religion

Feudal Future Podcast — Faith in Flux

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:24:13 -0500

The ground beneath American religion is shifting, but not in a straight line. We dig into why the country’s casual middle is shrinking while conviction grows at the edges—among communities that ask more, not less. With Charles Murray and Terry Mattingley, we trace the data on mainline decline, the plateau of the “nones,” and the surprising surge in tradition-forward spaces where authority, discipline, and community still shape everyday life.

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The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

Students work with the Center’s director and engage in research that will serve them well as they look to develop their careers in business, the social sciences, and the arts. Students also have access to our advisory board, which includes distinguished Chapman faculty and major demographic scholars from across the country and the world.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, Associate Director of the Center for Demographics and Policy, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu

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This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Feudal Future Podcast: Understanding the Iranian Revolution

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 10:05:11 -0400

On this episode of The Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky help us understand the Iranian revolution with project analyst, Mahnaz Asghari, Iranian actress Nazanin Nour, and hematologist Montreh Tavakkoli.

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Latest Research: From Chapman’s Center of Demographics & Policy, Joel Kotkin & Marshall Toplansky co-author the new report on restoring The California Dream.

If you haven’t downloaded the report, see it here

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The Center for Demographics and Policy focuses on research and analysis of global, national, and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time. It involves Chapman students in demographic research under the supervision of the Center’s senior staff.

For additional information, please contact Mahnaz Asghari, sponsored project analyst for the Office of Research, at (714) 744-7635 or asghari@chapman.edu.

Tweet thoughts: @joelkotkin, @mtoplansky, #FeudalFuture #BeyondFeudalism

Learn more about Joel’s book ‘The Coming of Neo-Feudalism‘

Feudal Future Podcast — Solutions to Anti-Semitism

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Mon, 19 Jul 2021 12:36:27 -0400

On today’s episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Susan Seely, chair of Women in Leadership, and Edward Hayman, editor of Tablet, and Rabbi Eliezrie, who serves on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency, Chabad’s National Liason to Jewish Federations of North America.

He (Rabbi Eliezrie) is involved in Chabad national affairs as a member of the Internet Commission of Lubavitch World Headquarters, the Advisory Committee of the Jewish Learning Institute, the Coordinating Committee of the National Jewish Retreat and the International Conference of Shluchim.

[ 3:28] Perception of Anti-Semitism in Israel and America

[ 6:22] Is it getting worse for Jews in America?

[14:15] What should the community be doing?

[29:44] Addressing anti-semites

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Feudal Future Podcast — Madness in the Ruling Class: Who is Leading Our Country?

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 15:38:30 -0400

On today’s episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, and Aaron Renn, an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker, and writer on a mission to help America’s cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century.

Julius Krein is the editor of American Affairs. American Affairs is a quarterly journal of public policy and political thought. It was founded to provide a forum for people who believe that the conventional partisan platforms are no longer relevant to the most pressing challenges facing our country. The obsolescent ideologies and expectations of previous decades are constraining our political discourse. The hyper-partisan posturing of our politics masks an underlying conformity and complacency in our intellectual life. American Affairs, by contrast, seeks to advance a more ambitious discussion of the fundamental issues and divides of our time.

Aaron Renn focuses on urban, economic development, and infrastructure policy in the greater American Midwest. He also regularly contributes to and is cited by national and global media outlets. He is a columnist for Governing magazine and his work has appeared in the The Guardian (UK), The New York Times, and The Washington Post, along with many others. Renn was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute from 2015-2019 and is a Contributing Editor at its quarterly magazine City Journal. Prior to his work in public policy, Renn had 15 year business career in management and technology consulting, where he was a partner at Accenture. He also founded the urban data analytics software platform Telestrian, which continues to underpin his work on cities.

[ 2:48] Changes in Wall Street and the financial community

[10:01] The effect of elite thinking on the middle class

[30:30] Is generational change next

[42:19] Are we the next Brazil?

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Feudal Future Podcast — The Passing of a Party? The Future of the GOP

New Geography — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 13:06:59 -0500

On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Charles Blain, Brian Calle, and Cullum Clark to discuss the future of the GOP.

Charles Blain is the president of Urban Reform Institute. Urban Reform Institute (URI, formerly Center for Opportunity Urbanism) is a stand-alone think tank, based in Houston.

Brian Calle is the CEO and publisher of LA weekly. Since 1978, LA Weekly has been decoding Los Angeles for its readers, infiltrating its subcultures, observing and analyzing its shifting rhythms, digging up its unreported stories and confronting the city's political leaders.

Dr. J.H. Cullum Clark is the Director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative where he is responsible for managing various aspects of the new partnership between the Department of Economics and the Bush Institute and leads the Initiative's work on domestic economic policy and economic growth.

[3:42] Joel compares the GOP to France’s right, saying how the GOP is on its way to becoming a voiceless, minority party.

[6:17] Charles dissects the party, explaining how the party has no unifying voice, member accountability, or adherence to principles.

[26:00] Joel speaks about the GOP's racial insensitivity, lack of positive programming, and opposition of big tech.

[29:48] The episode ends with the hosts and speaker’s optimism on rational bipartisan debates in both the Senate and the House.

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Related:

Learn more about the Feudal Future podcast.
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Learn more about Brian Calle.
Learn more about Cullum Clark.

