Making Meaning without Religion

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Religious Nones with Jessica Grose

  • Finding the Sacred in Secular Texts with Vanessa Zoltan

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude  

[00:00:34] Thank you for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics, where we take a different approach to the news. Today, we're stepping back to look at a trend that undoubtedly impacts politics from a different posture than our default. It's no secret that religion is a force in politics. It impacts elections, puts pressure on candidates. It shapes relationships. Sarah and I have spent a lot of time talking about religion and politics over the years, and we've had people like Kristin Du Mez and Lisa Sharon Harper and David French join us for those discussions. Those guests mirror our personal experiences in a sense. We are all deeply connected to faith communities. Today we want to talk to people who aren't the so-called religious nones. People who are interested in living lives of meaning and purpose and having relationships with others who want lots of the good that Sarah and I would call out as accompanying church attendance, but with none of the substantial baggage that many people find in religion. We have two fantastic guests to help us think about the religious nones today: Jessica Grose and Vanessa Zoltan. As this episode releases, Sarah and I are in Mississippi for a speaking engagement that focuses on advocacy across party lines for issues that impact our physical health. We love meeting people doing important work in their communities, and we love meeting those communities where they are. We know that conversations across party lines and even within parties are tough right now. If we can bring our years of communications, experience and expertise to your community or organization, please reach out to our managing director, Alise. All the information you need to do that will be in this episode shownotes and on our website pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. As we begin thinking about the large growing group of people who do not associate with any religion, we are thrilled to be in conversation with Jessica Grose, an opinion writer at the New York Times. She recently wrote a series based on her reporting about the religious nones. And we loved talking with Jessica about that reporting and her own experiences.  

Sarah [00:02:51] Jessica, welcome.  

Jessica Grose [00:02:53] Thanks so much for having me.  

Sarah [00:02:54] Okay. In April of this year, you asked your readers a deceptively simple question. Are you someone who has moved away from religion? And you got over 7000 responses and have been writing about what you learned over a series about religious nones. Now, important you talk about this a lot. Not N-U-N. N-O-N-E-S. Religious nones Tell us how this series and this question in this survey came about.  

Jessica Grose [00:03:23] So before that series, I had been reporting this big piece about millennials at midlife, because basically I had turned 40 and I was like, "This does not feel like the stereotype of what midlife look like that you see in pop culture." And so I started looking at how midlife was really different for people who are turning 40 now compared to their parents. So Boomers and the Silent Generation. And one big change over that, let's say 40, 50 year period that I did not get into in that big piece, but I noticed, was that there was a massive decline in religious observance. So churchgoing, but also people saying that they aligned themselves with a particular religion. I was like, this is interesting and sort of filed that away for later. And then that piece came out, I believe, in February. And in April, The Wall Street Journal had a big poll where they were polling people about their attitudes about a variety of things. And the number of people who said they thought religion was very important in their lives had dropped kind of dramatically just over the course of a couple of years. And so I was like, okay, this is a signal to me that this is a trend that is continuing to pick up steam. And so I started reading about it. And around 20 to 30% of Americans now say that they have no religion. And so the sociologist, as you said, called them nones.  

[00:04:53]  But when you start reading about nones, it really is an umbrella group. These people are completely heterogeneous. They're very different from each other. They have a variety of beliefs. A lot of them still believe in God. A lot of them still perform rituals of the religion that they were raised in. But for a variety of reasons, they no longer affiliate with the religion that they were raised in. And then there is another sort of subset of that group of people who say that they're agnostic or atheist, which in and of itself is a fairly strong belief system. It is not a religious belief system, but it's a coherent worldview. And so those people are even different than the people who say they have no religion but may go to church sometimes and still believe in God. So I felt that a lot of the statistics, which a lot of the news reporting just talked about the statistics and said the number of nones is on the rise. But I felt that that didn't really peel back the top layer. And look at all of the reasons that people had moved away from religion over time and how they really felt about it. Because your faith is one of the most deep and intimate aspects of your identity and everyone's is so particular and their stories are so particular and I am so nosy.  

[00:06:18] I mean, I could have reported this piece for a year because I just love talking to people so much about their lives. I mean, it just the way it was so intimately braided into kind of everything that had happened to them in their lives. And it just really was so moving to have all of these conversations. And I was really completely blown away by the response. We had over 7000 responses in a 24 hour period. We had to close the survey. Usually we just keep the surveys open to just be like, oh, more people will find it. I've never seen anything like this in all the surveys I've done at The Times. We closed it because I was like I could not go through all of these really heartfelt responses myself. I had some really amazing audience, people who are helping me, but they have 18 other things to do everyday. So I would have loved to keep it open and just have even more responses. But clearly this is something that people are experiencing. They feel they don't have a space to talk about it in their day to day lives, I think, because it is so intimate.  

