Social Media Culture - "Instagram Evangelism" with Leigh Stein
Shownotes:
According to author Leigh Stein, the internet is run by “a thousand Oprahs,” influencers with beautiful lifestyles who post relatable content that makes them feel like friends to their thousands of followers. While internet friends might “like” the same things as us, they can never truly listen to our honest confessions and pain. Social media influencers cannot meet the expectations that we put on them. What is it that we expect from Instagram icons, and where do we need to look elsewhere?
In this episode, Chris and Eddie talk with Stein about her New York Times article, “The Empty Religions of Instagram.” The article explores the ways social media users turn to influencers as moral authorities that offer structure, comfort, encouragement, and humor. Stein has observed the birth of a new online orthodoxy that resembles religious beliefs, but that is missing the mercy or grace of true human connections within faith communities. This episode offers insight into the disappointment of digital iconography, the outrage cycle of social media, and our innate urge to testify and tell our stories.
Series Info:
Social media has changed the way messages are shared throughout the world with a rapidity that is unparalleled. Its effects on culture, for better and for worse, are undeniable and seemingly inescapable. It’s impossible to grasp in totality what the increasing role of social media will mean for our society, but one thing is for sure: the Church needs to talk about it.
In our new series “Social Media Culture,” Chris and Eddie will engage in conversations about how Christians can establish healthier habits with technology and cultivate a more faithful manner of engagement on social media. It’s important for the Church to consider the advantages of this cultural shift, such as innovative outreach and the uplifting of important voices and messages, while also guarding against the threats, such as constant comparison, misinformation, and dissociation from the surrounding world.
Resources:
Follow Leigh Stein on the web:
Read Leigh Stein’s article The Empty Religions of Instagram
Check out Leigh Stein’s novel Self Care here
Follow Leigh Stein on social media:
Full Transcript:
Eddie Rester 0:00
I'm Eddie Rester.
Chris McAlilly 0:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.
Eddie Rester 0:03
Today we have Leigh Stein with us. Leigh is a writer and an author, and recently wrote an article for the New York Times, and Chris read it and what happened?
Chris McAlilly 0:15
I reached out. I reached out. I, you know, I do this. I've started to get in the habit of I read something interesting, I reach out, and a lot of times people do not respond.
Eddie Rester 0:25
They ignore you, yeah.
Chris McAlilly 0:26
I get ignored. That's okay. Leigh responded.
Eddie Rester 0:29
And she's written a book called "Self Care," which is kind of, it's a novel, a take on the influencer culture and what's going on with that, but she really dives into in the article, this kind of influencer worship, I think that we have in our world today, where we look to these people on Instagram or Twitter and kind of set them up to be...
Chris McAlilly 0:51
Moral authorities.
Eddie Rester 0:52
Moral authorities.
Chris McAlilly 0:53
Yeah, so the article that I read, the opinion essay that I read was called "The Empty Religions of Instagram." And I was taken by it because it spoke to a kind of spiritual yearning that I see in a lot of people my age, younger, that have kind of grown up with the internet culture and I just think that Lee's perspective on this was unique. I've never seen anything quite like it.
Eddie Rester 1:16
She talks about the move from televangelists to Instavangelists, talking about Instagram, and just the need people have to have someone speaking into their life and how that's happening in our world, but it's happening in different spaces than it used to happen.
Chris McAlilly 1:35
She's particularly interested in kind of the the wellness industry that has grown up around women. She described herself as a kind of a burnout feminist activist and she's looking at folks like Glennon Doyle and Gwyneth Paltrow and Jen Hatmaker and...
Eddie Rester 1:52
Brene Brown.
Chris McAlilly 1:52
Brene Brown, some of these big-name, you know, million plus followers on Instagram influencers, and just what that says about kind of what we do with our pain, with our questions, with our spiritual longings, and the way in which we offer that, you know, to these influencers in the comment section.
Eddie Rester 2:12
And I think she kind of leans towards, and maybe it's even more than leans towards, that we need something more than just these Instavangelists and that there's a sense of community in a place where we can really explore the meaning of life that our online tech Gods can't get us to.
Chris McAlilly 2:32
Yeah, I just think that there's something missing. And so she's trying to put her finger on what that is and offer, maybe, you know, an opportunity to kind of critique, self critique and maybe lead to some interesting conversations about... Really, I mean, this is a phenomenon in our culture that's not going away. So we've got to figure out how to deal with it, how to live with it, and how to, you know, live well within it. I think the thing that I am going to take away is maybe we're following the wrong people.
Eddie Rester 3:02
Yeah, I mean, she talked about that. We all talked about that. You admitted you're not following me anymore, so.
Chris McAlilly 3:07
Maybe I am. I have to go back and look.e I'll follow you, man. You know, I know that you need that.
Eddie Rester 3:13
I need that. I need that. Yeah. So it's a fascinating conversation. And I'm thankful that Chris reached out after reading the article. So the article, we will have a link to that in the show notes. Take a read through that. And really enjoy the conversation.
