Hello, why religion friends, John Hilton here.

Each episode of the Y-Religion podcast starts out with a little introduction like this one.

The version you hear hopefully sounds smooth and professional, but here's a secret.

It doesn't sound that way when I record it.

I make lots of verbal stumbles, and frequently I'll say something like, oh, stop the recording,

let me say that differently.

The OAU students like Jeremy Richards work as audio engineers for white religion to smooth out all those

errors to give us a clean, final recording. Now, that's probably a good idea for a podcast episode,

but this concept of using digital tools to create perfection, I'm using air quotes when I say

that, can cause problems. Tools like Photoshop or

curated social media pages can make everything look perfect, causing some people to wonder why

their life isn't perfect. Toxic perfectionism is a real challenge, and in recent years, it's gotten

worse. Some people have wondered if participating in organized

religion causes more issues with perfectionism because of the high standards of living

that are required. Others wonder if participating in religion leads to less perfectionism,

because you know that as a child of God you have infinite worth so you don't have to prove yourself to

others. So what is the impact of religion on toxic perfectionism? In religion we see that people

do tend to get the message to a greater degree that oh no matter what my performance I'm still

loved. So for example, Latter-day Saints, in our study,

12% were high in perfectionism. That's a lot. I think about my students, you know, 10%,

more than one out of 10 students that I have in class are high in toxic perfectionism.

At the same time, what we also found was that 20% of atheists and agnostics are high in toxic perfectionism.

...