 I am loving, loving, loving this book Legend in Secular Society. I'll be reading it for a second time. He's just a particularly rich sentence. Talking about the profusion of different churches in America, none of them could be discriminated against in the interest of keeping tensions down. In a society with so many potential sources of division, ethnic, regional, linguistic, think of all the potential sources of division in the United States. You've got race, region, linguistic, ethnic, religious. So from a European perspective, from a realist perspective, the American creed, what is it? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American attitude of we're all equal just seems naive. In America it's considered bad taste to put too much stock on racial and religious differences. But for most of the world, I think race is considered a real thing and a major part of identity. And most of the world religion is not considered a matter of choice. Religion is considered as something that you're born into and that it has consequences for very real differences. Catholics are not Muslims and Protestants are not Jews. But the American attitude is that religion is a private matter and you can't take it too seriously. Or you can take it seriously privately for the idea of the distinctive claims of your religion. It's considered in politic to take too seriously publicly. Like any religion is supposed to be just as good as any other. So I'm really enjoying my DJI pocket too because it's so small. I can just put it on top of my iPad here as I walk along. And I can just make this stream, it's not live, that's the one downside. I kind of interact with the audience. But it's not so embarrassing to walk along and talk to a machine. So, so many great insights in this book. And many insights that I never really thought of them. Subject lost, recapture me. Okay, got face tracker on. There's the face tracker. Okay, so I used to think that we all just had a religious impulse. But as I'm reading these secular works of analysis, it seems like the society industrializes there are certain consequences. And among them, the society becomes less religious. Religion has less effect on how people operate. So the widespread religious teaching that we must show contentment with our lot, fulfill our obligations, or the religious hope that God will enter the human scene and impose a new dispensation. Orientations which diminish in strength as realistic political possibilities are increasingly apprehended. So we live in increasingly pragmatic instrumentalist world where we see the potential of changing things by collective action. And so there's less need for the religious impulse. So he ties the religious impulse with the mystery and the magic. And as society becomes increasingly industrialized, life becomes less mysterious, mystical, and less emotionally fulfilling. So now when we struggle, when life is hard, we less often think, oh, this is God testing us in this world, or in Christian spirit giving us a cross to bear. Preoccupation with the morality of nation states has been replaced. This replaced individual morality as a dominant concern of intellectuals and modern society. Yeah, so dominant concern of intellectuals and modern society is politics. Because in politics you can make pretty concrete changes in the way people live. While the efficacy of religion is less obvious. So we have the ever increase of the scientific orientation and the growth of the behavioral and organizational sciences. So society is increasingly affected by these rationalist assumptions. So the way we operate are increasingly subjected to rational planning and organization. We're more and more involved in social activities, in which our own emotional dispositions are less relevant. So everything's becoming more rational. Most of us are in rational organizations. We're in firms, businesses, public service, education, government, the state. These institutions impose rational behavior. So from a secular perspective, the dominant function of the church is the institutionalization of emotional gratification. So contrast with the increasingly scientific and rationalist disposition, the churches are at ever increasing disadvantage. So with politics, we sense that we can change things pragmatically. So politics provide new outlets for individual effort and energy. So preaching the word, preaching the gospel is less popular when people can get involved in, say, politics. So in England there was an established church. If you wanted to challenge the status quo, you can take on the sovereign. You can directly take on the political system, but one way you could take on the status quo was by signing up for a non-conformist church, meaning any church outside of the Anglican. But there was never an official religion in the United States, so the idea of a non-conformist church makes no sense. So in the Protestant churches you had this tremendous growth of voluntary movements, Sunday school teachers and the like. But over the past 150 years, voluntary associations with more secular and pragmatic aims have been increasingly popular. They may not carry connotations of reverence and esteem, but most people find a wider application of power, better apparatus and equipment, and just a better way of spending one's time occupied with the here and now. So we get the rise of interest associations, and their spread reflects the decline of corporate and community allegiances, which religious affiliation was dominantly located. So we used to have communal emotions because we had a similar outlook on life, because we had similar troubles, but now with increasing occupational individuation and increasing levels of hobbies that are individual, we don't share that common community of feeling anymore. And from a secular perspective, the primary purpose of religion is providing emotional reassurance. So now that we don't