It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind America's Spiritual Revival

Summary

Summary of "It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind America's Spiritual Revival"

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show delves into the intriguing trends surrounding America's spiritual landscape in the episode titled "It's a Numbers Game: The Numbers Behind America's Spiritual Revival," released on March 3, 2025. Hosted by Ryan Grusky, the episode features an insightful conversation with Catherine Ruth Buccalik, a professor of economics at Catholic University and author of Hannah's Children. This detailed summary captures the episode's key discussions, insights, and conclusions, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened.

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Introduction to the Pew Research Study

The episode opens with Ryan Grusky introducing a substantial Pew Research study that examines the religious affiliations and practices of Americans over time. Conducted in 2007, 2014, and the most recent data from 2020, the study surveyed over 36,900 individuals to understand shifts in religious identification and daily practices.

Key Findings:

• Decline in Christianity and Daily Prayer: From 2007 to 2020, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians decreased from 78% to 62%. Similarly, daily prayer among Americans dropped from 58% to 48% during the same period.

  "Christianity in America has remained stable and even increased among some segments of the population since 2020," Grusky notes ([04:15]).

• Rise of the Religiously Unaffiliated: Concurrent with the decline in traditional Christian affiliation, there was a noticeable increase in individuals identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a trend that had been ongoing until 2020.

Emergence of a Spiritual Revival Post-2020

A pivotal shift occurs post-2020, where Christianity not only stabilizes but sees growth in specific demographics:

• Generational Shifts: Millennials (born in the 1980s), Zoomers (born 2000-2006), and Baby Boomers (born 1950s-60s) exhibit a slight increase in Christian identification. For instance, Zoomers' Christian identification rose from 45% to 51% ([05:39]).

• Daily Prayer Increases Among Youth: The percentage of Zoomers reporting daily prayer increased from 20% to 30%.

  "It's the first time in almost 20 years that there's been any reversal or slowing down of mass secularism that's worth noting," Grusky explains ([06:10]).

Potential Drivers Behind the Revival

The conversation explores several hypotheses for this unexpected spiritual resurgence:

1. Immigration: Some listeners speculated that President Biden's policies allowing significant immigration could have influenced the religious demographic. However, data reveals that immigrants in the U.S. are generally less religious, particularly Asian immigrants who are the least religious demographic ([05:39]).

   "The overall Christian population, America was 61% white, 13% black, 18% Hispanic, and 3% Asian. Now look at the overall composition of the US which is 58% white, 20% Hispanic, 13% black, and 6% Asian," Grusky states, highlighting the minimal impact of immigration ([06:05]).

2. COVID-19 Pandemic: The pandemic may have prompted individuals to reexamine their faith due to increased free time and the challenges of lockdowns.

3. Alternative Media Influence: Figures like Joe Rogan, Michael Knowles, and Father Mike Schmitz have played roles in promoting religious identity through podcasts and alternative media channels. These platforms have encouraged young men to embrace Christianity as part of their cultural and political identities.

   "Religion matters more than just people's personal morals, personal faith. There's entirely different life experiences that are happening from people who are religious than those who are not religious," Grusky observes ([09:15]).

The Role of Young Men in the Revival

A significant revelation is the increasing religiosity among young men:

• Balanced Religious Participation: Traditionally, women have been more involved in religious activities. However, recent trends show young men are now equally, if not more, religious than their female counterparts among the younger generations.

  "Young men are much more religious than they used to be. Religion was something that women always did more often than men," Buccalik explains ([09:45]).

• Influence of Political Alignment: Many young men aligning with conservative politics and figures like Donald Trump are also identifying more strongly with Christian values, intertwining their political and religious identities.

  "Those who identify as Christian are also more likely to support Donald Trump because of cultural values or saying that they're more likely to identify as Christian," Grusky notes ([09:55]).

Impact of Education and Homeschooling

Buccalik highlights the intersection of education and religious affiliation:

• Homeschooling Surge: There has been a significant rise in homeschooling, particularly among Christian and Jewish families. This trend contributes to the transmission of religious values and supports the continuation of religious identification in younger generations.

