Ryan Burge

which allowed people to actually say what they really were online and then find other people that agreed with them.

And that sort of gave people the courage when they were asked on polls to say what they really were.

The example I give is, imagine you were a kid raised in Mississippi in the 1950s and you did not believe in God.

You're probably never going to tell another human being what you don't believe in.

You might lose your job.

You might get kicked out of your family.

You might lose your spouse over something like that.

But now you can go online and find the Atheists of Mississippi Facebook group or subreddit or some online community, and that emboldens you to say what you really are when it comes to your religious affiliation.

And then the last thing I'll say is it has to do something with politics.

I mean—

You can't look at the data and say that something didn't happen.

And I really do think Newt Gingrich is one of the worst politicians we've had in terms of the trajectory of America.

I argue in my book that he decided that he'd rather win than be a good person.

And so to drag the Democrats through the mud was the way for him to win.

And by the way, proof's in the pudding.

Republicans won the majority in the House in 1994 for the first time in years.

And then by going in the mud, the Democrats did the same thing back and forth.

And then the Republican Party started calling the Democrats evil, right, because they're not the party of evangelicals.

And then the Republican Party started courting evangelicals and conservative Catholics.

And I think that sort of set off what we call the God gap or the Pew gap, which is, you know, the idea of the Republican Party is the party of people of faith.