Beth [00:07:25] Well, I've loved your reporting because it seems to me that the story being told about religion, primarily in media for the past few years, has been mostly about evangelicals as a cultural and political bloc and what that means for evangelicalism as a faith and then ex-evangelicalism. But I loved that you took a much more nuanced lens on the whole picture that you talked about people of different faiths. And within people of faith, is your worldview primarily secular but you have a faith, or is your worldview primarily religious? And what's your relationship to secularism? I just wonder what are the stories that are being missed? Like, what do you think are some big categories of stories that aren't being told when that evangelicalism takes up all of the oxygen in the room?  

Jessica Grose [00:08:14] I know this sounds maybe silly, but I think how busy people have to be in their day to day lives now and the pace of life now as compared to the pace of life 40 or 50 years ago. This didn't even make it into the series because there were so many stories to be told. But I think one reason we see less churchgoing, less community organizing, even outside of religion, is people are working so many hours. Their kids have so many more responsibilities. And there simply is not time in the day. And certainly the scholars I talked to about this would always say, well, it's a statement that they're not making a priority. If it really was important, they would make it a priority. And I think that's true to an extent. And clearly lots of people still are observant and still make the time for church. But I do think that there is a layer of people for whom there just isn't space in their life to have this sort of spiritual moment. And I did talk to a woman, and I think she did make it into the piece who she stopped going to church because she started working Sunday.  

Sarah [00:09:30] Yeah, I read that one.  

Jessica Grose [00:09:31] Yeah. She would get time and a half for working Sundays. And so I have no document type. I don't say it's good or it's bad people to go to church or not go to church. I think it's complicated and impersonal for kind of everybody, but for people who do find solace and enjoyment and meaning and just simply can't go because they're working so much and their caretaking responsibilities are so intense, I think that's just really important to talk about. And I think in an ideal world there would be a way for them to worship regularly and have more leisure time in their life.  

Sarah [00:10:11] Yeah, that's what I think. So much of that is tied up with Sabbath and rest. And when we started passing laws that said you can stay open on Sunday, well, that means somebody has to work on Sunday or Saturday. Sabbaths are different.  

Jessica Grose [00:10:23] We don't have a culture that emphasizes rest and reflections. And I think that came through a lot.  

Sarah [00:10:31] That's what I really appreciated about your piece. Because I think the narrative or your series even, is that for so long, I think especially surrounding millennials, I felt like what I heard and even what I subscribed to for a long time, which was that just subscribing to religion or being religious was unsophisticated and anti-intellectual. And so I really appreciated how you peeled that back and said, "Yes, that some of how people feel, of course, that some of where people are coming from, but this is much more complicated." And I truly appreciated that you named that some people missed it. There were barriers. And it wasn't easily substituted with a book club or a yoga class, that there was something very different happening in a religious institution that people were missing. Even in my own community that is highly religious, this has been a big deal even in the last couple of years. Up until when I would say before the pandemic, in my community you did not schedule anything-- and I live in Kentucky, sports are a big deal. But you did not schedule things on Wednesday night because people took their kids to church on Wednesday night. Wednesday night and Sunday. And just in the last few years, I would say since the pandemic, that's even changed in my community. And it's like it's a big deal because when there's scheduling conflicts and when people are investing a lot of money in kid's activities, or you have to work or you get time and a half, yeah, there's a prioritization, but it's a cultural prioritization that's happening that you're fighting. And, yeah, you can individually prioritize it, but when that is coming up against a cultural prioritization, I think that's really, really difficult.  

Jessica Grose [00:12:07] Yeah. I think part of the reason I was able to come at it in the way that I did is because I'm Jewish. And so we are sort of like this other thing since we're an ethnic religion. And so many people will say that I deeply identify as being Jewish and I haven't set foot in a temple in 40 years. And so there's never a conflict especially in Reform Judaism, you don't even have to believe in God. They're never going to ask you. They're never going to ask you what you believe or don't believe. As long as you have the lineage, you can just show up and you're encouraged to question too. It's sort of baked into the religion. So I think it allowed me to come at other people's experiences with just a completely open mind because my religious background is like you're supposed to question everything and you don't have to pass some sort of litmus test. And the intellectual tradition that goes along with it is so deeply part of it. So I never had a feeling like you couldn't be sophisticated and intellectual. There was never a conflict with religiosity and intellectuality.  

Beth [00:13:15]  I appreciate that you call out that there is a coherent worldview surrounding atheism and agnosticism, because some of the people who are most strident in their ethical codes who I know are atheist. I think when you have that worldview, it makes the present extremely important and you have a really sincere set of ethical precepts and you believe that they have immediate consequences. And it's a completely different orientation than someone like me who's just grown up as a Christian. And there's this other bigger picture at work all the time that gives you a little bit more wiggle room than I see in my friends who are sincere atheists. I wonder with the nones, if you think that group sort of rejects that coherence or if it really is just a factor of I don't have space in my life to ponder these big questions right now, or is it kind of all over the place?  