Chris McAlilly 3:31
Like, like it, follow it.
Eddie Rester 3:33
All those things.
Chris McAlilly 3:34
I don't know what I'm trying to say. Just listen to the the episode and I hope you have a great day.
Chris McAlilly 3:39
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 3:46
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 3:50
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 3:57
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 4:09
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 4:24
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 4:27
Well, we're here today with Leigh Stein. Leigh, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
Leigh Stein 4:32
Thank you for inviting me.
Chris McAlilly 4:34
My immediate response on, I think, March the fifth when I read your opinion article or essay in the New York Times was to reach out to you on Twitter, and so I'm so grateful. Normally I do that and nobody responds.
Eddie Rester 4:48
You never hear back.
Chris McAlilly 4:49
Yeah, but you responded. The title of the article was "The Empty Religions of Instagram," and we're gonna kind of use that as a way into conversation. I'm so intrigued by this, by a lot of the the themes and the different topics that arise out of the article. I wonder if you would just maybe go back and talk a little bit about how you ended up writing it.
Leigh Stein 5:14
Yeah, it's hard to know where to start that story. But I would say that part of my story is that for three years, I was a feminist activist and organizer. I started a nonprofit organization to help women writers, and I was moderating a Facebook community of 40,000 women. And I had some of the highest peak experiences of my life doing this work. And I also had some extremely low points. And I got extremely disillusioned and burnt out on the way online discourse, particularly among a certain subset of activists, can become really hypocritical. Like, I felt like I was observing women taking down other women in the name of being good feminists.
Leigh Stein 5:58
So I, and especially as things have gotten so polarized during the Trump administration, just watching politics online play out, and I'm someone who really lives online. I've been online for a really long time. And I feel like I started seeing this new orthodoxy take over, but it was political. There was a certain belief system. You weren't allowed to ask questions, you had to go along with the group think. And if you made a mistake, you'd apologize, but there was never any forgiveness. And so I actually first wrote a poem about this last summer, so I was already kind of percolating the idea for this essay, where I felt like I was observing the birth of a new religion, but it was missing any mercy or grace.
Leigh Stein 6:43
And so then I read a profile in the New Yorker about Glennon Doyle. And that really triggered me, too, and I tweeted something about it. And an editor at the New York Times said, "Do you have more to say on this?" And when she asked that, I really reflected over the course of the pandemic, and how emotionally moved I have been by moments when I see faith leaders on TV. Like, I saw a bishop, an Episcopalian bishop, on CNN when Trump did that photo op with the Bible in front of her church. I was really moved by her. And so I just I felt like there was something I wanted to say. And I wondered if there were others like me, who have also felt like we're missing something deeper than just our internet identity and politics.
Eddie Rester 7:31
One of the things that you talked about is kind of the influencer culture that we have. And so...
Chris McAlilly 7:38
Eddie's a little bit old, Leigh, you have to know, and he doesn't know what an influencer is. You have to... I'm just joking. He knows what an influencer is. But maybe there are some folks that don't.
Eddie Rester 7:46
Yeah, so help us. What is an influencer? When we, when you say that, when you refer to that, what does that mean?
Leigh Stein 7:52
I think that's a good question. So an influencer is someone who has built a large following on social media, and I'm talking about in the hundreds of thousands or the millions. So it's what Oprah used to be. It used to be that you would turn on the TV and everyone you know would turn on their TV and watch Oprah. But now that culture is so niche and segmented, it's like there are a thousand Oprahs depending on what your niche is. So these influencers, they build a cult around their personality, so they're constantly posting about themselves, but the women I follow in particular, it's this mix of they have a beautiful lifestyle that's aspirational, they look beautiful, but they also post self-help tips, self-care tips. Glennon Doyle is Christian, so she does post some Christian ideas, but they're all... To me the whole thing is watered down so much that it could mean something to anyone that to me it means nothing.
Chris McAlilly 8:57
I thought it was great the way that you described Glennon Doyle's gospel as an accessible combination of self-care activism and tongue-in-cheek Christianity. "Jesus loves me, this I know, for he gave me Lexapro," That's just... [LAUGHS] I think that, it encapsulates kind of what you see there, but I think, you know, the other thing that she's doing is there's a kind of watered down..I guess, if your starting place is thinking about doctrine or dogma or kind of like a very structured form of religious faith and practice.
Chris McAlilly 9:30
What it seems like what Glennon Doyle is doing is kind of offering a way to say you know, there's a ton of pressure in the world to look a certain way, to live a certain way. And she in some ways is kind of relaxing some of that and saying, you don't have to look or be like another person, or even the tradition that you come out of. People are drawn to an opportunity to kind of explore and look into different dimensions. It seems like she gives some space for that, I guess. What do you see, not only for For Glennon Doyle, but others, why do you think folks are drawn to these characters?
