The Second Naivete of a Nation: Diana Butler Bass on America 250, Anger, and Believing Again

Diana Butler Bass and I are back at the table, forty-eight hours out from the launch of the Theology Summit at America 250. She spent last week at Chautauqua watching the generational transfer happen in real time. I spent it half-yelling at Morning Joe. We came back together to answer two of the listener questions that have been landing in both of our inboxes since the last episode dropped — what fills the vacuum in American religion if both the mainline and the evangelical establishments are crumbling? and will there even be a mainline denomination at America's 300th birthday? — and the answers took the whole hour. Along the way: the two years Diana was the right age for anything, the real story of what fills the vacuum after the Protestant-Catholic-Jew consensus (spoiler — the vacuum is being actively filled right now, and it does not want you), why the mainline's most successful move in twenty-five years has been hiring ex-vangelical youth ministers, the neo-Christendom conference that meets annually in London and is planning a global Noah's Ark for the pre-selected, and why Diana's deepest hope for the Fourth of July is the second naivete — Paul Ricœur's language for a return to belief after disillusionment. The Theology Summit launches this week. Come argue with your friends about it.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Join our Online Summit - ⁠⁠⁠⁠Unsettled Ground: Faith & the American Story at 250⁠⁠⁠⁠

This summer, Diana Butler Bass and I are launching Faith at 250 — ⁠⁠⁠⁠an online summit⁠⁠⁠⁠ featuring scholars like Randall Balmer, Juan Floyd-Thomas, Elesha Coffman, and more, each offering their own take on religion and America at 250 years. We built it so faith communities have something honest and substantive to turn to when the nationalist narratives start flying. Sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheologySummit.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get access to every lecture, livestream, and discussion guide. The summit is donation-based, including 0.

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