Leaving the Church, Keeping the Prayer || Lauren Jackson, The New York Times
Talkin‘ Politics & Religion Without Killin‘ Each OtherShow Notes
She left the church at twenty-five. She never stopped praying, and she still doesn't know who's listening.
Lauren Jackson writes Believing, the New York Times newsletter about how people practice faith and doubt now, and she came to the beat by way of her own departure from the Mormon church she was raised in. Corey talks with her about what secularism can't replace, what AI is quietly taking from us, and the question she brings to every hard conversation.
Calls to Action
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Key Takeaways
Ask what if they're right. Before a hard conversation, Lauren puts that question to herself, then listens. Your position may not move, but you get closer to the humanity of the person across from you, and that turns out to matter more.
Secularism won, and it still can't do everything. Religion delivers beliefs, belonging, and behaviors in one place, and nothing secular offers all three at once. The absence shows up as a hunger for community that people describe to her constantly.
Belief is spiking. Attendance isn't. Gallup finds a sharp jump in young men under thirty who call religion very important, without the matching rise in showing up anywhere. Religion is increasingly a piece of a packaged identity rather than a practice.
Resist the doctrine of efficiency. Father James Martin's phrase, and Lauren's working rule. We lose to machines on volume, so the only place left to win is quality, which requires the slowness that AI is designed to eliminate.
She will always seek to humanize. Not condone, and not valorize. Understand what real, human motivations produce behavior we find contestable, which is harder to sit with than a verdict.
We are the times. A friend gave her Augustine's line from the sacking of Rome, and it landed as an assignment. Despairing about the age is a way of pretending we are not participants in it.
About Our Guest
Lauren Jackson is deputy editorial director for newsletters at The New York Times and the host of Believing, a weekly newsletter about how people live religion and spirituality now.
Links and Resources
📩 Believing at The New York Times - www.nytimes.com/newsletters/believing
📷 Instagram — @laurencristinejackson
📖 Letters and Papers from Prison — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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