  "We're seeing a real shift, let's just say explosive rise in homeschooling, Christian schooling, you know, those kinds of things," Buccalik states ([11:54]).

• Religious Education as Value Transmission: Education, especially within religious contexts, serves as a conduit for instilling and maintaining religious and moral values across generations.

Gender Divide in Religious Affiliation

A noteworthy gender disparity exists in religious affiliation and participation:

• Women Leaving Faith: For the first time, young women are more likely to leave religious institutions compared to young men. This trend contrasts with past generations where women remained more consistently affiliated with religious practices.

  "Women are more likely to leave faith than not for the first time. Young men are more likely to belong to a church than young women," Grusky summarizes ([30:58]).

• Reasons for the Divide: Buccalik suggests that societal shifts, such as the "girl boss" movement and a general rejection of perceived oppressive structures within organized religion, contribute to young women distancing themselves from religious affiliations.

  "Women don't like to be mean and so they don't associate with politics that seems mean and they don't associate with religion that seems mean," she explains ([32:24]).

Cultural and Political Implications

The resurgence of religiosity, especially among young men, has broader societal implications:

• Political Realignment: As religious identification intersects with conservative politics, it reinforces cultural and political divisions within America.

  "Religion is really, if you're an active participant in a church, a physical building, you are more likely to be middle class or upper middle class," Grusky notes, emphasizing the alignment between religious participation and socio-economic status ([23:03]).

• Future Predictions: While there is a slight increase in religiosity among certain demographics, Buccalik remains cautious, suggesting that without significant changes, overall Christian identification may continue to decline as secularism remains strong among younger generations.

  "But it's a generational shift, but it's not bleeding the way that it used to be," she cautions ([09:05]).

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the complex interplay between religion, politics, education, and generational shifts in America. While there are signs of a spiritual revival among specific groups, particularly young men influenced by alternative media and conservative politics, the broader trend towards secularism remains largely intact. The insights provided by Catherine Ruth Buccalik underscore the nuanced and multifaceted nature of America's evolving religious landscape.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Christianity in America has remained stable and even increased among some segments of the population since 2020." — Ryan Grusky ([04:15])

• "It's the first time in almost 20 years that there's been any reversal or slowing down of mass secularism that's worth noting." — Ryan Grusky ([06:10])

• "Religion matters more than just people's personal morals, personal faith. There's entirely different life experiences that are happening from people who are religious than those who are not religious." — Ryan Grusky ([09:15])

• "Women don't like to be mean and so they don't associate with politics that seems mean and they don't associate with religion that seems mean." — Catherine Ruth Buccalik ([32:24])

This episode provides a comprehensive analysis of the shifting religious dynamics in America, highlighting the delicate balance between declining secularism and emerging pockets of religious revivalism.

Transcript

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As a baby of the 80s and child of.

[Ryan Grusky]

The 90s, if George Michael taught me.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Anything, it's that you gotta have faith. And that's the theme of this episode. Welcome back to It's a Numbers Game with ryan Grusky. On February 26, Pew Research, one of the premier think tanks that looks at American life, put on their third religious landscape study. This is a study conducted in 2007, 2014 and last week that examines how It's a massive study. It examines how Americans think about religion in multitude of ways. Everything from raising children to praying to church attendance. It's over 36,900 people were part of this study. That's a massive, massive study. So what did I find between 2007 and 2014? These are the older studies. Christianity and daily prayer declined substantially, substantially in this country. Right. And the number of people claiming to be part religiously unaffiliated climbed pretty dramatically. That trend continued all the way through their smaller studies. They have smaller studies between these major years, all in these smaller studies until 2020. But, and here's your data for this episode. In 2007, 78% of Americans reported being Christians. That number fell to 71% by 2014 and declined further to 62% by 2020. Likewise, the number of Americans who said they prayed daily went from 58% in 2007 to 48% in 2020, a 10 point drop. Americans have been getting more secular every day until 2020. And that's when the really interesting part of this survey happened. Since 2020, Christianity in America has remained stable and even increased among some segments of the population. The boomers, zoomers and millennials are having a bit of a religious revival. The number of people born between 2000 and 2006 who reported to pray daily rose from 20% to 30%. It's only ticked up slightly for millennials born in the 80s and baby boomers in the 50s and 60s, but they all saw a slight increase, a noticeable increase. These are the generations that are most likely to also see an increase on reporting that they identify as Christian since 2020. For Zoomers, once again, those before born between 2000 and 2006, the numbers identifying as Christian went from 45% to 51%. For millennials from the 80s is one from 52 to 56%. And for older Gen Xers and young baby boomers, going in the 60s and 50s, the number went from 72 to 76%. That's an average of a five point increase in those three generations. And while that's not not massive, it's not like a 30 point increase. It's not this, you know, religious revival. It's in any like, you know, massive way. But it's a, it's the first time in almost 20 years that there's been any reversal or any slowing down of mass secularism that's worth noting. And while young people are still far less Christian than their parents, zoomers went from being plurality agnostic in 2020 to being majority Christian. So what happened in 2020? Like, why was that the thing? Why did it spark the change? Some of my readers online said it was because of immigration.