Jessica Grose [00:14:13] It's all over the place. It sort of encompasses all of that. It encompasses people who are incredibly deep conflict. Some of the most interesting conversations I had were with people who had observed many different religions over the period of their adult life. So they had tried Christianity, they had tried Islam, they had tried a general spirituality, things that didn't align with a traditional religious observance. And they were seekers, but they never found something they felt really suited them. And so it sort of encompasses those people. It encompasses people who just don't think about it. I always try to remind myself and my colleagues in news that we are biased by being constantly surrounded by people who really care so deeply about news and politics, where it's like a lot of people just don't think about it day to day.  

Sarah [00:15:06] Most people.  

Jessica Grose [00:15:06] Yes, the most people don't. And so it's always good to be reminded. It's just like, yes, these questions are really moving and enlightening to me, but it doesn't set everybody on fire. That's their life. So it definitely encompasses those people who are just like, I don't really think about it. But it also sort of includes people who have had really horrible experiences in the religion of their youth for just such a wide variety of reasons. And they find real comfort in rejecting this thing that has-- obviously, the people who spoke about this the most where people in the LGBT community who were raised in religions that did not accept that. And that's a huge rift, not just feeling rejected by this community that you expected to give you sort of unconditional love, but sometimes also by your family members. And so I think there's no way not to just take that so seriously and really understand absolutely where that's coming from. So it encompasses so many different kinds of people.  

[00:16:19] Well, it's so interesting to me because you sort of just described my own church congregation. We're a farming congregation, so we have members of the LGBT community who left other congregations. We have questionnaires. We have people who are just devout; they're highly religious. We have people who are skeptics. And to me, that's what's the thing that people name that they're missing, that sense of we're all in this. There's something that draws us together that I loved where you named somebody who will show up if there's a death in your family, who will bring a casserole to your house, who is committed to you and your family and this community in a deeper way. And it's so interesting to me that you named that news and politics as we were talking about this too, that there does seem to be this interesting confluence between the religious nones-- and I would call them the news and politics nones. No, I don't know if we are sort of solidifying this narrative around institutions. I think that's what I really loved about your piece, is I felt like instead of doing one more "People distrust institutions and they're turning from institutions," this was like, "Well, can we scratch at that? Can we dig deeper? What's underneath that?" Because I think we've adequately named the problem at this point. And we know that there are some problems and that people's needs aren't met and that communities are suffering and that certain demographics are suffering. So if we want to rebuild the institutions, reformulate our priorities individually and as communities. We got to start scratching that more than people just distrust the government or people just distrust religion. And there's just a generalized distrust of institutions because I'm assuming we want to continue with a society that does, in theory, contain institutions. So what are we going to do about it?  

Jessica Grose [00:18:12]  I had some really wonderful conversations with sociologists who are also pastors. So they're coming at it with people not going to church is bad, which is obviously not my point of view, but it is their point of view and I respect that. And the point that they made often was that the first thing we need to do is actually make our houses of worship welcoming to people who don't follow what sociologists call the success sequence. So the success sequence is you graduate high school, you go to college, you get a steady job, you get married, you have kids. And more and more, I think, the people who do not fit that narrow success sequence feel alienated from all institutions. Not just religion. And so of all institutions, religion, the whole point is to help people who are less fortunate. That's the core of most of the [crosstalk].  

Sarah [00:19:16] Some consistent threads there.  

Jessica Grose [00:19:17] Yeah. And so I think something that I did mention and that was brought up is the cost of being part of a church community. It shouldn't be expensive to pay dues to worship. And I talked to pastors who are not doing this sort of studying but are out in the field trying to do good. And one of them talked about really trying to meet people in his community where they were. So what does that mean? And sometimes during COVID, it meant-- they were in Florida so it was easier to do this-- having services outside. Constantly and actually still having more services outside than they used to because we can't do it inside, but we think meeting together is an important thing so we're changing it up. And then another thing he talked about was getting together with different faith leaders in his community. So all different faiths and doing community service projects all together.  

Sarah [00:20:16] Listen, I love interfaith gathering.  

Jessica Grose [00:20:18] Yes. So I think part of the issue is saying the way that we we used to do things, people are now no longer responding to. So there must be something wrong with the people. I think twisting that and saying, "How do we change the way that we're doing things so that we reach these people who want to be reached?" To this day, my mother is still angry that someone came to proselytize at our house on Yom Kippur. This was in 1992. She is still angry.  

Sarah [00:20:53]  I agree with her.  

Beth [00:20:56] Yeah, I get that.  

Sarah [00:20:57] Yeah. So it's like not trying to reach people who don't want to be reached. Like, we're not talking about that.  

Beth [00:21:04] I think if somebody said our institutions are struggling because they were built around this success sequence, and our culture and our society is more diverse and complex and we need to respond to that, that seems like an advancement in the conversation to me.  

