Islam, Judaism, Christianity, uh, particularly Pentecostal Christians. Well, I was going to say within them, yeah, the more the most strongly congregational these days are Pentecostal and evangelical groups, and groups we sometimes label cults, but that's really much too pejorative.
Whether it's Seventh day Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, these are groups. Of people who uh who support each other very, very strongly. And in a world that's that's radically changing, this is especially true in Africa, Latin America, uh where you cannot count on traditional structures.
And in other, and in places in the Middle East where you cannot count on the government to support property rights or provide social benefits, uh, you turn to, and and I don't think this is particularly a psychological phenomenon. It's just it is a totally sensible, rational thing to look for groups or other structures that can provide you with real support.
Well, and and at the grass roots level, right? This is it's interesting. We we were recently talking about talking to uh Adrian Waltrich, who's uh written a fantastic book about um the revolutionary center and the need to bring people back to the center. Um what my thought was in listening to him that the idea of a congregation
¶ Nihilism And The Post Familial Split
as a grassroots unit creating its own world of moral practice seems like a pretty attractive political unit, right? It's a pretty pretty attractive unit for social change or social conformity. Is that are you seeing that in in places like you were saying where institutions have lost their sway?
Well, South Africa is a good example.
Like in South Africa, for instance, is that is it is are these grassroots communities, congregations replacing public institutions as the locus of control?
Yeah, so uh what we're essentially talking about here is the measurement of values and making sure that the measurement of those values do not change with the words of a few particular individuals or people that have essentially the might to change those values. And such as that of human dignity and such as that of private property, the rule of law, and and all such features that we spoke about.
But just to give the the overview of an experience of a young South African, particularly like myself, and this is reflective of millions of other South Africans and sub-Saharan Africans, is that your nearest town is about an hour away, your nearest hospital is an hour and 30 minutes away, but your nearest church, which is often a Christian church, is about 10 minutes away. In some places, you don't even need a formal structure. You need to just be below the tree.
And you can have congregations of people around you, people that support you, people that you pray together with, people that actually also uplift you, which share skills with you. If we're talking about the fluent versus the lesser fluid. So it is a grass-fluid level, and it's also decentralized. There's not central authority, particularly in South Africa.
It depends on Catholics as well, but in South Africa, Christianity is not a centralized, there's no one church to look at uh the values of what a Christian should believe. What is the central authority is are the biblical accounts and biblical scriptures. So, yes, it is a grassroots grassroots level. And it hasn't taken over the public, I mean, so the competitive discord uh discourses of yet.
But what we see if we're looking at polling data, for example, which is something that I found quite interesting, this is to contrast my experiences here in America looking at data as well as in South Africa, is that if I if you give me an Excel sheet in South Africa and you list the top 10 priorities in South Africa, I cannot tell you if this person's race, I cannot tell you the political beliefs, but what I can tell you is that they have shared common common values, which are anchored by
Christian values, the conservative Christian values. In America, if you give me that same speak sheet, the same Excel sheet, I can tell you which political party this is, be it that of Republicans or Democrats. And in some cases, I can even tell you the age. In South Africa, you don't see that.
And it's because this has become a fundamental anchor of values that's shared across all spectrums of South Africa, where be it that you come from the poorest of the poorest, being in the villages, or that you come from the city.
It's a uniting, it's it's a uniting force. How does that play out here? And especially when you think about the political activism of uh of evangelical groups in the United States, how would you contrast that?
Um historically, what uh Becky is describing is exactly what you saw in the United States. There were all these different denominations shared, sort of Christian and Judeo-Christian values, but uh an understanding that you both tolerated
¶ Congregations As Durable Social Structures
and even to some extent, you know, supported religiosity when whatever form it took, and people were taking for granted up until rather recently that it was Christian or Judeo-Christian, but also you must keep in mind that the population was overwhelmingly uh Judeo-Christian. It is you found very devout people uh across the all across the political spectrum. Geography likewise, yes, the South was somewhat more religious, but it was a fact that religion cut across all of the other dividing lines.
What is very scary and disturbing is that over uh you know, since the 60s and especially since the 90s or so, we're seeing more and more of a convergence of region, religiosity, or type of religion, and politics. And frankly, I think this is very, very bad. And just to be unhealthy.
Right. I I totally get that. But are you thinking of this in terms of specific groups that are in the ascendancy from a political practice perspective?
A lot of this has happened by default. The what we used to call the Protestant mainline, and what indeed represented 50, 60, 70 percent of all Protestants in America, who in turn were 50, 60 percent, uh, 70, 80 percent of the population, it's just collapsed.
