Ross Douthat

How much of these changes are demographic changes?

Is there any non-Christian religion that you would expect to be more influential in 2050 than it is today?

Or to at least something like the role that Judaism eventually took on in 20th century America?

Well, because you're talking about numbers and fertility, and I have read fun demographic projections that say, guess what?

By 2075, 15% of Indiana and Pennsylvania will be Amish.

Is the 21st century the Amish century?

Now, you do for now.

But if you have a situation where a substantial portion of southern Pennsylvania is actually Amish, I think it's more likely to happen in in Midwestern states.

But do you put any stock in those kind of demographic predictions?

Yeah.

Would you bet on exponential Amish growth?

All right, I want to end by pushing you towards wilder speculations.

Oh my gosh.

And you can resist, right?

We're trying to stay with the data here, and you are a partial debunker of overly enthusiastic projections of revival or anything else.

Yeah.

But, you know, religious change in U.S.

history, to say nothing of the world, is often pretty weird.

It is.

And in the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson had this famous quote where he said, you know, there's not a man, young man today alive who won't die a Unitarian.