10 observations on religion & faith in America, from the book American Grace

I finished the book American Grace [Amazon] more than 5 years ago, but decided to re-read my saved Kindle highlights as part of a renewed focus on studying and writing about organized religion and religious wisdom.

The book is dense. A ton of information on America’s religious landscape: how it’s evolved in the 20th century, which denominations are growing and shrinking, how religion overlaps and interplays with American politics, education, and culture. And great case studies. The book is more suited to an academic audience, given its heavy use of surveys and scholarly writing style.

Here are 10 things I learned, with supporting book excerpts.

One: America is unique among developed nations today in its strong religiosity

Americans have high rates of religious belonging, behaving, and believing—what social scientists call the three Bs of religiosity. […] The United States ranks far ahead of virtually all other developed nations in terms of all three Bs of religiosity.

The General Social Survey also suggests that the fraction of Americans with a self-described “strong” religious affiliation has held steady at just over one third (35–40 percent) since 1974 […] we begin with the bedrock fact that America is now and always has been an unusually religious country.

America is the birthplace of myriad new faiths, some of which flourish and some of which flounder. Examples abound, but include Pentecostalism, Seventh-day Adventists, the Christian Scientists, and the Mormons. In other cases, new religions were born abroad but found a receptive audience in America, like the Methodists, the Shakers, and even the Unification Church.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French visitor to America four decades later, also thought that democracy in America rested in part on Americans’ unusual religiosity.

sociologist Robert Bellah has described the nation’s civil religion, which stands apart from the beliefs of any particular sect, denomination, or religious tradition. In his words, “the civil religion was able to build up without any bitter struggle with the church powerful symbols of national solidarity and to mobilize deep levels of personal motivation for the attainment of national goals.

Two: Women are more religious than Men…and within organized religion there is a gender ceiling much like in politics and business

Women read scripture, talk about religion, and read religious books more than men. […] No matter the specific yardstick, women exhibit a greater commitment to, involvement with, and belief in religion.

…the difference between religious and secular women is modestly but consistently greater than the difference between religious and secular men.

Women represented a paltry 8 percent of clergy in churches as recently as 2006–2007 (up from 6 percent in 1998), although women represent a third of all students in theological schools.

Three: Religious behavior varies widely by ethnicity, although religious bridging and mixing is on the rise

…who personifies the most religious type of American? An older African American woman who lives in a Southern small town. And the least religious? A younger Asian American man who lives in a large Northeastern city.

…the stronger the ethnic identity, the stronger the religious identity. One notable exception, as suggested by the data on counties, is evangelicals. They rank high on the importance of religion, but low on the importance of their ethnicity. Mormons are also off the line.

Among African Americans, in fact, religion has increasingly become a middle-class affair. Since roughly the mid-1980s, black college graduates have become increasingly likely to attend church.

Though the Mormon population in Utah has formed what is perhaps the strongest conservative voting bloc in the country, most members insist that this phenomenon is not the result of directives from inside the church.

Four: We tend to become more religious as we age

Most people become somewhat more observant religiously as they move through their thirties, marry, have children, and settle down. Then as we retire and approach the end of our lives, we often experience another phase of increased religiosity—“nearer my God to thee,” perhaps.

Five: Evangelism is dead / dying

Since this fact is not widely understood, it is worth reemphasizing—the evangelical boom that began in the 1970s was over by the early 1990s, nearly two decades ago

Six: American Catholicism is undergoing great change

…roughly 60 percent of all Americans today who were raised in America as Catholics are no longer practicing Catholics, half of them having left the church entirely and half remaining nominally Catholic, but rarely, if ever, taking any part in the life of the church.

…by dint of their sheer numbers, Latinos are reshaping the American Catholic Church, with every indication that their impact will only increase in years to come. […] Latinos comprise roughly 15 percent of Catholics age fifty and above. That percentage increases to 34 percent for those ages thirty-five to forty-nine (roughly the overall average), and then rises to 58 percent among Catholics under thirty-five.

Seven: Community and friendships are what keep people in a Church

The fact that friends rank so low suggests that it is more common to become friends with members of their congregation than to be pulled into a congregation because of one’s friends.

