Ryan Burge

Most people who are non-religious are also non-spiritual at the same time.

Espionage are a one manifestation of non-religion.

I think, Derek, what you're talking about is this concept that Christian Smith pioneered about 20 years ago, moralistic therapeutic deism, which is just like God wants me to feel good about things.

You know, like I'm going to take this little – like your lucky socks or like astrology or like I'll go to mass once a year on Christmas.

Like you pick and choose what kind of theology makes sense for you, and you sort of like push away whatever else doesn't make you feel very good about that faith.

I think it's what SB&Rs have done.

They sort of like plucked out certain practices from major religious groups and go, I'm going to take the parts that I like and leave those other parts behind because they don't work for me.

Not realizing that one of the reasons that religion has been so successful for all of human history is because it has to do all.

I'll give you a story.

There's this thing that about 10, 15 years ago, there was a huge media blitz around this idea called Sunday Assembly.

And it had this great headline, Church Without God, because it was a bunch of atheists who got together on Sunday morning and had coffee and donuts and then had a service where they sang pop songs and heard like a Ted-style talk.

And they had community that way.

And it was like the biggest story.

Oh, we're remaking American religion without God.

Most of those Sunday assemblies folded because they only wanted to take the parts of religion they liked and left the other parts behind.

For instance, they were afraid to ask for money because they thought it felt kind of scummy and scammy.

And so a lot of them didn't have the money to pay the musicians, to pay the rental hall, to set the whole thing up.

It's like, you can't just like pick and choose what parts of religion makes sense to you and then leave the others behind.

It's a cohesive, it's like a three-legged stool, right?

You've got to have all three legs for it to continue to endure.