No, this moment in history is not normal. We live in a time of crisis that revolves around political and geographic fragmentation, a loss of faith in institutions, an enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and under the constant influence of social media and its monitoring and algorithms. We’ve seen this before in history. It may have not been the internet in previous occurrences. Instead it was the radio, or the pamphlet. It occurs about every 80 years or so after a period of global hyper-connectivity experiences a backlash. The world counteracts against all of the global and ethnic integration, loses faith in the traditional forces that have kept society together, and moves toward an emotional, chaotic period of dangerous ideologies. People retreat into conspiracy theories; religious cults and bizarre sects flourish as institutional religion declines. What makes this period different is the speed and the scale at which this is happening. Nothing exemplifies this recklessness more than the QAnon movement that is growing globally and now has elected representatives in the U.S. congress. In a time when much of the Christian movement in the world is choosing to focus on political power and ideology, QAnon represents the next dangerous frontier for the church where service, theology, and compassion could be replaced by fear, conspiracy, and division.

 Conspiracy theories are nothing new. They are especially prevalent during time of rapid transition and confusion. People who are attracted to conspiracy theories are often those who feel powerless against forces bigger than themselves, are inclined towards a victim mentality, or resent where they are in life. Conspiracy theories offer four big payoffs: 1) They make powerless people feel like they have valuable, insider information. 2) They quickly identify an enemy who can be blamed for all of their ills and concerns. 3) They have the potential to create communities of people that bond over being against the world together. 4) Finally, a conspiracy theory is a very convenient belief because it can never be proven wrong. After all, if you don’t agree, it’s just because you have been manipulated by the dark forces. Enter QAnon.

 In many ways, groups formed around conspiracy theories can serve as a pseudo-church or cult – one that puts the person in a self-centered frame of mind and is constantly seeking to identify enemies and live in perpetual fear. That’s what unhealthy religion does as well and we’ve seen plenty of that lately. In many places, global Christians are more interested in accruing political power and winning the argument than changing their community and serving those least like them. The message of Jesus and the New Testament is replaced by the dysfunctional Israelite mentality that wanted a king with political power (that didn’t go so well). If theocratic politics is akin to dysfunctional Israel reborn, QAnon is like the gnostic movement, which deviated from Jesus’ teachings in favor of a detachment and disdain for the world.

QAnon followers are your neighbors, they are in churches, they might be your dad or your grandma. They believe that QAnon is a person deep inside the U.S. Government in the Department of Energy (or some other department) who is exposing lots of secretive information about how their political enemies are conspiring against them and society. It often involves conspiracy theories revolving around child molestation, but can include warnings about vaccines, can be hostile to both education and science, or can go on about Satanism or how technology is being used to control people etc.  QAnon conspiracies often go after liberal Hollywood celebrities like Tom Hanks (who is a Greek Orthodox Christian and not really that political). Then there are conspiracies about the illumnati, UFOs, Bill Gates and the idea that some politicians actually have lizard skin underneath their human skin (no joke). It’s often the case that a QAnon follower is someone who is pretty naive about the internet. They access it in lesser known parts of the internet like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit and take it all at face value. It all sounds pretty goofy, but 22 Republicans in congress and 2 independents have supported QAnon beliefs. QAnon is alive and well in Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.

But who is Q? The primary sources are James and Ronald Watkins, a father and son team who gained control of the message board 8chan, which is filled with lots of questionable material including child pornography. They were based in the Philippines and started posting on October 28, 2017. Q believers don’t seem to realize that the Philippines is a hub of dark web entrepreneurs who spread pornography, scams, and conspiracies from the safety of some nice home in Manila. The most wanted criminal in the world was a thirty-something, obese American who brilliantly realized how to sell illegal pharmaceutical drugs over the internet to Americans with remote doctors signing off on the prescriptions. He made billions of dollars off of the opiate addiction of Americans. The Philippines was a good base of operation because it’s so easy to pay-off the authorities in that country. Cyber-libel cases are also extremely rare in the Philippines (The F.B.I. eventually arrested the cyber-drug dealer). Of course, the Q leaders have managed to monetize their conspiracy theory with books, t-shirts, and other memorabilia. Unfortunately, the F.B.I. has not always been able to stop actual acts of violence in the name of QAnon and those are expected to grow exponentially in the near future. Watkins had previously made money by starting porn sites designed to get around Japanese censorship rules. Fortunately, it looks like the Philippines finally had enough of this embarrassment and chased Watkins back to the United States.