Americans may select their congregations primarily because of theology and worship, but the social investment made within that congregation appears to be what keeps them there.

Eight: Church attendance is positively correlated with education and income

Secularization (at least in terms of organized religion) seems to be proceeding more rapidly among less educated Americans.

…over roughly the last thirty years, it is the working class who have become less likely to attend church relative to the upper class.

Among African Americans, in fact, religion has increasingly become a middle-class affair. Since roughly the mid-1980s, black college graduates have become increasingly likely to attend church.

Nine: Religious Americans are more involved in their communities and give back more

…while religiosity has a significant positive effect on secular giving, it has an even greater positive effect on secular volunteering.

…the civic difference between Americans who attend church nearly every week and those who rarely do so is roughly equivalent to two full years of education.

Religious Americans express significantly more trust than secular Americans do in shop clerks, neighbors, co-workers, people of their own ethnicity, people of other ethnicities, and even strangers.

Other things being equal, the difference in happiness between a nonchurchgoer and a weekly churchgoer is slightly larger than the difference between someone who earns $10,000 a year and his demographic twin who earns $100,000 a year.

Ten: America is a place of great religious diversity, tolerance, and bridging

By a wide margin, Americans see the value in religious diversity for its own sake.

The explanation for the fact that so many Americans appear to disregard the theology of their religions rests in the religious bridging within their personal social networks.

America has had sporadic religious riots, but no sustained religious wars.

The Lindy Effect in religion, or why Hinduism will be around longer than Facebook

I plan to write more about organized religions and what we can learn from studying all of them, no matter how we describe our own faith.

Today, let’s briefly talk about the Lindy Effect. I first learned about it in Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile.

The Lindy Effect, in Taleb’s words:

If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not “aging” like persons, but “aging” in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy. This is an indicator of some robustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life!

I’m always amazed at just how long organized religions have survived in some form.

Hinduism is 3500 years old.

Islam is 1500 years old.

Catholicism is 2000 years old.

By comparison, the oldest company – according to Slate Magazine – is Sudo Honke, a Japanese sake brewer started in 1141, or almost 2000 years old.

How many of you have heard of Sudo Honke? Or drank its sake?

The oldest company on the NYSE is Consolidated Edison, which was first listed in 1824 and was then called New York Gas Light. 194 years old.

The oldest university still in operation is The University of Karueein, founded in 859 CE in Morocco. 1159 years old.

And for a contemporary spin, let’s look at the most recognized business brands in the world and their current age in 2018 [source]:

1. Apple ($184 billion) – founded 1976, or 42 years old
2. Google ($141.7 billion) – founded 1998, or 19 years old (this surprised me)
3. Microsoft ($80 billion) – founded 1975, or 43 years old
4. Coca-Cola ($69.7 billion) – founded 1892, or 126 years old
5. Amazon ($64.8 billion) – founded 1994, or 23 years old

I challenge you to identify an institution today that is as old – and pervasive – as our most established religions. (seriously, I’m curious if they’re out there)

And it’s not like Hinduism and Judaism are struggling to survive, barely hanging onto relevance and meaning. Despite what media headlines and vocal critics would have you believe, religion is not dying. Far from it. We can park that discussion for a later essay, but the numbers clearly show that organized religions are still massive, and still growing [source].

Hinduism has 1B followers.

Christianity, 2.2B

Islam, 1.6B.

Judaism, 14M.

Those user numbers might not *seem* that impressive when compared to Whatsapp, which attracted 1.5B monthly users in less than 10 years. Facebook has 2.2B monthly users. Coca Cola serves almost 2B drinks every day.

But if forced to choose, would most Christians abandon their faith or Facebook? Would most Muslims delete Whatsapp or stop praying? How important is Coke, really, to society or the individual? I’m not sure. Just posing some questions.

Back to the Lindy Effect: the only tangible things I can think of that have survived for longer than religion are foundational technologies: like the written word (5000 years old) or metal coinage (4000 years old).

Otherwise you’d have to fall back on the non-tangible, like philosophy (Stoicism is 2300 years old) or stories (The Epic of Gilgamesh is 4800 years old).