[Ryan Grusky]

Right.

[Ryan Seacrest]

President Biden, after all, did let in millions and millions of people demographically change this country possibly permanently, unless we get the mass deportations really, you know, kicking big time. But let these millions be blend. So maybe they changed the country. And that's a valid point. So I looked into it. The overall Christian population, America was 61% white, 13% black, 18% Hispanic, and 3% Asian. Now look at the overall composition of the US which is 58% white, 20% Hispanic, 13% black, and 6% Asian. Basically, America's Christians look like the rest of America. It's not overwhelmingly, you know, Hispanic or overwhelmingly African. It's. It looks just like us. And I think people forget that while America has grown more secular in the last 20 years, so has the rest of the world, including Latin America and even Africa. Like the image that we have of like regions of Latin America where there's like nine kids running around with, you know, in a houseful, crucifixes and Our lady of Guadalupe statues, that doesn't exist. That doesn't exist anymore. Not any big way. The most of Latin America has a birth rate way below fertility level. Some parts of Latin America have a fertility, you know, has fewer kids than we do in America. So the study that, the studies actually all by the study also found out that people born outside the United States actually have a less religious affiliation than those born in the United States, which does make sense when you remember that Asians, Asian immigrants, are the least religious group of people of any demographic in the United States. So if it wasn't mass immigration that stopped the decline and created a slight resurgence in Christianity over the last few years, what was it? Some analysts said it was COVID 19 that sparked maybe a slight religious change among some people. With a lot of free time and the lockdown, I think people reexamine their faith. But there's a bigger story, and that's the story of young men. Young men are much more religious than they used to be. Religion was something that women always did more often than men. And that's true of the silent generation, baby boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, but not much for zoomers. Young men were basically as religious as women for the very first time. Some studies actually, besides the pusa, have young men being more religious than young women. Analysts like David Campbell, a political scientist from the University of Notre Dame, he says that young Men who have also become more likely to support Donald Trump because of cultural values or saying that they're more likely to identify as Christian, that there's an Internet personalities besides, like the Joe Rogans and the barstool sports, which are not religious at all, that have created this cultural movement to sit there and say, you know, you should at least identify as Christian because it's part of our overall political values, our, our moral values. You know, people like Daily Wire's host Michael Knowles, big, big, you know, podcast host. He talks about his Castic faith a lot. Father Mike Schmitz, who had a huge podcast called A Bible in a Year and Catechism in a Year, there were big hits. He's a prominent person on the alternative media. And then there's even like subculture Internet people, people who are not huge. Like, those people are as far as, you know, podcast hosts go. And Internet people also. Dasha Naraka Sova, I'm probably just butcher her last name, but Dasha from Red Scare and she was on the TV show Succession. She talks about her Catholicism a lot. Like a lot, a lot. And she has a lot of women and young men and people who are maybe like in more of the Internet subculture, but they are looking and they're listening and they're talking about it. Is this part of a permanent change? Are we just going to get a much more religious country? No, because zoomers are still way less religious than baby boomers are. So as baby boomers die off and zoomers go into adulthood, Christianity will decrease as that time goes on. It's just a generational shift, but, but it's not bleeding the way that it used to be. And maybe if the doors open to some kind of revival, maybe that means something else will happen, you know, because religion matters more than just people's personal morals, personal faith. There's entirely different life experiences that are happening from people who are religious than those who are not religious. 82% of people who are politically conservative say they have some kind of religion, compared to just 30% of liberals. Those who are religious are also more likely to have babies. They're more likely to volunteer for charity. They're more likely to, you know, affiliate with other religious organizations like schools, like religious schools and private schools and homeschooling organizations. Think about this. Among 38 year olds, churchgoing Mormons, 70% have children under the age of 18. Compare that to 38 year old atheists. Only 38% of them have children under 18. Half as many are experiencing parenthood like this. Life altering part of your life as, as an adult, being a parent is only being experienced or is being twice as experienced among religious people as non religious people. And that will bleed into our politics, it will bleed into our values, it will bleed into our economy and a million other things. And while 63% of Republicans say that they believe in God, without a doubt, just 39% of Democrats do.