Jessica Grose [00:21:17] Well, I hope so. But I really appreciated his perspective. And he was talking about his own son. He was saying, "My son, who is in his twenties, he might not always come to church on Sundays, but I know that he sits in a coffee shop and he read scripture on his phone." So why should I be angry about that? Is it having these messages that I value reach my children or is it having it look exactly like it's looked for 150 years? I think different denominations will have different answers to that. And I think some are saying it has to be the way it always has been and we are okay with having a smaller congregate and that's their right.  

Sarah [00:22:01]  Good luck with that. But you're right, yes, their right.  

Jessica Grose [00:22:05] That's their right. But I think a lot of other faith leaders are saying, "Okay, how can we meet people where they are?"  

Beth [00:22:12] Are the nones comprised demographically of a large group of people on the success sequence?  

Jessica Grose [00:22:20] Yeah.  

Beth [00:22:20] Because that's what I see my in my life.  

Jessica Grose [00:22:23] So every single demographic has left religion, every single one, every racial, ethnic, religious, literally every body. So it is slightly over-represented among people who are not in the success sequence, who are nones. But no it is across the board.  

Sarah [00:22:45] And I think that's probably true of the news and politics nones as well. Not for nothing. 

Beth [00:22:50] I think so too. And I ask the question because one thing that I observe is a real sense of when you talk about the cost of attending church. So I feel the pressure as a success sequence person of keeping the church going so that we can do that ministry to everyone else. There is a cost to me and there should be because I am here to be part of that ministry to people who have less. But I don't see a lot of people on the success sequence in my demographic strata that are up for having a cost of the investment of time and money that it takes to keep these things running because they're creating the success sequence for their kids. They're so heavily invested in what that means for their kids.  

Sarah [00:23:42] No, the success sequence is scam for real. Is this what we've hit upon?  

Beth [00:23:47] Well, if it's distracting us from the larger purposes of being here then, yes, I think it is. But I'm just really struck by like, okay, faith is intimate and core and people are longing to talk about it. But also we all want to do that without any sense of commitment.  

Sarah [00:24:05] Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to ask.  

Beth [00:24:07] Not because we're commitment phobic, but because we can't figure out where another commitment goes for us. Am I getting it?  

Sarah [00:24:14] I think the success sequence, even if you're in it or outside of it, trains you that everything, every institution is transactional. Everything. We talked about this with dress codes. Like where's the balance between, yes, we want you to find your authentic individual journey and also you are part of a whole. We don't do that balance very well.  

Jessica Grose [00:24:37] We really don't. And I am definitely part of the problem. I'm just tired. And my husband and I both work full time. And it's like I think what our employers asked of us is more hours and more commitment than 30, 40 years ago. What the schools ask of us. The other institutions I think have become greedy in terms of the time commitment that they are asking for. And so at some point something has to give. And if something feels more optional, I think, people are going to not want to do it. And that's not to excuse all of it, because I think we should all be giving back as much as we possibly can. But I think especially when you have young kids, there are truly only so many hours in the day. And I think most families now have to have two working parents to make ends meet. And I'm certainly not arguing to go back to the days of everybody has to have one parent stay home because I think that's not what most people want anymore. It's certainly not what I want. But I do think we need to insert some more sanity in terms of our work hours, our extracurricular commitments that our kids have when they're little, little. You know, we don't have to do it.  

Sarah [00:26:12]  We don't have to do it.  

Jessica Grose [00:26:16] Some days I feel like I shouldn't have to do any of it, but I still do. I just don't want to, but I do it. There's no choice. Yeah.  

Beth [00:26:29] So we talk a lot politically, Sarah and I, about what is effective as to the people who don't like politics. Because we're a democracy, we need everybody to some extent. And to be persuasive, especially in an election, it is important to say, here person who wants out of all this, this is how I convince you to be a part, at least in some way, or this is how you can feel supported by all this, or this is what this means to you. So culturally, what did you learn about the nones that would allow those of us who are deeply interested in our faith communities not to recruit them, but just to more effectively live together, support each other, understand each other?  

Jessica Grose [00:27:11]  I think a thread that connects the politics and the religion and honestly public health is that shaming people doesn't work. Shaming people just makes them angry and makes them hate you more. It makes you immediately turn off whatever the messages. And so we see this across everything. If we're saying in politics, if it's like, well, you don't pass the litmus test for absolutely every topic that I insist that you pass and so you can't sit with us, well, that's not very effective coalition building. At some point, yes, you have to draw the line of if you're super pro-life and that's your number one issue, we may not find compatibility. But beyond those very black and white things, which there actually aren't that many, I think shaming people, making the tent smaller, any study I have ever seen says that it does not work. And I think about it in religion and also public health. I've done a lot of reporting about anti-vaccine. And there is only actually a very small percent of people who are hardcore unreachable, will never vaccinate a child, and you should actually stop trying to reach them. Who you need to talk to are people who are skeptical. They maybe had a really bad experience. I'm talking about parents here because usually they're the ones who encounter vaccines the most. They had a horrible experience giving birth. They felt totally unheard by their medical team, and they just became totally skeptical of anything that any doctor was telling them. And so saying you're a horrible person for not vaccinating your child, well, that's not going to actually get them to vaccinate their child or to understand like, hey, I understand that you had this horrible experience that you shouldn't have had, and here's why I still think you should consider vaccinating your child.  