So is religion a technology? What exactly is religion? What counts as an “organized religion”? All great questions, saved for later.

Let me end with:

If we believe there is at least *some* value in things because they are older and have survived longer – whether a book, a song, a person, or an institution – then we need to study organized religions more and more deeply.

If we read The Odyssey because it’s a Greek classic, then we should read the Rig Veda because it’s a Hindu classic.

If we listen to Beethoven because he was one of the composing greats, then we should listen to Christian hymns for similar reasons.

And if we believe some diets are better because people have practiced them for millennia (for example, the caveman diet, or the Mediterranean diet), then we should pay close attention to Ramadan and monastery culinary practices.

And finally, just reflect on how much time and energy and headline space we devote to the institutions of the moment, whether the American Presidency or Microsoft or cryptocurrency. If we are to believe the Lindy Effect, then it’s likely that all of these things will be gone long before Orthodox churches, and the Hindu festival of Diwali, and the Islamic practice of zakat (charity). Shouldn’t we start paying attention to those as well?

Thanks for reading. More ramblings to come!

Why coolness is positive rebellion and other fun facts I learned in the book Hit Makers

Hit Makers was recommend to me by a friend in the music business, who found it a profound and practical study of how things become hits. And he’s right. Whether you’re a businessperson, a musician, a film maker, an ad exec, or just a curious soul, reading this book will make you better at what you do. It will help you understand culture and the consumer mind.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

But perhaps every hit is a cult hit. You could easily say that from a majoritarian standpoint, nothing is popular. The mainstream does not exist. Culture is cults, all the way down.

There is an old Japanese term that perfectly sums up this surfeit of content: “tsundoku.” It means the piling up of unread books.

people crave fresh voices telling them familiar stories, because they enjoy the thrill of discovery but ultimately gravitate to the comfort of fluency.

In study after study, people reliably chose the words and funny shapes that they’d seen the most. […] Their preference was for familiarity. This discovery is known as the “mere exposure effect,” or just the “exposure effect,” and it is one of the sturdiest findings in modern psychology.

Even governance is showbiz: One third of the White House staff works in some aspect of public relations to promote the president and his policies, according to political scientists Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell. The White House is a studio, and the president is its star.

A cheeky UK experiment found that British students’ opinion of former prime minister Tony Blair sank as they listed more of his good qualities. Spouses offer higher appraisals of their partners when asked to name fewer charming characteristics. When something becomes hard to think about, people transfer the discomfort of the thought to the object of their thinking

The most significant neophilic group in the consumer economy is probably teenagers. Young people are “far more receptive to advanced designs,” Loewy wrote, because they have the smallest stake in the status quo.

Writing poetry without rhyme is “like playing tennis without a net,” the poet Robert Frost once said. In music, repetition is the net.

But in all cases, the hero is the synthesis of his friends. The thinking Spock and the feeling McCoy are two halves of Captain Kirk. The brilliant Hermione and the sensitive Ron balance out Harry Potter. Luke Skywalker combines Han’s bravery and Leia’s conscience

The good news is that getting your child to like broccoli is possible through repeat exposure. The bad news is that familiarizing broccoli is an expensive chore for parents, requiring up to fifteen servings for kids to accept the bitter vegetable.

If the lead male character sleeps with somebody else during this break, the audience will ultimately forgive him when he reconciles with the lead actress, Bruzzese said. But if the female lead sleeps with somebody during this temporary breakup? Even the women in the audience will stop rooting for her.

“If you look at the most universal forms of laughter shared across species, when rats laugh or when dogs laugh, it’s often in response to aggressive forms of play, like chasing or tickling,” Warren told me (and, yes, rats can laugh). “Chasing and tickling are both the threat of an attack, but without an actual attack.”

This is the life span of the laugh track: It was conceived in controversy, grew up to become a social norm, and is dying a cliché. In other words, the laugh track was a fashion. The sound of other people laughing, which used to make people laugh, now makes many people cringe.