[Ryan Grusky]

So is politics fueling a religious revival, especially among young men, or is religious inspiring a political conversion? To talk to me about it this week is Catherine Ruth Buccalik. She's a professor of economics at Catholic University and the author of the great book Hannah's Children. Catherine, welcome to A Numbers Game.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Thanks, Katherine.

[Ryan Grusky]

In your book Hannah's Children, which I am in the middle of reading, I it's a great book, by the way. You interviewed dozens of college educated women who had five or more children, basically demographic outliers, and they all had college educations. That' important equation. They had college educations and they had lots of kids. And, you know, having large families is a very obvious. In the book, in the book, they often talk about their religion, all these women, and how religion plays an important part in their decision to have children. We've talked a lot about religion earlier in the show and the, and the, and the change in how people act with religion, how religion is changing and that there's been this small increase in number of young people saying that they are religious. That aside from just marriage or is it just marriage and child rearing, is there another thing that religion plays a part in?

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Probably education.

[Ryan Grusky]

Really?

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, meaning we're seeing a real shift, let's just say explosive rise in homeschooling, Christian schooling, you know, those kinds of things. I think that's probably something to keep our eye on. I haven't dug into the data on this, and I'm not actually sure I've seen any. But I think, you know, if we, if we were to break down the trends and like the rise of homeschooling, you know, we're seeing that motivated by a lot, a lot of Christian groups, a lot of Jewish groups. So.

[Ryan Grusky]

Right.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

So I think it's there. But of course, education, I'd say, like in terms of marriage and family, it's, it's part of the transmission of values. So it's, it's probably part of this story, of this political interaction.

[Ryan Grusky]

The Pew study was interesting because there was the number of people who are zoomers, right. Generation z, people born 2000, 2006, who report being Christian. Is up from 2020. But they are not praying daily. Increasing there. But they're identifying as Christian. Like they're. Oh, they're Christian. What is it? Like they're, they're contemplating Christianity. The doors open. They're kind of like walking through.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

Is being culturally Christian just a big part of it? Like to say I'm not down with wokeism, so therefore I'm Christian, maybe.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

I think that's part of it. Another piece of it is probably what we would call like immunity. So like they're. Because they're Christian or they identify as Christian, there's some like other identity group that keeps them immune from these trends or gives them a, like a safe space to be. I kind of wonder, looking at your point about like these are zoomers. They're a certain age. I mean like if they're zoomers, they're born in like 2000. Right. That means probably a lot of them haven't started their families yet.

[Ryan Grusky]

Yeah.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

And we know in terms of religious trends, religious behavior, that actually a time when sort of cultural, religious people become like actual religious people is when they have their first kid because they. Right, right.

[Ryan Grusky]

You have somebody to take to church, you know.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

And also if you go sit in a religious school, that's a big part of it as well.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah.

[Ryan Seacrest]

You're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Graduski. We'll be right back after this message.

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[Ryan Grusky]

There's a big question mark of like why did Christianity stop declining? Yes, part of it could be it happens like 2020 is like the figurehead. And there's a lot that happens in 2020.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Right.