Leigh Stein 10:07
Yeah, and I should say I take like a very critical, cynical eye to this stuff. And that's also because I wrote a novel that came out last year that's a satire of this influencer space. So I'm looking at everything with a slant. But I was interested to hear from some people who messaged me after the article that came out to tell me what it is that they find so moving about Glennon Doyle, and one said, you know, she's part Christian, she's part Jewish, and she felt like Glennon Doyle made space for people like her, like, I really understand that. Someone else said it's really hard to put words to faith. And so the fact that Glennon Doyle can articulate that is what leads her to have a following.
Leigh Stein 10:45
So I'm writing, I'm interested in and I'm writing about the wellness space and internet culture. And I think a lot of this stuff is just the same kind of self improvement texts that have been marketed towards women for a long time in newspapers and magazines and books, that you need to work on your diet, you need to work on your health, you need to work on your brain, you need to work on your spirit, except now it's coming directly from famous people instead of from Marie Claire magazine.
Chris McAlilly 11:21
Yeah, it's within the context of a kind of, you know, digital iconography, you know what I mean?
Leigh Stein 11:26
Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 11:26
There's like this living breathing 3D, 4D, you know, lived icons that you're supposed to kind of live like and be like, etc. Eddie was gonna jump in.
Eddie Rester 11:37
I actually don't remember I was gonna ask. I was kind of caught up in that, that there are these people that, and Gwyneth Paltrow is one of them, that, yeah, it's aspirational, that you want to be like them. And in the book that you wrote, which is "Self Care," I was reading a little bit about that. The kind of the protagonists in the book kind of lead that double life. They present something that they want people to see, but then underneath, it's not that. It's, you know, more even going against what they were showing the world. One of the ways that you refer to them is they're kind of a different kind of clergy. Say a little bit more about that, kind of that sense of, they're out there kind of directing the life of folks.
Leigh Stein 12:30
Well, I can't speak for everyone, of course, but as a secular millennial myself, I don't have a religious faith that I practice regularly, though I've dabbled in different things. It's almost like an overwhelming number of choices. Like, I could become a yoga teacher. I could do Buddhist mindfulness meditation. I could go to a Buddhist Sangha. I could go to church one day. I could try that. I could follow this person. I could follow that person. So I think we think that we would like to have as many choices as possible, that's what we think, but fact having too many choices is overwhelming.
Leigh Stein 13:07
So if I follow one person who says this is the belief system, buy my memoir, you know, celebrate your messy life, your messy self, celebrate your feelings, because your feelings are telling you the truth. Glennon Doyle has a whole belief system and message, and so there's almost like a relief in finding the structure and finding someone who can show me a way to live. And I think there's a trickle down effect. So these women have huge followings. But there are also even more women that are building their own brands as life coaches and wellness experts. I mean, I follow all kinds of people that are telling me smoothie recipes I need to drink, and they might only have 1200 followers, but they're emulating the women at the top. So, to me, when I go on Instagram, it's so pervasive. It's everywhere I look. Even if I don't personally follow Glennon Doyle, I can see her influence or Gwyneth's influence.
Eddie Rester 14:06
And you talk about this is the new kind of the next phase of maybe the diet fad and the self help fad. Years ago, I read a book by a guy named Philip Rieff, "The Triumph of the Therapeutic," and it was written back in the 1960s. And he really nailed the culture of self help, self improvement that the world begins with the assumption that there's something wrong that needs to be fixed. And what he talks about is one of the things that gets missed in that kind of self improvement culture is any kind of meaningful community. And in the article you talked about one lady who confessed something in the response in the comments of someone's post, and no one picked up on it at all.
Chris McAlilly 14:57
Yeah, the way you described it is a confession without a confessor, and that was just devastating. You know, I mean, because you see that every single day online where you have these folks who have, you know, are putting out messages and, you know, I guess digital sermons and people long to, I mean there's a deep yearning that's going on in these conversations and on these platforms where people are responding with what's going on in their heart and in their life and putting it out quite vulnerably for the all the world to see.
Chris McAlilly 15:31
It seems like they're, at other times in history, when we didn't all live on the internet, that stuff would be handled within the context of a loving community within the context of a, you know, perhaps a, you know, you know, an individual embodied physical community in person. And it seems like what you're trying to draw attention to is the way in which there's been something that's lost in that transition. How I guess, is that, is that on base or kind of how would you describe it?
Leigh Stein 16:01
Yeah, I think, you know, so many people are in profound pain, and they're reaching out for connection through the internet, just like I have done for much of my life. And I asked the woman Kimberly, who I interviewed for the article, I said in my interview, I said, "I noticed, you know, that Glennon Doyle didn't respond to your comment. Did that hurt your feelings?" And she said, it didn't, because she said, she feels like what she gets from Glennon Doyle is a way to express herself. So she felt like she got something just from articulating that message and putting it out into the void. Which I respect her own take on her own situation. But to me, there was something really moving about seeing that go unanswered.