[00:29:19] It's not like you're a monster and I won't ever talk to you again. That just doesn't work. It's very unusual for that to work on anybody. And I think the same goes for religion. So many people responded to my survey and said that they left religion because they got divorced and their church made them feel like they were-- well, either said you can't come back. I mean, obviously there are some churches that are very hard line, but even the ones that would allow them just made them feel so ashamed. They're just like, well, I'm divorced; what am I going to do? So, again, I think there's connections with all of this. Shaming people doesn't work. You want a welcoming, encouraging open scenario?.  

Sarah [00:30:06] Well, and I think you just see so many threads between like the experience inside the medical institution, wellness, to anti-vax pipeline, the experience inside politics or government to the either direction hard line extremes. Same with religion. Some of the most-- I don't want to say zealot, but the hard liners are people who have left religion that I've met that adopt the politics as their new religion. And it's because when we behave like that as we leave or question or critique institutions, I just feel like then it becomes-- and I've been this person, it became my whole entire personality for ten years, being the anti person, right? And then we all wonder why we're lonely because we create these impossible standards that no institution, much less any person inside the institution, can meet. And then we're just at each other all the time. And I think that you can see. You can see those threads of shame and people doubling down and creating entire personalities around ideas around medicine or politics or education or religion and then just pushing everyone else away. We did a survey for our second book Now What. It really caught both of us off guard how many people answered our surveys about what makes you feel disconnected? How many people answered, like, "I can't talk about what matters to me because I'm afraid of people's reaction or they shut me down." And so it was the pushing out of conflict, that sort of zero tolerance of any disagreement just makes people feel so lonely and unheard and disconnected. Church, marriage, family, work, you name it. They said, "We can't talk about the ways we disagree. We can't talk about the hard things because the stakes are high and so everybody shuts everybody else down." And so I'd feel so disconnected, like nobody really cares what I think.  

Jessica Grose [00:32:11] That's so interesting and sad.  

Sarah [00:32:13] It is sad. It is sad. And I think we all want a path forward. And so I think we have to start saying, like, what is lost when we leave these institutions? Where can there be improvement? If we're building a new way, if we're thinking about new ways to meet these needs, then we need to be really honest about what the needs are.  

Jessica Grose [00:32:31] Absolutely. I think that's spot on. And I think, yeah, just feeling open to disagreement and some conflict and getting to the other side.  

Sarah [00:32:45] Well, Jessica, that is what we love and respect about your work. This isn't just write about religious stance. When you were talking about turning 40-- obviously we are millennials and we turned 40. What year were you born?  

Jessica Grose [00:32:59] Eighty two. All this millennial.  

Sarah [00:33:00] We're 1981. And so when you were just saying all these things, I was like, that's why everything you write, I'm like, "Yes, Jessica, tell me more, please." Day care, education, the sleep deprivation, unduly shouldered by women. Yes. I would like to read a thousand words about that. Thank you so much for coming on Pantsuit Politics.  

Jessica Grose [00:33:22] My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.  

Beth [00:33:26] We're so grateful for Jessica's work and vulnerability in this conversation. You can find more of her writing at The New York Times and in her books, Screaming on the Inside the Unsustainability of American Motherhood. And her two novels, Soulmates and Sad Desk Salad.  

[00:33:40] Music Interlude 

[00:33:59] Vanessa Zoltan helps us add even more layers to this conversation. Vanessa is the author of Praying with Jane Eyre, in which she beautifully and profoundly offers up sermons from her scholarship and her perspective as an atheist Jew, trained as a nondenominational chaplain at Harvard Divinity School. Vanessa Zoltan, I'm so delighted to have you with us. I have been a big fan of Harry Potter and the sacred text for a long time. So tell us about the inspiration to take the practice that you've been demonstrating on your podcast and put it in the form of a book.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:34:37] That's such a nice question. I first had to write about treating text as sacred. So Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is actually based on my master's thesis. I got my master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and was training to be a non-denominational chaplain. And so I was really interested through my chaplaincy and developing a way to talk to people who are secular or don't know what religion they are, spiritual but not religious. I was working in hospitals and prisons, and there's something really special about talking to people about things that they find sacred, whether it was baseball or their relationships with their kids or art. And so I was really trying to codify what that practice would look like as a chaplain. If I go into a hospital room and someone is sick and I go, "Hi, I'm here from the spiritual care department," and I have seen on their chart that they have put that they're unaffiliated with a religion, what is my way in? And so that is really what my initial work was about. And then I sort of developed with my mentor, Stephanie Parcell, a methodology for that. And that is what Harry Potter and the Sacred Texts is based on. It's the methodology I developed for that time with her and for my chaplaincy. And so it started as writing. And then I wanted to prove that it worked, and so the book is really just me trying to prove that it works. That you can treat secular things as if it was sacred and be like, "Look, you can reflect on anything in your own life." Try this at home. Journal. Be like I'm thinking about heartbreak and Taylor Swift is how I always think about heartbreak.  