And uh and and so the these churches, these denominations, whether whether it's it's Presbyterians or congregationalists or or uh you know Anglican Episcopal, they've diminished out, you know, they've they've now just they're not just no longer the main line, they're sidelined. Uh and selling their properties in New York City. No, I know. This is a tragedy, and it's left this open space into which the evangelicals and these groups that we call cults have grown, growing.
But I I would uh emphasize that I think also there's been a failure of the clergy in in these organizations. I it was not a coincidence that this happened. Right, right. You know, when when when you I mean, I even in our our synagogue reform judges, so we had you know rabbi who was more interested in politics and more interested in in sort of politicizing the religion, which well led partially led to the term being um removed uh by a fair uh a fairly liberal congregation.
I mean, I I I I still haven't met a Trump supporter in the in
¶ South Africa Churches As Local Institutions
my entire uh congregation, but there does seem to be this thing where when religions begin to blur into social activism or you know, taking all sorts of very, you know, environmentalism. And of course, my point is, well, what the hell do I need a church or a synagogue for environmentalism? There are many very well-organized environmental groups who can do this work.
But so what I think has happened is it seems to me that these mainline people forgot what the purpose of religion was and what its selling points were. And and and therefore they're they're in tremendous declines. But when young people start asking questions about what about you know religion, what about Christianity, and you know, the people with the coherent and and and passionate answer are more on the evangelical side. What do you guys think about that?
I would say that you're exactly right. And since the 60s, uh in many of the formerly mainline Protestant, liberal Protestant churches, um the position with regard to the traditionally traditional foundational beliefs of of their denominations was turned into something analogous to a marketer saying, Yes, we have this brown fizzy water that we call Coca-Cola. We know that there are a lot of other brown fizzy waters.
We would particularly appreciate your coming and buying our brown fizzy water, but heaven forbid we shouldn't say anything nasty about the others. This is not this kind of way you sell a face. You have to have some, you have to treat it. I mean, we're talking about the supernatural here. And if you if you you know you either are serious about this or you're not. And if you're not serious, or if it's secondary to your politics or to your social activism, people eventually lose interest.
And as you say, if they want to do social activism, there are more efficient ways to do it. And if they want to do religion, there are more efficient ways to do that.
And we've noted it in the report that actually the hunger for religion, uh, particularly amongst the young, is for that of those traditional values. Just to touch there a little bit on some of the I think it is also important to highlight, uh, particularly if if injustice has been caused from biblical account, for the church to speak on it.
The reason why I say that is because South Africa's history under Abad date, which is the government legislation of racial segregation since 1948, when it became law, what became a hub for public discourse then was the church. The church was actually saying that human beings have been created by the image of God. Therefore, whether you're black or white, male or female, you should be treated equally. You have innalable rights that you are justified to be uh given those rights.
And it was the importance of the church speaking on those injustices that led also to the pressure of Abuck Data to Rail away. However, going to the point that you've made here, is that the points that have been taken on by the church actually have no fundamental biblical anchoring on why they speak on those events.
Yeah, I I I I I think that the movement toward becoming more and more politicized is in American evangelicals in particular, is is a losing, is a losing game. And I can understand how this defensiveness has arisen, the but I I really think it it undermines the mission, the message of those churches.
Well, and it was a conscious choice to move from social awareness to social activism to political activism, yeah, right. It was a conscious choice on the part of churches to say, no, we need to inject ourselves into the political process. And your argument is that's a mistake, long-term loser.
Look, I think the best thing that ever happened to the United States was that we had a constitution in which 13 colonies with various different state religions realized that they were that the only thing that they would trust is to checkmate each other. Right. And Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion or you know, limiting the free exercise thereof. Um it's dangerous.
And Europe, Europe's history shows that when you create strong ties between church and state, and the quid
¶ When Religion Merges With Politics
pro quo is that the state, the first thing the state does is basically ban all the competing religions, and the first thing the church does in turn is legitimize the the you know the current authorities.
You know, that I'd like to follow that up a little bit, because you you mentioned something like we were talking about this notion of grassroots congregationalism, right? The idea that the atomic unit for um for religion is the congregation.
Um and with Islam and Judaism in particular not having a centralized structure, but Catholicism having a centralized structure, has that, and maybe this is inside baseball, I don't know, but is is does that change in organizational structure between those, or the contrast of organizational structure, have has that had any impact on the success of the religion in terms of spreading its its reach?