Leigh Stein 16:47
And I've gotten all kinds of emails and DMs and responses to this piece. One woman invited me to go to her church service over zoom on Sunday. And I was supposed to do something else on Sunday, and I was gonna tell her, I couldn't do it. And then my other plans got cancelled. And so I thought, well, this is a sign that I should try it. So I went to church, and it was really nice service and the part of the service where the congregation--it was a small congregation, maybe 20 people--and the the part where people could ask for prayers for themselves or their loved ones. And then we all prayed for each other that was, that was profoundly moving to me. And that, to me is totally the opposite of what social media is, because you can see each other's faces, there's a sense of humility that I don't find online. Online is so performative. It's so ego-driven. You really want those likes and those follows. And so I think, some kind of congregation whether it's religious or otherwise, really offer something that I find to be missing.
Chris McAlilly 17:48
you know, I sent I mean, we have a congregation that has an active presence online. And and this is not just us, this is just kind of the way it feels like the movement of the way the world is moving. It's where people live. And so you feel like you need a presence online as well. But it's easy for the church to get swept up in that as well, you know, in the same kind of cultural trends. And I think you're right, that what's lost in that is the virtue of humility. And there's something profound about that.
Chris McAlilly 18:20
I mean, I remember when I was in my early 20s, and I was invited to be a student pastor at this little country church out in South Fulton County, in Georgia. And there was something healing to me about being a part of a group of, you know, 20, folks Sunday after Sunday, that had no idea what I was doing, you know, in seminary at Emory University, Atlanta. They just loved love me. And, you know, we had that prayer time. And it was a beautiful, humble, merciful, loving community to be a part of in my 20s, I mean, that was big, for me, is a big part of my story is being a part of that embodied community in that way. It wasn't flashy, nothing sexy about it. It was very much not that. It was the opposite of that in a lot of ways.
Eddie Rester 19:12
One of the things you talked about in the article was that it says the women leaders we've chosen as our moral leaders aren't challenging us to ask the fundamental questions we've been wrestling with for thousands of years: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What should we believe beyond the limits of our puny selfhood? Is there a way for us in our online lives? And I'm not sure that our online lives are going away, but is there a way for us to wrestle with those at all? Or is that just that can't happen in our online lives, the way things are set up now?
Leigh Stein 19:48
That's a really good question. I mean, something that's become clear to me since I published this is like, I could be following the wrong people. Like if I were following more faith leaders. I just started following Rabbi David Wolpe online who I really like, and he posts little videos you know about God and the Torah. And so I think if I were following different people, I would see these faith leaders who are wrestling with these questions. So part of my criticism is that I think we're expecting too much of these influencers, where they're serving too many roles for us. If they're our diet coaches, and our motivational coaches and our coaches on how to manifest wealth and our moral guides, you know, it's a lot to ask from one person. And so we're bound to be disappointed by that.
Eddie Rester 20:37
We follow the niche, and I wonder about that, you know, there's a whole conversation about the algorithms and where they're leading us these days, but it just seems like everything is broken apart. And so yeah, if we feel like we need to figure out, how do I feel better about this, I'll go to this person, or if I need, you know, inspiration about that, I'll go to that person. How do you, how do we find these folks that we may need but we don't know that we need? I mean, that's, I'm not sure there's an answer that question, I'm gonna toss that out to you.
Leigh Stein 21:10
Yeah, I feel like among my peers, there's a big push to follow a diverse group of people. But when the word "diverse" is used, it's often white people talking to other white people that we need to follow people of color, of course, which is one part of diversity. But another part of diversity is also diversity in thought. And I think diversity in secularism or faith, because I don't even know if I could name for you the people I follow on Twitter that are religious, and I follow over 1000 people. So it could be that I do follow people who are religious, and they just aren't public about that, which I totally respect. But we're siloed into these categories with people who are like us, and we're just the echo chambers I think are really destructive to the country.
Eddie Rester 22:01
The discover page on Instagram--Emily across the room is feeding me information. She says Instagram knows who you follow and they suggest people for you to follow in line with the people that you're already following.
Leigh Stein 22:20
Yes.
Eddie Rester 22:20
And so we just get deeper and deeper into the same voices. And I think it's gonna take effort for us to break out of those voices. I've become real, real aware, in the last probably five or six months that, yeah, I've been led to follow people who sound a lot like me, or like what I want to sound.
Chris McAlilly 22:40
I want to go go back a little bit in the conversation to you're talking about a time where you kind of understood yourself to be an activist, and you were engaging in the work of activism, and you kind of came to a moment of burnout. And it seems like, you know, part of this journey for you this kind of, like, trying to get in touch with the ways in which our pain and our longing and our yearnings and our desire for hope or faith or love or whatever are kind of thrown around on the internet, that you got a little bit more serious on the other side of that burnout in exploring some of those questions.