have the same kind of communal feeling, there's less demand for the services of religion. So religion deals in emotional matters, in meaningful communication, in interpreting, evaluating, evoking responses, in inviting individual's participation. Science does none of these things, but art does. So often art is our competing religion for the loyalty of men. So it used to be that the church dominated intellectual life, and increasingly intellectual concerns have passed way beyond the knowledge and the ability of the clergy. So it used to be scientists came from the clergy, but as science has become more specialized, the possibility for a cleric to be a scientist has diminished. So in our ever-increasingly economically efficient societies, we have more reliance on science for economic advance. So the 19th century businessman often subsidized religion as an agency of social control. He thought that religion would instill a sense of discipline and order into the workforce. But as industries become more capitalized, machinery increasingly controls labor. And that control can be specifically adjusted for the task in hand. And there's no longer such needs for controlling people in their private lives outside of work. So remember, character references don't have so many of those anymore. It used to be that businessmen relied on a worker's general dispositions to industriousness, punctuality, thrift, sobriety, willingness, and reliability. But the new control demanded nothing of this character. The conveyor belt could exact all the control that was needed. The industry has passed from internalized character values towards mechanical manipulation. To turn from religious socialization to technical devices for regulating the work situation. So now they no longer need to control workers' industry, outside of workers' industries, turn to the new sciences of management and industrial relations. In economic terms, it's wasteful to demand that the whole person in all his facets should be self-disciplined. And a more specific method of manipulation can be evolved. Adjust that part of the person which is needed for the job. So industry has rejected the blanket control of religious and moral socialization of workers. The methods which control them much more efficiently as if they were mechanical instruments of production. So businessmen once in philanthropy gave to religion, now they increasingly give to science. And science developed into a profession. Its professional prestige has steadily risen. So an increasingly pragmatic society is impressed by the results of scientific endeavor. It's more evident and more dramatic than anything the cleric does. So science has risen in prestige and increasingly attracts the better mind. Minds, it provokes more public concern. It gains increased access to the media and wins higher rewards in salaries and status. So the clergyman's special expertise is knowledge of theology and liturgy. And his license to perform at sacramental rites is increasingly less relevant to our pragmatic society. The cannons of objectivity, neutrality, empiricism are now infected with theology. You find them in the movement towards the higher criticism which places religious authority under scrutiny. In a way, he's not altogether conducive to the maintenance of the actual authority of the priests in the pulpit. As geology and biology have developed, the authenticity of the Christian interpretation of the world has become less and less tenable. Psychology and sociology, their attempt to produce analysis of society have also challenged the Christian interpretation. There used to be religion-dominated education, not so much anymore. Religion used to dominate all of life, not so much anymore. So rereading this classic 1966 book, Religion in Secular Society. So, clergy have lost social standing. They've been replaced in the intellectual stratum of society. Literature and the arts have passed almost completely out of religion. So the skepticism of modern society has shaken up the clergy. They attempt to find other levels at which religious propositions are true. So levels other than common sense and literal level. So it's led to this wide, diverse clerical interpretations of religion and contemporary meaning. So even many clergy have come to disbelieve in the ultimacy of any answers which they can supply about social questions. So we're increasingly aware of the relativity of modern knowledge, which makes the cleric more guarded, less confident in the intellectual content of religion. So the man in the street has developed a protective cynicism about what is being put over on him. And the clergy realize how much the discipline of theology is now influenced from outside by archaeology, comparative religion, anthropology, psychology, society. So it becomes ever more difficult for the church to reconcile their traditional claims to wisdom with the increasing acceptance by the clergy of modern branches of knowledge which casts considerable doubt on what the church's half a century has been teaching. In the street it's not interesting the subtle shifts of academic debate. So as a professional clergyman we can afford to play intellectual games but as a cleric he's bound and committed by vows of obedience and loyalty and economic dependence. So a layman usually only wants assurance and certainty of his salvation. Assurance of a kind that clerics feel increasingly less able to provide. So clergy have become increasingly skeptical and cease to believe any of the essentials of the faith. And this is only a source of bewilderment to ordinary believers. Wonder why these men think as they do they continue to take money from the churches which commit them to rather different beliefs. And though the clergy become more skeptical they have little chance of reproach more with a secular intelligentsia. Since they are committed to a framework of debate which is unequivocal