[Ryan Grusky]

There's the, there's the racial riots, there's the wokeism. There's also Covid. And there are a lot of people who turn to podcasters. You know, was a father. Mike Schmitz has his famous podcast. Yeah, you have, you know, Michael Knowles, you have even like subtext of people. What do you think it could be? You're you know, college kids a lot.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah, no, that's right. I was gonna say, I mean I think that alternative media has been a huge piece of that. My, yeah, my sons are probably my sons who are exactly in that age range and two of them are married. I mean they listen to more podcasts than I do and they're probably like politically a little bit to the right of me, you know, which. And I'm like to the right of most people. But my Sons are definitely probably to the right of me. Jordan Peterson had a big impact. And of course, he's like, you know, and he talks about God and religion all the time, even if he's not a member of an organized religion.

[Ryan Grusky]

I think now he is.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Oh, is he? Did I miss.

[Ryan Grusky]

Like, I think. I don't. I'm not a huge follower, but I think, like, his wife was, like, dying. His wife, she had a miraculous comeback, and now his wife converted, flirting with it. His wife. His wife converted.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

I mean, and obviously he talks about God all the time. And so if you were. If you were grow. If you were like a kid growing up in a religious family and looking for sort of permission to be sort of politically religious or to express yourself or identify as a Christian, Peterson would certainly have been something that would support that. Yeah. I mean, and actually, just. I'm thinking of another detail from my book that I forgot to mention earlier. I tell that story, like, in the second chapter of this family. I walked into their house. They lived in New England. It's a super democratic area. There's like a Jewish family with a bunch of kids. And the dad greets me with a MAGA hat on, you know, and I.

[Ryan Grusky]

Was like, I read this part of your book. Yeah.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

You know, and it's like, you know, you go look at the. You go look at those correlations, and there's. There's obviously something going on that I think it'll crystallize in the numbers better in the next decade. But, like, something we're seeing. These red states have more marriage and more family, more traditional family behaviors, I'm assuming, although I don't have a good chart of it, but I think the religious behavior is stronger there as well.

[Ryan Grusky]

Yeah. I mean, yes, I think, like, the highest states for fertility off the top of my head is like, Utah is always usually number one, because the LDs like things still kind of. Even though the Mormons don't have as many kids, they used to, they're still higher than the average. And then it's like Nebraska, Kansas, sometimes the Dakotas.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Dakotas, yeah. Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

The Plains states and Utah really outstretch the rest of the country.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah. The. The other thing about, like, young people becoming more religious and I'm thinking we may want to think about, too, is like, religious colleges. There's this kind story of these kind of scrappy religious colleges, many of which stayed open during COVID And we've also got the homeschoolers coming of age. I mean, that big shift, that kind of growth in homeschoolers which was like, you know, it's just like a classic tipping point. You'd say, well, people were out there homeschooling their kids in the 90s when I hadn't even heard of homeschooling. They were out there doing this, and then those kids had kids. And, like, are we just starting to see a sort of tipping point of all those homeschoolers?

[Ryan Grusky]

Right. People said, like. I mean, my followers on Twitter were saying to me, well, obviously, this uptick in religion is all because of immigration. Biden let all these people in.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

No, I don't think so.

[Ryan Grusky]

Well, I looked it up, the numbers, and it's basically the same exact demographic breakdown as America. So there's no big change. Also, I think that people forget that, like, Latin America is much less religious than it used to be. People.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

Is a bunch of, you know, women with our Lad of Guadalupe statues with nine children running around, and that's not the way it is and hasn't been for quite some time.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah. A lot of Pentecostalism.

[Ryan Grusky]

Yeah. And a lot of just secular people who don't have kids anymore. Mexico's well below the birth rate. Most of Latin America is way below the birth rate. So I think that that says a lot about who is. If. If everything in culture, everything in society sits there and says it's as easy as possible to be secular. And pop culture more or less mocks religion more often than it celebrates it.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

What would make a young person or a younger person gravitate towards faith now? Is it just saying, hey, look, I'm Christian, therefore I'm not woke? Or is it something deeper going on? A lot of young people, a lot of, like, Zoomers especially, really crave an authentic relationship with something all the time. They're always searching for authenticity. Do you see that? Do you think that?