Sarah [00:36:19] You beat me to it.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:36:20]  I'm sorry, but I'm going to pull a Taylor Swift lyric like she had a marvelous time ruining everything. And I'm going to just journal on it and figure out how I feel about it using a text that's sacred to me.  

Sarah [00:36:34] I loved the origin story with Casper, who's been on our podcast before, when he said, "How about we do this with a book that people read?"  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:36:42] Yeah, no, he's a jerk.  

Sarah [00:36:44] Well, that's rude.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:36:45] It's real rude.  

Sarah [00:36:45]  That's how people talk about Jane Austen, which is one of my sacred texts, and I get real feisty about it.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:36:52] So I was reading Jane Eyre as sacred, and he came to this little group and he was like, "So smart. I'm so proud of you. What if we do it with a book people actually like?".  

Sarah [00:37:01] Instead of that cute accent and you couldn't be mad. So lame. 

Vanessa Zoltan [00:37:05] I know. And then he was right [inaudible] Harry Potter and that there's something special about the ubiquity of Harry Potter.  

Sarah [00:37:12] That's a hell of a text too in all fairness. But I think you're right. It doesn't have to be a seven part several thousand page. I think the beginning of this treatment that you have codified, as you so eloquently put it, is the first fun part is just to think through your life, the things you've treated as a sacred text and didn't realize it. Like, Steel Magnolias is a sacred texts to me.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:37:37] Me too!  

Sarah [00:37:37]  Listen, if I sat here long enough, I could quote the whole movie to you. Give me some time. It might take me a minute. I couldn't do it in the runtime of the movie, but I could do it if given enough opportunity.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:37:46] If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me.  

Sarah [00:37:48] Come sit by me. Well, and listen-- I'm going to start crying already-- to have treated this text in a sacred manner, to bring it into myself, that movie is in my cells, and then to have a child diagnosed with type one diabetes, that's some real moving pieces.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:38:09] Oh, my God. Yeah. 

Sarah [00:38:09] You know what I'm saying? And that's when you realize when you treat something like this, it's living. Then you see other layers of it. And I think that's what you do so well in this book, is articulate that. When you talk about using something secular as sacred, it's just hard to get out of that intellectual space where you think you're criticizing or analyzing that. And I even still do that and watch you walk through Jane Eyre and show that I'm not talking about Jane Eyre, I'm talking about my life. I'm using Jane Eyre to talk about my grandparents experience in the Holocaust. I'm using Jane Eyre to talk about my experience with mental illness. I'm using this text because it has depth to explore my own depths. And I just think it's incredible.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:38:56] Yeah, the way my Professor Charles Halsey would say that is we're using it to learn from and not about.  

Sarah [00:39:03] I love that. I underlined that part.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:39:04] Yeah, it's so good. He's so smart. I want to learn from it, how to be a good person, how I want to walk through the world. Do I want to be like Sally Fields in Steel Magnolia? Do I want to let go more? And no judgment, right? We have these fictional characters who we can live our lives in conversation with. It's like one of those touch me museums where you're just allowed to pick it up and look at it from every direction. And you're not judging. You're thinking critically because these aren't real people who are going to get hurt by you judging them, and you actually do know everything about them that has been created because they are fictional. And so, yeah, you're just like really invited into it. And if it doesn't suit you, if it doesn't work for you, if it doesn't get you better at loving, then throw it out.  

Beth [00:39:51] I have been staring at a post-it note on my desk all week. My friend Anna quoted Krista Tippett in her newsletter as saying, "If you're faithful to a question, the question will be faithful to you."And as I am reading your book, you have really fleshed out what being faithful to a question means. Will you talk a little bit about, as an atheist, what bringing faith to this exercise means to you?  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:40:18] Yeah. So first of all, I talk about faith as an act and not a thing. You don't either have faith or don't have faith. You act with faith. And Simon Weil who was a 20th century French philosopher, she talked about love and faith as very related. And that they had a lot to do with attention, which I think is like very similar to that Krista Tippett quote. And that paying attention to something is loving it and is having faith in it. And so she has this great, great essay that's super readable, not just for a philosophical essay, but just for any essay called On the Right Use of School Studies. And she talks about treating studying Greek or doing your chemistry homework or anything as if it were sacred, because it's going to get you better paying attention and then it becomes sacred. And I think that that's a dangerous idea because you don't want to be like, "Oh, I'm in a really bad relationship, but if I treat it as sacred and if I have faith in it then it'll be good."  