Chris McAlilly 23:18
Could you, I just think that's a common experience, you know, that you feel like you come into adulthood, you think you can change the world and then you realize that the world is far more complex. Talk through that a little bit, if you don't mind, just kind of go back to that. What led you in that direction of activism, and then how it broke down and kind of where you are, how you're putting things back together?
Leigh Stein 23:41
Yeah, and I think, I mean, my story might even resonate with people who have felt doubt in their own religious faith or who have changed churches. Because I was so swept up in this community. This community meant so much to me. So someone else started this Facebook group for women writers to share resources, and it was secret, you had to know someone to be in it. And she thought 20 people would join. And within three months, there were 30,000. And I was one of them. And the energy was so propulsive, that I really got swept up in it. And I said let's organize a conference. And soon I had 100 volunteers who were going to help me put on a conference, and I met a co-founder who said, we should be a 501c3 nonprofit, and we should do two conferences every year in New York and LA.
Leigh Stein 24:30
So before I knew it, I was executive director of a 501c3 nonprofit, organizing conferences but not making enough money to live on. The most I ever made doing this role was $12,000 a year. So I had three other part time jobs in order to be able to do this. And I went into thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and it just was exhausting, and to do the Facebook group on top of it. So I had a lot of idealism. I had a lot of people helping me. I had a lot of volunteers.
Leigh Stein 25:03
But part of the problem--there was a lot. It's hard to think of one example--but there was a lot of tension between how we could live up to our feminist values. So the the biggest divide, the thing that tore us apart, was whether or not--this is gonna sound silly, but this tore everyone apart--whether or not babies should be allowed at the conference. So half the women said no babies at the conference. This is this is our weekend away from childcare. We just want to be writers. Let our husbands take care of the babies. The other half said how can you call yourselves a feminist organization if you don't welcome babies at your conference? And this culminated in this strategic campaign on Twitter to publicly shame us and draw negative attention to what we were doing.
Leigh Stein 25:54
And I just cried, and I just thought, I'm going to have to resign in shame because I couldn't figure out a compromise that would satisfy everyone. And when I look back on that now, I think that it wasn't my personal failing. It was actually a larger problem within contemporary feminism, that there's no one feminism that we all agree on. But at the time, it just, it just tore me apart. And so I ultimately had to resign. By the time I resigned, I was $8,000 in credit card debt. I was taking antidepressants, and I didn't know if I could ever write again. And my partner said, of course, you'll write again. And I was like, I don't know, if I can't, but I ultimately then wrote my book, "Self Care."
Chris McAlilly 26:37
Well, talk about that, how is the book, the writing of that book, the taking that critical edge both in kind of internet culture, influence or culture, and then also the way in which the self-care industry has become a thing that doesn't simply kind of, you know, edify and make life better. But you saw things within that were, I guess... Talk about was that a, I guess, a cathartic process, writing that novel and kind of, you know, working through some of those questions.?
Leigh Stein 27:11
It was fun to write because it's funny. So I think humor is definitely my biggest coping mechanism. If I can laugh at something then I can get over it. So there's two main characters in the novel, and one of them is most closely based on me. And she's a workaholic. She's self-righteous. She thinks if everyone would just listen to her, their problems would be solved. And she's on this campaign to sell her company for millions of dollars, because she thinks that will fix her life. And then her co-founder is the beautiful skinny Gwyneth Paltrow type, who has tons of followers but is extremely lonely. And both her parents have died, and she's just desperate for connection. But she just goes online and post to her fans, and it just doesn't fill that void.
Leigh Stein 28:02
So I started writing it in January, in January 2017, right when Trump was inaugurated, and I really started noticing how the internet fed us things to get upset about, and then fed us advertisements for face masks and detox diets, in this vicious cycle of keeping us outraged enough to buy the products to soothe our anger. And so I got really cynical about that. And that really informed the novel.
Eddie Rester 28:38
Feeding that the outrage. I, you know, at times, I'll think back to this a simpler time when Facebook was just launching, when Twitter was just launching, and we would post pictures of what we're eating at restaurants in those days.
Leigh Stein 28:54
Yeah.
Eddie Rester 28:54
Or you know, the prompt even for Facebook was like "Eddie is _____." And you would fill in this prompt, and very different and yet it moved to this kind of this outrage culture where people make mistakes and there's not forgiveness anymore. Is there a way... And influencer culture, that's something in the last four or five years that really has become something huge that wasn't there in the early days of all of this. Do you think we're seeing kind of the end of this culture that will birth something new? Or is this just where we are now, and we've got to figure out how to navigate the world of influencers and rage and algorithms and all those kinds of things?
Leigh Stein 29:47
I don't know that it's going to go away, but I am hopeful and optimistic that when it's safe for us to gather in person again, we're going to be able to put down our phones for longer periods of time. I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, I was on my phone so much. Like, we would be watching the news on TV, and I couldn't even pay attention because I could get more immediate updates on Twitter than I could on CNN. It just felt like I couldn't look away. It felt like I was inside a disaster movie. But I was getting live updates. So I am hopeful that things are going to get better.