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, certainly in my time as a college teacher, kind of watching over the last 10 years, I mean, I would say I'm definitely seeing greater identification with religiosity as a form of identity, but definitely political. These are a lot of the same young men and women that are part of the MAGA movement. The other thing I kind of want to mention is, like. And I don't even know have. I don't have a name for it, but it seems to go along with this, which is kind of these more traditional or sort of throwback forms of religion, which do seem sort of like they're not doing what. Like, we need to be more granular when we talk about religion. Right. Sort of like we know what's happening with the sort of mainline Protestant churches. They're all like super woke and progressive and that. Right. And then, you know, they're all like.

[Ryan Grusky]

They have like, you know, Jesus was like a black trans feminist. Like, you know, that's the sign that they have outside.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Exactly. And you're like, that's not going to be the future of your church, is it? You know, but I would say like in my church and the Catholic church, you know that you've got these sort of, I mean, so called trad Catholics. That wasn't even a name. We didn't have a name for that 10 years ago. It was like, oh, there seems to be like Latin mass people. But actually it's much bigger what people call trad Catholic stuff today. It's a lot bigger than Latin mass stuff. It's like young people that want a veil and they want like older they smells and bells Catholicism. They want sort of like that. And that seems to be broad. It seems like there's a lot of orthodoxy. I know literally no people, you know, older than zoomers that are like becoming orthodox Christians.

[Ryan Grusky]

I know orthodox Christians too.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Yeah.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

That's like all new.

[Ryan Grusky]

Yeah. And I know. Well, there's two things that come to mind. One is that people have this perception, like the Obama perception that religions for lower income people who cling to their guns and their Bibles, when in fact religious church attendance is higher among college educated people than non college educated.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Difficult.

[Ryan Grusky]

Religion is really, if you're an active participant in a church, a physical building.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

You are more likely to be middle class or upper middle class. It is a bougie thing to belong to religion. Really? Why do you think that? Isn't is religion something that you just have to have a lot of money and time to sit there and be a participant in because the cultural forces of that would make someone go to church aren't there anymore.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah, well, I definitely think that. I mean religion is always engaged. There's like, you have to idea of the intellectual virtue. I mean religion has always been a part of kind of the academic or the intellectual sphere. There are religious groups that are popping up and protected on all, all the college campuses. I mean this is another piece of this. Right. Like compared to when I was a student, it's much easier to be part of a religious group on a secular campus than it used to be. Like when I was a student it was like you couldn't even find other Christians. You could look around Harvard.

[Ryan Grusky]

Right.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

I went to Harvard for grad school, UPenn undergrad. Deeply secular places. Very, very secular places.

[Ryan Grusky]

Not a. Not a community college dropout like myself, but go ahead.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

You know, now I honestly, like, at this point, I'm like, despite having gone to Ivy League schools, I'm still like, a decent person. It's. That's like. It's almost an embarrassing thing on my vita at this point. But I mean, for sure, like, you would look around and be like, those look like cheerful Asian students over there. They're probably Christian, which is a funny sort of stereotype. But it was. It was kind of true at the time. And you'd have to guess, looking at people like, maybe they're Christian, maybe they're religious. There was no, like, chat groups. There was no, like, way to find people today. Like, that's. That's one of these things that's been enabled. So there's a lot of that. But I did want to get to that point that I think religion, the great religions of the world have always been engaged with a kind of proposition about faith and reason. And so I think it is kind of natural that. That we would see this reflected in the sort of educated classes. That's not a complete answer to your question. But you. You reminded me of something else. Like, I know that ARC Forum was in London last week. Was it arc this, like, alliance? It's like Peterson's gig. It's this alliance for responsible citizens. There's all these people that want to protect western civilization. I mean, I would think of it as like a political, cultural thing. It has nothing officially to do with religion. But the first ARC forum that they had, like 18 months ago, one of the speakers was like, so organize religion. It's important. Raise your hand in this group if you are belong to an organized religion. Unless you're just like Peterson, like, spiritual. And, you know, like, all the hands went up. And so there is some kind of story here about kind of whatever it is that organized religion is providing in the wake of sort of like the rest of it all fell apart, right? Like the old belief that, like, liberal pot, like, whatever the old consensus about, like, liberal institutions will save us. Like, we'll all just kind of march toward this happy, religious happy towards, like, the neoliberalism.