Join the Beyond Feudalism Facebook group.

Read the Beyond Feudalism report.
Learn about Joel's book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism.

Feudal Future Podcast — A Test of Strength: Pandemics Through the Eye of Religion, with Rev. John L. McCullough

New Geography — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 12:33:48 -0500

On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Rev. John L. McCullough, President Emeritus of Church World Service. CWS is a global ecumenical organization specializing in Development and Humanitarian Assistance, Immigration and Refugee Services, Justice and Human Rights. Headquartered in NYC with primary offices in: Bangkok, Belgrade, Buenos Aires, Elkhart (IN), Hanoi, Islamabad, Jakarta, Miami, Nairobi, Phnom Phen, Vientiane, Washington, D.C. CWS is also branded as CROP Hunger Walks, and is a major sponsor of the Ecumenical Advocacy Days. Mission Statement: Church World Service works with partners to eradicate hunger and poverty and to promote peace and justice around the world.

[4:00] Marshall opens up the discussion asking Rev. John what the impact of covid has had on faith-based organizations

[6:45] Joel and Rev. John discuss how developing countries respond to crises without relying on the government

[22:15] Marshall and Rev. John dive into the effect COVID is having on refugees and resettlement across the world

[32:00] Rev. John ends the episode with how religion will reinvent itself through this pandemic

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Evangelicals: Preventing and Causing the Housing Bubble

Wendell Cox — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 10:38:40 -0400

The International Monetary Fund has published some of the most peculiar econometric research in recent history in Irrational Exuberance in the US Housing Market: Were Evangelicals Left Behind? In it, Christopher Crowe associates the financial behavior of Evangelical Protestant Christians with more stable US markets during the housing bubble. It is well known that the housing bubble was concentrated in some metropolitan areas and largely missed others, such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis and many others, most of them with stronger underlying demand than in the metropolitan areas with huge house price increases. Crowe's research raises the possibility that Evangelicals kept house prices down by not speculating, due to their religious beliefs.

Evangelicals generally believe in missionary and conversion activities and tend to hold to beliefs that were largely liberalized in large portions, but not universally in the "mainstream" Protestant churches (such as Episcopal, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist and Disciples of Christ churches) during the first half of the 20th century. In recent decades, Evangelical churches have grown strongly, Evangelical membership is now 50% greater than that of "mainstream" Protestantism (even with its Evangelical remnants), which has been relegated to "mainstream" in name only.

The Crowe thesis is generally that Evangelicals, allegedly with an "intense" belief in "end times" theology (such as the "imminent" return or the "second coming" of Jesus Christ) were less inclined to speculate in housing, which kept house prices from rising strongly in metropolitan areas with larger concentrations of Evangelicals.

There are some rather substantial difficulties with the thesis.

The first problem is relates to speculation. Rising prices are needed for there to be any incentive to speculate. If, for example, the numerous Evangelicals in Dallas-Fort Worth had undertaken a furious speculative frenzy, prices would not have gone up, instead more houses would have been built. This is because the liberal land use regime in Dallas-Fort Worth permits housing to be built in response to demand and nullifies any potential for speculative gain. Evangelicals, of course, like Catholics, Mainstream Protestants, Jews and Atheists are not stupid and were no more inclined to speculate on housing in the plentiful Dallas-Fort Worth market than they would have been climb over one another to offer higher prices for sand on the beach.

Another difficulty is that Crowe's characterization of Evangelical beliefs is a caricature. In fact, the nation's 40 million Evangelicals, including 15 million Southern Baptists more than 2 million Missouri Synod Lutherans, more than 1 million members of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, non-denominational megachurch members and others behave similarly to other Americans in the economic sphere. Crowe hypothesizes that "that a belief in the end times reduces incentives to save simply because agents put a lower expectation on the future being realized." It would have been equally reliable to conjecture on the subsurface geology of an undiscovered planet.

Evangelicals like nice houses. They like nice cars. They like their children to be well clothed and to go to good schools. They do not refuse raises offered by their bosses because they expect shortly to be caught up into heaven like the prophet Elijah. True, some "end times" Christians have sold their property and trekked to mountaintops or otherwise awaited dates wrongly prophesied by their leaders. It happened in 1844 and in 1914, but these were not Evangelicals.

While Crowe’s research suggests an Evangelical stabilizing effect on housing markets, an opposite, but no less improbable thesis was advanced in an Atlantic Monthly article entitled "Did Christianity Cause the Housing Crash?" This article suggests that the "prosperity" gospel preached in some Evangelical churches led parishioners to take on obligations they could not afford, leading to the bursting of the bubble, though it is mercifully devoid of spurious regressions. Author Hanna Rosin names names, such as Joel Osteen of Houston's Lakewood Church and Rick Warren, whose Saddleback Church in Southern California hosted President Obama as a candidate. It would not be surprising if a future article in The Atlantic pontificated about abandoned suburban megachurches.

One can only wonder what the other nearly 90 percent of Americans were doing while Evangelicals were simultaneously causing and preventing the housing bubble.

Wendell Cox a contributing editor of newgeography.com is the son of an Evangelical clergyman (Pentecostal), became Presbyterian and later an Episcopalian.

Photo: Hollywood Presbyterian Church: An Evangelical Church in a Mainstream Protestant Denomination (by the author).