Eddie Rester 30:23
I remember my screen time, like, the first Sunday after we were all in lockdown, the little screentime report that shows up on your phone on Sunday mornings, and I turned it off after that, because I don't need to see that.
Leigh Stein 30:35
You don't even want to know.
Eddie Rester 30:36
I don't want to know how much time I spent on my phone. And you talk about that. I think near the end of the article that we need to be able to put down our phones, maybe we need... Our screens might actually be distracting us from the things that we need in life.
Chris McAlilly 30:51
The next sentence I thought was really interesting, where you know, maybe we actually need to go to something like church. I mean, you know, what I think about that is just that the church is not, I mean... I guess the way I hear you using the word church there is something like an embodied physical community with people who aren't just performing for one another but can actually be there to receive one another's confessions and one another's testimonies and one another's stories and offer love, forgiveness, you know, mercy, like all the things that are just basically human. Would you talk a little bit about that? There's a yearning at the end of the piece that that maybe I wonder if you could talk about.
Leigh Stein 31:38
Yeah, I love that you use the word testimony, it makes me regret that I didn't use the word testimony, because it's such, it's such a good word for what the internet is. I feel like it's like... You know, I'm a writer, but I also teach memoir writing workshops, and work with people who want to write memoirs and the urge to testify is so powerful and so human. And again, this is going back to something I said earlier, but it's like there's something so sad to me when it's just out into a void. But there's also something sad to me when it's just being done to stoke the ego or to get more attention. It's the humble testifying that I think is missing online, and that can happen in a really powerful way in person. And I think I joke about this, that secular millennials, part of our religion is therapy. But I think for millennials who are in therapy, I think that's what they find so powerful is, you know, being in a room with someone who listens and validates their experience.
Chris McAlilly 32:43
One of the things I've been thinking about kind of running through this conversation, the idea that memoirs are testimony and that testimony done in the form of memoirs can be a way of, you know, just building up your personal brand and platform. There's a conservative think tank scholar named Yuval Levin, have you come across his work?
Leigh Stein 33:08
No.
Chris McAlilly 33:09
So he's, I think, Ezra Klein, interviewed him recently, who has got a column in the Times and a podcast as well, interviewed him talking about kind of, can the Republican Party be saved, and he's offering a really... His most recent book is called "A Time to Build."
Eddie Rester 33:29
"A Time to Build." Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 33:30
And it's about institutions. And it's about the way in which we've turned our... Institutions used to be forming and shaping people of character and moral authority and humility and all the rest, people of virtue. And now our institutions tend to just be used by individuals, as, you know, the catapulting platforms to build personal brands and all the rest. It's an interesting, you know, I just found it very fascinating, because it's coming out of a, you know, very different intellectual tradition that values the importance of institutions to shape our character. It seems like you might be an interesting person to read it at some point. I would be fascinated by what you would see in his work, just because I think it may, you know, raise some interesting questions around the whole conversation about platform.
Leigh Stein 34:24
Mm hmm. Yeah, I'm also thinking one other thing I would add to in regards to memoir, which is that when I teach memoir or talk about memoir, I talk about the specific and the universal because everyone has a specific story, something that's only happened to them, you know. I can talk about influencers in a way that to someone else would be like, What's an influencer? It's very specific. But at the same time, a memoir is talking about something universal, and I think that universality is what's neglected or missing, and it's what older traditions have to offer us. Like even Buddhism, you know, the Buddhist teachings about suffering. Even if my suffering is my thumb hurts because I'm scrolling so much on my iPhone, you know, like the Buddha wouldn't have thought of that. The suffering is the universal part. And so there are these old traditions and these old lessons that can speak to us, even in our contemporary malaise, because we're all human, and we're all mortal.
Eddie Rester 35:25
And maybe Yuval's book, Yuval Levin's book, really talks about is we've spent all these years tearing down all these institutions, and some of them have needed to be torn down through the years. It's been necessary. But as ideas, it's time to rebuild some of those places and spaces. So I guess, you know, tagging on to what you just said, some of those universal ideas and ideals can begin to be talked about and shared again. And I guess that's one of the things that I think about when we think about influential culture and social media that I'm not sure that it can ever offer that to us, I think.
Leigh Stein 36:04
Right.
Eddie Rester 36:04
I think that's the thing, that we're looking for it to give us more than it can possibly give us.
Leigh Stein 36:10
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Chris McAlilly 36:12
I'm super pessimistic about it, frankly. I mean, you know, I just don't see a lot of hope there, unfortunately. But on the other hand, I'm it's intoxicating, right? Like I feel myself being drawn in by it. You know, those two things happen at the same exact time. It's both, you know, you can kind of see it for what it is, but there's something there. It's just like, I don't know. And I think you're right. I mean, Leigh, one of the things that you mentioned earlier was just maybe I'm following the wrong people. I find myself wondering that, too. You know, I did this deep purge of my Twitter account during the election season last year. Just like, I'm following way too many political analysts and commentators. I'm just, I'm inundated with all of this stuff. I went from like, 900 people down to like, 40. I just to get...
