Tara Isabella Burton talks to Vicky Walker about Strange Rites: New religions for a godless world

On the podcast this week, Vicky Walker talks to author and theologian Tara Isabella Burton about her new book, Strange Rites: New religions for a godless world. They discuss the breakdown of public trust in major religious (and other) institutions, the subsequent rise of wellness culture in the US and beyond, and the part that technology plays in the formation of identity, community, and spiritual beliefs. “What we’re seeing is not a kind of secularisation of America between the religious and the not-religious, but a reimagining of religion as this kind of more individualised, more intuitional religion of the self, where people want to mix and match and play around with different traditions, different belief systems, different practices.” You can read the an edited transcript of the interview and an edited extract from the book in this week’s Church Times (7 August). Strange Rites: New religions for a godless world is published by Public Affairs Books at £20 (Church Times Bookshop £18, from September). Picture credit: Rose Callahan Podcast edited by Serena Long. Get the Church Times delivered for 10 weeks for just £10: www.churchtimes.co.uk/10-weeks