Brian Lera on WNYC, and for our last 10 minutes or so, we're going to open up the phones on the

question.

Where do you find meaning, ritual, and the sense that you are part of something larger than yourself outside

of a religious context? Where do you find meaning, ritual, and the sense that you are part of

something larger than yourself outside of a religious context? 212-433 WNYC,

212, 433-9-692. You can call or you can text. Why? Because if you've been listening,

you know that we've done Passover and meaning conversations. We did an Easter. And meaning one,

we did Ramadan. And meaning meaning one, we did Ramadan, and meaning one when it was Ramadan just recently. So when we were talking about Gen X and the slight trend of them kind of going

back to church, it was mostly in a Christian context on Friday. Joe and Rawa wrote in,

he's a secular humanist, and here's part of his text, really I'm paraphrasing, that many atheists

and non-religious people have their own rich language for expressing love and wonder and shared humanity.

So, Joe, thank you for that text. We hear you, and it made us want to open up the phones in response.

You know, after all, the share of American adults who say they have no religious affiliation is about 28% of Americans, according to the Pure Research Center. It's a lot more

than it used to be. And yet people don't stop needing some of the things that religion can

in theory provide, right? Ritual, belonging, shared purpose, a reason to show up for each other.

So we were just talking about baseball with Planet Money Guests.

Is it your sports league where you find community? Is it your knitting circle? Is it your

community garden plot? Is it the mutual aid network that you participate in? Maybe you joined

during COVID and you never left. I know people, to give another example,

who belong to a Jewish humanist group, Jewish humanists, which exists precisely to offer community

to people who feel ethnically or culturally identified, but don't believe in God. Humanists in that

context is another word for atheist. And I don't know if

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