Sarah [00:41:18] Right. Most good ideas are dangerous in the wrong light.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:41:20] Exactly. So we ought to be really careful and ask ourselves, is this getting us better at loving, including loving ourselves? But as long as it sort of meets that criteria, I think that having faith means that you believe that it has gifts to give you and that's it. Like, that's what it means to have faith in something. And that doesn't mean that it has the right gifts to give you or that you need to be in a relationship with it right now. But it's just believing that it has gifts to give you and that it's generative. It keeps you thinking. It keeps your mind expansive. People will ask us, can you treat anything as sacred? And I'm like, technically, but to be dramatic about it, my [inaudible] isn't going to get you better at living. Like, it's going to limit the way that you see the world. It's going to make your world smaller. And so we don't want to do that. We want it to be generative and expansive.  

Sarah [00:42:14] I really feel like your book is in conversation. At least it was in my mind with Susan Cain's Bittersweet. The premise is like, why do we listen to sad songs basically? Like, that's the kick off. Why do we do that? Why do we love to listen to songs and music and read art and pay attention to things in the world that make you cry and are very poignant? And she's really scratching at that and unearthing and examining that. And I thought because, for me, as a religious person, sacred is easy to define. It's when God is present in that thing. But listening to you define it, and I thought about how she really does a good job of naming, both of you are really dancing together. And how do we name this without depending on that, without just saying, "Well, God is present in it and that's how we know." Which I think that to me they are not in conflict at all.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:43:09] Yeah, me neither.  

Sarah [00:43:11] And so it's also easier for me because I know when something's poignant. I know when something's sacred. I'm a crier and I cry. It's a very is a tool. It's a very easy clue. I jokingly told our social media manager once I know something's good if I've written if it makes me cry. Because I'm like [inaudible] I tapped that part of me that's crying. So that's how I got there. But I think because that's what good art does. But I think it's almost more difficult, honestly, to name while that is good, not just from a criticism, not that intellectual pursuit, but why is there feeling here? Why is this important to me? How can I learn from this? And I think you do such a beautiful job of naming that, helping us see it, examining it because it is so valuable. Not to just lean into those moments when you feel it, but to really hold it in your hand and turn it and all those different lights and say, "Why is Steel Magnolia important to me? Why does Taylor Swift fill arenas with people just with the passion of the sun? Why does Jane Austin and Charlotte Bronte-- why are they naming something that people are still reading and loving?" I have a real love affair with classic literature anyway for that reason. Like, because if it's doing that thing for people for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years-- like Harry Potter too, but Jane Eyre has a longer record of doing that beautiful, poignant, sacred thing for the reader.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:44:50] And part of what I love that you just pointed out, Sarah, is those were all things that have huge communities around them. Part of what makes it easy to treat Harry Potter as sacred, even though J.K. Rowling has revealed herself to be a hateful person who prefers surrounding herself with misinformation about trans folks, is the ubiquity. It's the fact that I can talk to like one quarter of the globe and say Gryffindor and they know what I mean. Like, that is special. That is really special. And the same way that sports are special, but those tend to be more national. There's just something, no pun intended, magical about the Harry Potter books. But I agree with you that there's something about like Charlotte Bronte. I'm like, wow, she knew me almost 200 years ago. I am an atheist, but that's got to feel similar to God's love to imagine that there is a woman writing in 1830 being, like, women are going to be lonely and need this story and I'm going to write until my eyes need surgery because I want to tell the story so much. And I think that Swifties all know it's about Taylor, but it's also about the friendship bracelets that you're exchanging in the isles.  

Sarah [00:46:10] And the costumes.  

Jessica Grose [00:46:11] Exactly. It's about Joy. And so I think that's a huge part of sacredness, is being in community, being in joy with people.  

Sarah [00:46:25] So tell us those three things you outline of what is required for sacred text.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:46:30] So I talk about faith, rigor and community. And so as I talked about faith is just believing that the more time you spend with it, the more gifts it'll give you. Community is like-- it can start just as the gym buddy theory. You're more likely to leave the Taylor Swift concert and think about it in a more complicated way and for longer and more thoughtfully if you're there with someone else who's going to disagree with you, who's going to agree with you, who's going to pump up your good ideas. It's just going to last longer. And rigor is about maintaining a long term relationship with someone or something, a text, because you will map how you are changing against it because you're building a relationship with it. And sometimes you don't want to show up at the dinner with your friend because you're tired, but you go anyway and you're almost always glad that you mustered the energy and went. And that's also just going to be true about a text you're trying to have a sacred relationship with. The more time you put into it, the more it's going to give back to you. And that's just the truth. And so that sort of rigor. And we know this, right? You go to church every Sunday, you go to synagogue every Friday night. I'm Jewish. And so you end the Torah and you open the Torah. You just go back and go back and go back. And that's what makes it sacred.  