Um going back to my story about what happened more than 200 years ago, free market religions do remarkably well. Um Catholicism throughout much of its history and much of its location has been much more decentralized than you might imagine. It was Catholicism that Americans, you know, that that occurred and rose up in America with the immigrants, with immigration uh starting in the mid-80s in the mid you know 1800s and thereafter, was a parish-based, a local congregationally based Catholicism.
And uh I won't, I'm not denying that there's a hierarchy, but it was a less we greatly overestimate the power of that hierarchy.
Well, it's some band based control economy.
Right. You know, not even in the height of of medieval era did did Rome have this kind of control. Interesting.
Do you feel that at all when you look at South Aram South Africa, for instance? Is there some kind of centralized projection of power on the part of religions, or is it all still pretty much grassroots?
It's still pretty much grassroots and decentralized. I mean, if uh decentralization you would see would happen much more in North Africa. North Africa has much more for a bigger Muslim population. Uh, but even that is also just decentralized as well. It's it's also quite a bit complicated. But in terms of Africa, religion is at a grassroots level, and particularly that of sub-Saharan Africa, it's it's much more at the grassroots level.
There's no central authority that holds sway on people's opinions and beliefs of the Bible. And if there is such a figure, and that figure usually gains a lot of traction and says something wrong, people just leave it towards the scripture.
You know, we we're talking about the value of a religion creating a sense of shared moral value that people can find meaning on for themselves, right? And the idea of the attractiveness of, especially when you have children, of being able to imbue your children with these. But I want to get back to your free babysitting. I think this is really an interesting thing. So one of the reasons the birth rate is so low, at least if you listen to the polls, right?
Uh people of what respondents say in the United States, somewhere skewed toward that, is that the economic cost of having children is just incredibly high, and the people want to avoid that. So is this like the marketing opportunity for religion now?
Well, I think what's happening right now in in um particularly states like Florida, which are now allowing uh for the school choice. And that's an area where the churches can really play an important role. Uh and the synagogues can do the same, and so can they So beyond just babysitting, it's babysitting writ large. It's so much larger than state was the same.
And and we where where you have teachers who theoretically at least have certain values and will not step over certain lines, whereas, you know, increasingly the parts of the public school system have become sort of something out of the Soviet Union.
One of the first things uh that was said to me at church uh by to someone an ordinary man who's taken care of his family, was that I'm taking my child out of public schooling and not homeschooling him because I'd not agree with the values that is being taught by the Department of Education. And I thought that was quite remarkable.
And it was also happening that I noticed that also in the scale of other churches, like the increase for demand for homeschooling, but not only that, but also church-based schooling as well. And going to the how uh the babysitting is that if you grow in, if you grow up in the church, you have church on Sundays, but also on Saturdays or during the week.
I think here in America's during the week, you have teenage ministry, which is you have young, young individuals that just go to church, read the scripture, and just want to talk about God, and also socialize with other young people. And that has become also a community-driven initiative, and also for the parents to know that their kids are in the safe environment. That happens in America, and that also happens in the shouldn't talk.
Um I completely agree. Uh, and I think that it's it's for outsiders, it's so easy to misunderstand the glue that holds religions, dynamic religions together. You think of it as an intellectual phenomenon. You think, oh, you know, somebody studies and and then they they decide on their faith, and then they get around to getting involved or something. It's exactly the opposite.
And whether you're talking about you know, small cults or or major denominations, the pathway into religious commitment is through religious involvement. And and it, you know, and especially in in the kind of congregations and denominations we're talking
¶ Mainline Decline And Evangelical Growth
about, where there's so much diversity and so many opportunities to just easily slide in or out. The product, so to speak, has to be work at meeting people's needs, or they're going to find something else, including not being religious at all.
What we have going on now is most striking in Latin America and Africa are people are not just any Christian denomination, but those that are most decentralized, the Pentecostals, the evangelicals, uh uh going, you know, growing at a tremendous rate, in part because there's so little control. But along with that, there's tremendous innovation. And the innovation was directed at what works for people, what helps them. And it's not just enough to have a babysitter.
You want to trust the babysitter. Why do you trust the babysitter? Because you've got another friend who uses the babysitter, and you trust that friend because there's yet another one who would be, you know, gossiping if they were. We're talking about whole communities.
And community cohesion. Yeah. Right? It's a way of enforcing. You know, it just if you wouldn't mind handing me this, I just want to let people know that that Bethany Yetrol just recently published this, Is There a Religious Revival? Um, and you can go to our website at uh uh the Center for Demographics of Policy. I know Larry has published a ton of stuff and has some fantastic data within his institute. Um so it's just a topic that's getting a lot of a lot of uh interest.