Clothing, once a ritual, is now the definitive fashion. First names, once a tradition, now follow the hype cycle of fashion lines. Communication, too, is now coming to resemble the hallmarks of a fashion, where choices emerge and preferences change, sometimes with seeming arbitrariness, as people discover new, more convenient, and more fun ways to say hello.

If you think Tinder and dating apps are destroying romance today, you would have hated cars in the 1900s. Cars didn’t just hasten a historical shift from teenage codependence to independence. They fed the growth of a high school subculture.

But what is coolness, anyway? In sociology, it is sometimes defined as a positive rebellion.

When you share something online, you are giving up nothing. In fact, you are gaining something quite valuable: an audience. Sharing, in the context of information, isn’t really sharing. It’s much more like talking.

“The best jokes are so specific that they feel private,” he told me. “It’s that surprise, I think, that people like—that I shared something that felt almost too small and personal for anybody else to know.”

First, people seek out others who are like them. Sociologists call this “sorting.” Second, individuals change to become more like the group around them. This is called “socializing.”

Publicly, people often talk about issues. Privately, they talk about schedules. Publicly, they deploy strategic emotions. Privately, they tend to share small troubles. Publicly, they want to be interesting. Privately, they want to be understood.

HBO does not rely on dial testing, focus groups, or surveys, its executives told me, because its business model requires something subtler. Its economic imperative is to build a television product that viewers feel like they have to pay for—even when they don’t watch it.

“When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.” – Jeff Bezos

Originating in late 1800s medicine, the word “tabloid” first referred to a small tablet of drugs. It soon became a catchall for a smaller, compressed form of anything, including journalism and newspapers.

Writers used to call each fad a “nine days’ wonder.” In the 1960s, Andy Warhol predicted that everybody would have just fifteen minutes of fame. The half life of notoriety is shrinking.

Umberto Eco called Disneyland “the quintessence of consumer ideology,” because it “not only produces illusion,” but also “stimulates the desire for it.”

(all of the above are from Hit Makers by Derek Thompson)

Daily Habits Checklist (April 16 – May 13): “Fortune is not only blind herself, but blinds the people she has embraced.” – Cicero

I felt like it was a solid month even if the scores don’t necessarily show it. Most of the gaps are due to travel, not laziness, and the travel itself was time well spent.

Although I am beginning to wonder if it might make sense to set an alarm clock. I’ve been unable to wake up earlier than 8am, consistently, for the past several months, and it makes an enormous difference in the quality and output of my day if I simply wake up an hour earlier. And my eventual goal is 5-6am haha. I haven’t set an alarm clock in years. Maybe it’s time to resume, just as a test?

Recent additions to the Personal Bible: Kevin Kelly, Eckhart Tolle, and Steven Pressfield

Below are the latest additions to my Personal Bible.

Here’s an explanation of what the Personal Bible is and a past update to it.

You can download the latest version here. If you create your own, would love if you shared it with me!

Example highlights:

Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants (I summarized this book a few years back)

  • We have become deeply dependent on technology. If all technology – every last knife and spear – were to be removed from this planet, our species would not last more than a few months. We are now symbiotic with technology.
  • In one year 1 eagle eats 100 trout, which eat 10,000 grasshoppers, which eat 1 million blades of grass. Thus it takes, indirectly, 1 million blades of grass to support 1 eagle.
  • Each new technology creates more problems than it solves.

Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art (already in the Bible; these are additions)

  • Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.
  • Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, fear doesn’t go away.
  • The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth (which I haven’t finished reading; for me, it’s been less inspiring than The Power of Now, but still a good read)

  • The first part of this truth is the realization that the normal state of mind of most human beings contains a strong element of what we might call dysfunction or even madness. Certain teachings at the heart of Hinduism perhaps come closest to seeing this dysfunction as a form of collective mental illness. They call it maya, the veil of delusion. Ramana Maharshi, one of the greatest Indian sages, bluntly states: The mind is maya.
  • Throughout history, there have always been rare individuals who experienced a shift in consciousness and so realized within themselves that toward which all religions point. To describe that non-conceptual Truth, they then used the conceptual framework of their own religions.
  • When you complain, by implication you are right and the person or situation you complain about or react against is wrong.