Hello, and thank you for joining us for a special edition of The World and Everything in

it. I'm Mary Reichard. I'm joined today by best-selling author and podcaster Andrew Claven.

Claven spent an earlier part of his life as a screenwriter and crime novelist, so he knows a thing or two about storytelling.

In his 40s, he converted from agnosticism to Catholicism. And these days, he's exploring stories

that don't shy away from darkness, but also point us toward hope. To that end, his latest book is

called The Kingdom of Cain, Finding God in the Literature of

Darkness. It's a deep look at how even the grimest of stories can reveal light, truth, and

beauty. And it's worth adding that, though this is the focus of our conversation, there are some

parts of this discussion that you might not want younger ears to hear. So, Andrew,

welcome. It's so great to have you with us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

The one line out of the whole book that stuck with me the most was on page 107. It says,

The Long Withdrawing Tide of Faith is the central event of our time. The collapse of the Christian moral

order would inevitably follow from that. What is your more recent evidence of this decline?

Well, I think it's all around us, the actual decline in church attendance and the actual

rise in people who identify as none of the above when asked for their religious affiliation.

But more importantly than that, I think, is the kind of takeover of our intellectual space by people who think things that could only possibly be true if there were no God, that men can become women, that morality is relative,

that, you know, there's no such thing as truth or beauty. I mean, these are things that have

been taught in our universities since I was a lad, which is almost the Jurassic period at this

point. And I think that they, for, until very, very recently, they were the dominant intellectual strain, not

just in America, but all throughout the West.

And so that's what I'm talking about.

I mean, it's been when Nietzsche said God is dead, that's what he was talking about.

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