[Ryan Grusky]

We'll all have McDonald's in every box.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yes, that clear. Really fell apart. Right.

[Ryan Grusky]

And so, yeah, I think there's three different boxes to it. I think that there is, like, the people who are motivated by influencers, whether they be like the whole crisis king, you know, like, this is what I'm signaling or whether it be like the trad wife movements on Instagram. You see those women who like, they've got makeup and they're milk and cow and they, you know, have 14 kids running around.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

And then you have their millionaires.

[Ryan Grusky]

They're millionaires, right?

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

They're all just millionaires, models and millionaires. I know.

[Ryan Grusky]

And then you have people who have real crave towards, towards authenticity where you. I mean, I go to, I've gone to Latin mass. I'm Catholic too, so I've gone to Latin Mass several times in my life. There are a bunch of young people and they do tend to sit there and wear the veils. And then I think the third bucket are people who are defenders of Western civilization or just see that the culture is rotted. So they sit there and say like, look, the west is worth defending. And it's not in the terms of like the post World War II neoliberal philosophy, like the real west of what it means to be Western. That's, I think that's more of like a sense Trump thing.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah, I was going to, just going to say like when you put that together, I'm thinking of like, you know, how appealing J.D. vance was to so many or is to so many of like my students and so on that kind of like he's religious. He sort of rejects that old neoliberal consensus, you know. Right. I mean, he's like, well, I don't know, like we're going to deal with western North Carolina and their problems before we deal with other things. Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

Right now I worked for JD and I think, think JD does fill out a lot of, you know, things where as a kid, I don't think he went to church very often. I read, they read the Bible a lot, but they didn't go to church. They weren't part of an organized religion, which is a story of a lot of people in lower income communities. And that conversion towards being a practicing Catholic came once he had college degree and money. And it's. And I think marriage to that story is something that's more common. I think people know.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Hey, we'll be right back after this.

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[Ryan Grusky]

The last question I want to get to you and you've written about this for Hannah's Children which is a really good book. I want to emphasize that to my listeners. You bring up a lot of times these women who have a lot of kids, but we are seeing a big gender divide when it comes to women and men. Women are more likely to leave faith and than not for the first time. Young men are more likely to belong to a church than young women. What is going on with young women? I hate to say it like that.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

But yeah, that's great. Like. Oh, don't, don't give me an easy question to answer, doctor. Like, man, I don't know. I mean, I'm inclined a little bit toward the direction of the thesis that, you know, people, people like alibastucky talk about where, you know, just, you know, as a kind of a class of explanations. I mean, to some extent other commentators where, you know, you look at young women who are kind of, they are other focused, they're empathetic, they want to do good, they want to help people. That's all we associate that with, with a female charism, if you will. And they just are applying it to the world. So, you know, like they want to take care of stuff and mother things, but they want to do that in a, you know, so they kind of take like, don't be nice and then they sort of spread that out. So it's like, I mean the thesis is, it's like a misapplication of your desire to take care of stuff.

[Ryan Grusky]

Is it also like a girl boss thing of like rejecting things that seem oppressive? Is that because the religion's, you know, allegedly oppressive?

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know where we are with the girl boss stuff. It seems like that bubbles burst a little bit. I think that women don't like to be mean and so they don't associate with politics that seems mean and they don't associate with religion that seems mean.

[Ryan Grusky]

Right.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

And I think that's like a really good point.

[Ryan Grusky]

That's a really good way to put it. Yeah, yeah. And that's why traditional things or like Republican politics would seem too mean.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Republican politics seems evil. And you know, certain kinds of traditional religion seems kind of mean too. Right. Like you don't accept all that love is love and so it looks kind of mean. That's the explanation I would favor. But we are seeing too, like once women get married and have kids, like they tend to move way closer to their, to the, to the men in the same age range.