Eddie Rester 36:17
Did I make the cut?
Chris McAlilly 37:06
You did not, man, I had to get rid of you. But yeah, I mean, I've wondered about that, like, you know, for someone who's who's struggling with this. Maybe what are some of the things that you're learning as you've studied this, but as you've looked at as well, what are some of the the practices or the habits that you're trying to adopt right now?
Leigh Stein 37:28
Well, first, we all have to recognize that it's designed to be addictive. That it hijacks our brain chemistry in order to keep us showing up at the slot machine. Because every time we refresh, we might get a like from someone we really admire, or we might get a crazy reply from someone who didn't read our piece and is completely misinterpreting what we're trying to say. And yet I keep refreshing because I'm addicted to those little hits of dopamine.
Leigh Stein 37:58
I have to be on social media for my career. It would be extremely hard to have a career as a writer if I was not on social media. But I have found that when I deactivate my account for a certain period of time--I'm also too addicted to just take it off my phone, because I'll check it on my laptop, so I have to actually deactivate my account. And when I do that, my attention span is incredible. Like I can read books, and read more difficult books than I can when I'm online. So for me, just making that a practice of figuring out in a year, in a year's time, you know, a period when I can deactivate, when I'm not actively promoting something, that's been helpful for me. And I left, when I resigned from my organization, when I burned out, I left Facebook forever, and I haven't been on Facebook and four years.
Eddie Rester 38:49
Well, I admire you for that. You know, as I read the article a couple times, 2, 3, 4 times, one of the thoughts I had was, there was more you wanted to say. I know you're constrained by word count, and those kinds of things when you write the article, and Chris and I, when we preach, we're constrained by the number of minutes people will listen without going to sleep on us. I just felt like there was something else that you wanted to throw in there. Were there things that you cut that you wish you had added to the article, or could have added to the article?
Leigh Stein 39:27
Oh, yeah, I had to cut so many of my favorites. Um, that was hard. That's hard for me. I had a reference in there to Christopher Lasch, who's a historian who wrote this book called "The Culture of Narcissism" in the 70s. Because I think this moment does have a historical precedent. When the hippies kind of got disillusioned from activism in the 60s and in the 70s, they turned up best and other new agey movements and started working on themselves. I think there's definitely a parallel between then and now, and he said something about, when he's talking about this kind of narcissism, he says this is the culture of people without faith. And so I wanted to include that; I couldn't.
Leigh Stein 40:13
They also made me cut this George Bernard Shaw quote that I really liked that was just kind of similar to what my mom had said, which is, the joy of life is, I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like: the joy of life is finding your true purpose, not just being a tangled knot of complaints and ailments, you know, which is just the internet. And then the original ending was actually like a much more wistful ending about how I wonder if after the pandemic, if I do go to a house of worship, if I will be able to recognize the others like me, as we mouth the words to old prayers and old songs, which I thought was very nice, but they cut.
Leigh Stein 40:55
And then they, at the very last minute, right before it went to press, they added this line about maybe we should go to church, which is not something that I wrote, because I was hesitant to say anything too preachy, because I don't want to be one of these Instantvangelists that I'm criticizing, where I'm telling people how to live their lives. That doesn't feel authentic to me. But I do wonder if there are others like me out there.
Eddie Rester 41:23
You bring up your mom, and you talk about your mom in the article. She's a lay preacher at a church, I assume, of some sort. But what's your conversation with your mom like about these things, about the need for community, you know, confession without confessors? I'd love... Have y'all had these conversations?
Leigh Stein 41:46
Yeah, as soon as the editor at the New York Times asked me to write this, I called my mom first thing because my mom is like, obviously a role model to me. But she is a clinical psychologist. And she's also a lay minister at her Episcopalian church, and she's very progressive. And we've had many conversations about this, because she also has an interesting perspective as a therapist. Something that really gets my goat about Glennon Doyle is the way she makes her trauma or her suffering a part of her brand and her image. And, like, one conversation I've had with my mom is that if you have to keep talking about your wound, you're not healed yet, you know, you're still in that kind of wound worship, and so it's not a space of healing. And I worry about someone like Glennon Doyle, because how could she ever recover from her eating disorder if now she has a million people following her because she has an eating disorder. So I think it gets really tricky.
Leigh Stein 42:51
But my mom is someone... The last time--I saw my parents once during the pandemic. They live in Illinois, and I live on the East Coast, but I saw them once. And my mom happened to be giving a sermon that weekend. So I got to see it in person. I wore a mask to church. And she's just really good at it. It's like, this is what she was, you know, finally she found her calling. She's in her 70s. But it's like, she's just really good at it. And I'm really proud of her.