The point about schooling, though, it's really fascinating, and that is when I grew up, there was a rejection of religious education because it was considered biased. It wasn't considered Aristotelian enough, it wasn't considered to be fact-based, it was considered to be, you know, faith-based. And in the world of the early 50s and 60s, that was we were in a world where it was that was rejected that. And what happened, Joel?
I mean, did did did the public policy folks just go too far on the edge on the public education side?
Yes, I and and and particularly in certain states. Um, I mean, you know, there's there's some lawsuit right now against the several school districts in California, where basically anti-Semitism is essentially being promoted by the teachers' unions themselves. And then all sorts of ideologies that, you know, whether it's green ideology or Black Lives Matter or something like that.
So the more that that the public uh sector seems to be owned by a particular ideological group, people have to look for some something somewhere else. And I think this tremendous move towards school choice, that's part of why that's happening. I'm not saying it's ideal. I grew up with the ideal that public education, something we all all Americans share. We need an educated public. Right. And yeah, I went to college at a public university. I mean, uh my wife went to a public university.
And yet when it came to my kids and the world they were growing up, we started looking at charter schools and and um in uh and and to some extent uh religious schools. Um so you know, this has been a great discussion, but I I'd like to leave this or have you guys uh end it this way. Where do you think we're going in the next 20 years in terms of religion? Is this just a little blip that Becky and I are writing about, or is it a long term trend? You're the skeptic, so yeah, I'm the skeptic.
Uh I I think that the when you look at the developed world and even the United States, the trends don't look very good. Good for you know religiosity. Uh and even though it's true that You see some increase here and there. Uh the cohorts, if you think, you know, as people age from their mid to their early 20s, which is often the Tyrian point people are least religiously active, they tend to get more religious.
We're seeing that in Gen Z and the millennials, but they're replacing over time cohorts that were much more religiously active. Now, the fertility angle could have some really striking results. If if all these you know secular people just stopped reproducing, then that changed. But short of that dominating in this trend, I think we're going to see continued decline, at least for the time being.
Within, you know, but within our culture, the people who are religious uh are, you know, often very religious, and they're very closely tied to communities of faith. And I don't think that's going to go away if those have been the most successful kinds of religions for a long time. And I see that continuing. And in the global south, in Africa, in Latin America, and and other parts of the world, uh religion remains very robust. Yeah.
Very robust. Mr. Belobo, last words for you.
I think religion will, particularly Christian religion in sub-Saharan Africa, will become the centerpiece of global religion. Based on fertility rates as well, uh, as well as based on the sense of community, but as well as based on if you look at the demographics, we've done some work on this, particularly looking at Africa's demographics. The median age in Africa is aligned to you. Here in the US, I think it's about 35. In Europe, it's about 45 hours.
So it's not after, I mean, sub-Saharan Africa has an extremely young age demographic. More young people are being born compared to the ones that are dying out. And not only that, but the economic prospects of the continent are quite favorable. Out of the top 10 countries that are the fastest growing from the according to IMF, five of them are in Africa. Africa hosts the quantum of global critical
¶ School Choice Homeschooling And Church Community
minerals. And with that, match with the young age demographic, you have a really powerful consumer base in the next 20 years that will be fundamentally anchored by Christian values. So I think it grows in Africa. So the trends that we're talking about here, such as the religion, will become an elite market in Africa as well as those demographics, those tailids also start to benefit the living standards of many millions of sub-Syrian Africans.
Yeah, and wonderful perspectives, General. Thank you. So we know it's interesting. We didn't touch really on the potential of AI and belief in the algorithm to uh displace belief, belief of faith. And uh this should be a fun one to be able to see how that evolves. Well, maybe we'll have to come back and do that right later. I'm not I'm I'm thinking of the famous book.
Well, maybe I did the show.
Well, I'm thinking of the famous uh sci-fi book Tanticle for Lebawish. Oh, yes, right. So who knows whether we'll ever get to that kind of a thing, but yeah, hopefully not. Thank you. Actually, you've given us a good deal of comfort in being able to lay out where we are, the idea that people are are feeling fulfilled and getting some meaning from religion, and that that may actually show signs, maybe not full fulsome signs yet, but signs of uh of ascending.
So thank you very much for spending time with us. And thank you for joining us on the Funeral Future podcast.
Okay.