[Ryan Grusky]

I think what you could see is this really different, two different Americas that people live in. You know, I said earlier in the show that if you look at like Mormons, for example, church going Mormons between 18 and 40, 70% have kids. And if you look at atheists in the same age range, 38% have kids. And the numbers just drop immensely among those who are churchgoing, those who are not church going from doing a lot of things that I guess are very sacrificial. It's a lot a big sacrifice to have children. It's a big sacrifice to sit there and do a lot of things. You don't have as much freedom as you would, and there's no incentive to demand it. And so I think that that is that use. I think if there is a fuel of religion and it marries with political lines, you're talking about two immensely different life experiences that kind of infused them both.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Exactly. Well, I like this. This line about, you know, sort of sacrifice and hard work. I mean, I think. I always think like in kind of archetype, the universe of archetypes. There's kind of two things that a lot of people have with religion. You know, one is the sort of the nasty archetype, like it was the cause of all the wars. Everybody fights a religion and inspires people to do bad stuff. We don't want people to be too religious. You know, that's kind of a thing people have. But then there's this other part of your brain. It's like you forget that part altogether. The other part of your brain remembers that, you know, every time you find these stories of heroism, the Mother Teresas, the people who survive in prison for ages and ages, I mean, just the. Just the ones just released, you know, recently, you often find these amazing stories of faith that sustain people through really difficult things.

[Ryan Grusky]

Can I tell you, I've never told this story before and I have flashbacks to it once in a while in a. I worked in politics my entire life. That's my whole experience working on campaigns. And I was working on. I was literally just doing like handing out palm cards outside of a mail house. I meant a voting site. This was like when I was 18 years old, like one of the very, very first things I ever did. And there was a woman there running for office as a Democrat and someone said something anti Catholic to her. And I will never forget this because this. She didn't win. I forget what her name was, but she dressed down. The person who said the anti Catholic thing hurt because she said never forget. When, like, I think when the AIDS epidemic happened, the person. The first group of people to take care of dying AIDS patients were nuns. It was not the government. And she made this big defense of none in the religious order, the women's religious order that I found extremely well educated, extremely intelligent, and coming from a very progressive side, which you would not hear nowadays probably at all. But it's something that was really real. And I think that obviously that meant a lot to her. And among religious sec. Religious liberals, like the Stephen Colbert's of the world who speak very profoundly on faith and very well educated on faith.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grusky]

There is something there that is just different than those who sit there and say it's all hogwash and evil.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Yeah, yeah, totally. And that's going to be the big thing to unpack.

[Ryan Grusky]

It's just there's fewer Stephen Colbert's than there used to be.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

I know, right? And those are great stories. They're great stories and so they're worth nursing our imaginations on them.

[Ryan Grusky]

Well, Katherine, thank you for being on a numbers game. Where can people go to find your book or read what you write? Give us your plug.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Amazon's a great place to get the book. And audible if you like to listen to books on tape. Tape. That's not a thing anymore. So Amazon. I'm on X. You know, I'm not, I'm not as big as you are on X, but I'm there. I'm holding my own. You know, God willing, in the next couple years I'll, I'll get more out there.

[Ryan Grusky]

But I hope you write another book because I really like Hannah's show.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Oh, it's coming.

[Ryan Grusky]

Oh, it is. Okay.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

I'm going to interview the man next. I'm going to do the guys.

[Ryan Grusky]

Oh, that's fair. I really want to talk about that then, because that's really, really fascinating.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Exactly.

[Ryan Grusky]

Absolutely. Good luck on the new book.

[Catherine Ruth Buccalik]

Thanks.

[Ryan Grusky]

I will definitely want. I'll definitely pick that up because I'm interested in the men's story. The women's story is very good, though. Get hannah's children on Amazon.com and thank you.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Thank you so much for listening.

[Ryan Grusky]

It's been great.

[Ryan Seacrest]

This podcast has been growing. Please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, give us a five star review. It means a lot. And thank you again. Come back next week and we will have more numbers to break down.

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