Chris McAlilly 42:54
That's so awesome. That is so great. I think that, you know, you mentioned, I wonder if there are others out there? I'm sure that there are, and I my hope would be that, you know, I think I my immediate response reading this article was to try to reach out to you because I just think you're tapping into something. I think you're you see something. I think that, I hope that you continue to kind of dive into it and continue to work it through, because I think we need more critical voices that are helping and constructive, voices that are helping us understand this world that we're living in in the culture.
Eddie Rester 43:54
Yeah, you talk about the Pew Research at the beginning. And I've been tracking that, probably since I was in seminary in the early 90s when they really started publishing about the nuns back then. But I think you're you're touching on--there comes a tipping point where those bigger questions, we somehow as a culture, we've got to create some spaces to deal with just those bigger questions of meaning and purpose along the way.
Leigh Stein 44:20
Well, maybe I can ask you one last question, which is, what's the conversation that I don't hear that your peers are having about the nuns? What's the theory about the nuns and why they've left the faith or why they haven't found it to be in with?
Chris McAlilly 44:35
I mean, you want to take a stab, and then I won't?
Eddie Rester 44:38
Why don't you take a stab?
Chris McAlilly 44:38
You know, I mean, I think it's probably not monolithic. I think that everybody kind of has a different story. I think there are a couple things that I hear that are kind of threads or themes. One is that a religious tradition is too constrictive in whatever way, that can be both like intellectual or it can also be moral. And so we need to kind of break out of, you know this constrictive space and spread our wings and fly. I think on the other hand, you know, I just I sense, I don't know, a real yearning among young folks. We're in a college town, a university town, we just interact with a lot of young people that have a lot of mental health issues or a lot of substance abuse on campus. A lot of alcoholism, you know. There are a lot of just mental health issues in general that are there, and I think that's where I'm kind of wrestling as well. I think for whatever reason, the church has not offered space, either for those questions or in the right way, or whatever, you know. I think a lot of it is, you know, we've fronted the moralism and not left enough room for either beauty or just kind of honest doubt, you know, and I think so... Yeah, I don't know. What would you say, Eddie?
Eddie Rester 46:03
I think the word that I would add to what you said is disillusionment. And I think that's disillusionment with one, institutions. You know, we talked about the tearing down of institutions, I don't think the church has escaped that. And I think that there are good reasons for the church not to escape the tearing down of institutions. I think disillusionment with the lack of integrity at times, not just with church leaders, but church people. And then I think I would add to that, to add to what you talked about, not having space for people with doubts and things. I think the lack of hospitality and wideness of hospitality at times has come back to us and we don't have space for people to be real, to ask the hard questions, to struggle with what do I really think about this, or what is life really supposed to be about. And so we stay within a monolithic formula, and we don't let people kind of come in where they are. We expect them in a certain place.
Chris McAlilly 47:17
I think we see, you know, a lot of honesty in our... We host AA and NA meetings at our church, every day, at noon and in the evening, and, we have people that are both kind of a part of the worshipping congregation and also part of the recovery community, and there's some overlap and kind of hybrid folks there to kind of, you know, interpret both crowds to one another, you know. That's really interesting. Yeah, but I think that's a space where, you know, it's interesting, we're trying to find ways to increase and open up the translation, and then also kind of the space that's available for the depth of, I guess it's the 11th step where you kind of deepen your trust or confidence in your higher power by exploring ways to make that an ongoing way of life.
Chris McAlilly 48:13
And so we have some folks who are interested, who maybe grew up in a Catholic tradition, or in some of some more kind of robust wisdom traditions from within communities of faith who are trying to kind of strengthen and deepen practices around ritual, life, and community. But also, you know, I think people, I mean, we're in the American South. We're still in the Bible belt in a lot of ways. So that there's a rich, both for good and ill, cultural Christianity that's here. I think that there are a lot of good things about that. The church still where we are is an intersection of different disciplines, and people in business and law and education and healthcare do intersect in our community, in our community of faith. I think that can be a good thing. But you know, I think for young people, it's still like, have we given paths of access? I don't know that we're always asking the questions that the young people are asking the way that they're asking them online.
Eddie Rester 49:20
I spend a lot of time thinking about the nuns. So Leigh, when you figure it out? Let us know.
Leigh Stein 49:27
Well, I have a lot of empathy for people who grew up in a very rigid kind of Orthodoxy or tradition. And I understand why they might have rejected that, because I have a very... I was really a dabbler. So I have a more open-minded approach. So I understand that there are people who, for good reason, might be more doubtful and skeptical.
Eddie Rester 49:50
Absolutely. But you know, there are people who've been deeply wounded in real ways by the church, and I know that. Yeah, I think that's part of the conversation as well. We thank you for taking time to be with us today. It's been just a great conversation and we're thankful for all the ways that your article really sparked a lot of conversation around here this week.
Leigh Stein 50:15
Well, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to talk to both of you.
Eddie Rester 50:17
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 50:21
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 50:33
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]