Ryan Burge

that religion really had to compete to be the best, to be the most interesting, the most charismatic, the most attractive.

And we had the most robust religious market of any country in the Western part of the world.

And because of that, we had one movement after another movement after another movement

capture more of the American consciousness, right?

Even add the Latter-day Saints in the conversation.

But the United Methodists and the Baptists, you know, dominated American religion in the 1800s with their circuit riders.

They gave young men a Bible and a horse and said, go west and don't come back.

Start a church.

And a lot of them had a lot of success.

And even the modern iterations of these non-denominational churches.

I mean, you can see constant evolution in the religious marketplace when, to be fair, in most of the rest of the developed world, religion is very stagnant.

They're sort of worshiping the same way today they did 200 years ago.

Now, add to that the fact that America was founded by deeply religious people, by and large.

I mean, a lot of us scallywags and weirdos and, you know, people got, you know, debt problems in Europe and came here.

But a lot of people really came here because they thought it was the new Eden, right?

It was the new world for them to express their faith.

And I, you know, we can't measure this, but it almost feels like a deep sense of religious belief and religiosity sort of like woven into the DNA of

of Americans and into our culture.

So I think that created the sort of fertile soil.

And then the fact that we had this marketplace just allowed that soil to be even more productive.