Beth [00:47:53] I think that what I have learned from making a podcast is that rigor is freedom over time.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:47:58] Oh, my God. Yes.  

Beth [00:47:59] Sarah and I recently had a conversation about bonds and interest rates. And I think when we first started making the show, I would have felt a lot of pressure to come to a policy proposal at the end of that conversation. But the rigor and the community and I think to an extent the faith that I bring to my discussions with Sarah, that they will always be generative, that they will always work on me, I'll always learn from them, they always have gifts, meant that I left that conversation thinking more about humility and about equity, and these bigger themes in life that they don't lead me to like, well, here's what we should do about the interest rate. But more of here's what I learned from that about who I want to be in the world and how I want to show up in these conversations. So the freedom of doing this consistently, even when we don't feel like it, even about topics that we don't want to discuss, has been really revelatory to me. And I have never made a connection between that freedom and sacredness until we started having this conversation. And I love that you demonstrate how what feels like constraint is very liberating.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:49:12] Yeah. My mentor, Stephanie Parcell, tells a story about she was a sort of junior minister and someone said, "Okay, I think it's time for you to offer the Eucharist." And she was like, "Oh, no, no, no. I don't feel ready to do that. I still don't know what the Eucharist means." And her mentor said to her, "Well, we don't do it because we know what it means. We do it because we don't know what it means and we're trying to find out." And then there are whole weeks that you do it and you're not thinking about anything. You're just doing it. And then one day it's there for you and God is feeding you for the very first time. Like, whatever it is. For me, we do Shabbat a lot in my house. And most weeks I light the Shabbat candles and I wave my hands in order to welcome in the Sabbath. And it just means nothing. It's just like I do it because my mom did it and her mom did it. And it's what we do on a Friday night when it gets dark out. And every once in a while I'm like, no, I am welcoming in 24 hours of rest and time with my family. And because my arms are just used to doing it, the moments that I need it, it is just like there for me in the muscle memory of it. And I don't have to go reaching for it, right? I'm not like, Oh my God, I'm so tired right now. What do I do? I know what I do. I gather my family on a Friday night, I cook a dinner and I light candles and I welcome in rest and I know exactly what I do. And so, yeah, we have to build those tools for ourselves when we're healthy and happy so that they're there for us when it's hard.  

Beth [00:50:47] Well, I'm so glad that you came to spend time with us. I'm so grateful for your work. I think that it will really resonate with lots of people listening to this conversation. So thank you.  

Vanessa Zoltan [00:50:56] What you guys create is really a gift. And so I want to thank both of you for your work in general and for having me on.  

Beth [00:51:13] You can find more of Vanessa's work through Not Sorry Productions where she is the CEO and co-host of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, The Real Question and Hot and Bothered. She's also the founder of Common Ground Pilgrimages, a travel experience steeped in literature that features brilliant faculty. And, of course, we highly recommend her book, Praying with Jane Eyre. Part of what I loved about these two conversations is that they don't have a conclusion. They just add to my thinking, and I hope yours, about all the people we share the world with in the many ways that we're all doing our best here, looking for meaning and purpose and the opportunities to give and receive love. We're thankful to Jessica, Vanessa, and to all of you. We never take your time and attention for granted. And we look forward to continuing this discussion with you through your messages, comments and emails. We'll be back in your ears on Tuesday to discuss this week's election results and the presidential primary. Until then, have the best weekend available to you.  

[00:52:07] Music Interlude  

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

Jessica Grose [00:53:34] The most conflict I have with my husband is that he is someone the second his head hits the pillow, just out. It's not his fault.  

Sarah [00:53:45] Here's what I need you to understand about what's happening here at Pantsuit Politics. We have reels. We've played around reels like everyone else on Instagram. One of our most popular reels. And I'm on making my bed with my husband, and I roll back our blankets. And what you ultimately see is that we have two twins side by side. It's a split king.  

Jessica Grose [00:54:06] Nice.  

Sarah [00:54:06] And the caption across the real is co-sleeping is a tool of the patriarchy. And it is one of our most viewed reels because it's real. It is shouldered by women. So let me recommend to you a split key, which is life changing. Life changing.  

Jessica Grose [00:54:28] Someday we will have a guestroom and the other person who's struggling, someone can just go. We'll start in the same room, but just if you need to eject for the night there's nowhere else to go. I mean, we both ended up on the couch because we're just like the other person is snoring, whatever. But he literally the second his head hits the pillow...  

Sarah [00:54:53] That's obnoxious.  

Jessica Grose [00:54:53] I'm tossing and turning.  

Sarah [00:54:54] I agree.  

Jessica Grose [00:54:54] Like, it's not right. It's not fair.  

Sarah [00:54:55] Co-sleeping is a tool of patriarchy, Jessica. That could be your next column.  

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