[Side note: For those of us interested in actually fighting sex trafficking, QAnon is not helpful. Their stupid conspiracy theories interfere with the actual work of rescuing people from human slavery. It’s deeply counter-productive and minimizes the issue so that false and ludicrous charges are constantly on the web and in the media; while the real criminals get ignored.]

So how did your sweet, church-going Grandma become a die-hard QAnon follower? Well, it can be addictive. Q releases regular “Q-drops” of enticing information and follows it up with melodramatic writing along the lines of “I could get killed by sharing this information. I must go now.” It’s like being on a giant investigative team solving the world’s most dramatic and consequential mystery:  What evil forces are taking over the world? It can appeal to lonely people, people who are not good critical-thinkers, people who naively believe anything on the internet, and people who are angry. The primary in-road, however, is sharing Q’s political beliefs.  It then can become a vortex that sucks people in and no amount of intercession by friends and family members can break the spell. But how, specifically, does your evangelical grandma get caught up in a movement that originated with a pornographer based in the Philippines?

In some circles of Christianity (and Islam, and Hinduism, and Buddhism), there is a fascination with end-time prophecy. Looking for symbols and hidden messages in the Book of Revelation to identify current events has been going on since…well, since before that book was even written. QAnon taps into that same desire to uncover mysteries and find clues that lead to dramatic findings about what is going on in our turbulent world of 2020. A scientific reason for the pandemic is too boring, so a conspiracy comes to the rescue. Then there’s the political angle. Since much of Christianity has chosen to become very aligned with particular politicians and political parties; any conspiracy theory that adds fuel for hatred of the opposing party is welcomed with open arms. Certain segments of Christianity (certainly not all) have a real hostility toward science, education, and intellectualism. Something like QAnon provides reasons why none of those things can be trusted. Then there’s the fact that we are living through a time of increased natural disasters, political division, a global pandemic, and other apocalyptic-like events that make people feel like they are the generation witnessing the biggest catastrophe in human history. It is not true, of course, but QAnon is not for students of history. Good old Q has even dropped scripture in his hate-filled messages from time to time. That really confirms the truth of Q for Grandma because the reality is that QAnon is becoming an extra-Biblical source that guides her life. A key to Q’s manipulation is making it seem that no other source of information can truly be trusted. Q makes predictions that never come to pass, but that doesn’t matter to QAnon followers. That just means he is throwing people off track on purpose. QAnon becomes an emotional and spiritual belief for Grandma. It’s not about reason and healthy skepticism in a world where, say…anyone, myself included, can post their opinions on something and have it instantaneously beamed around the world. QAnon people will often claim that they do research, but that research is usually limited to any website or source that aligns with Q’s presuppositions.

 QAnon evangelists are now all over Youtube and have their own websites and social media. It has far outgrown Q. Many of these Q evangelists come from the evangelical Christian world. They are your grandma, but with more social media savvy and who know how to monetize it. The next generation of scamming televangelists may primarily be online and linked to Q-like conspiracy movements. As QAnon grows, it will morph into whatever people want to believe, whenever they want to believe it, and the Bible will be used to justify all of it. This is the birth of a new age of heresy and cults–the kind that always flourish in times like these. There’s nothing to stop a new QAnon from emerging and being part of a more outwardly fascist movement, or leftist movement, or any other ideology. Wherever people feel like powerless victims amidst all this global change and want to uncover the identity of the cabal oppressing them, there we will see a QAnon-like cult emerge.

 So what can society do about this? The country of Finland is teaching kids how to identify fake-news and navigate the internet beginning in elementary school. These are the kinds of skills and skepticism that need to be developed in every country. Conspiracy theories are raging around the world and leading to deaths in places as closed as Myanmar and as open as the U.S. In the same way that you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theatre because of the potentially dangerous consequences, some forms of monitoring and censorship have to become more prevalent. Do we really want videos on how to traffic women or groom children to be on Youtube and Facebook? There are limits to how much poison our societies can withstand in this cyber-world.

For Christians, the chances of more people in their churches getting caught up in this kind of thinking is very real. Complicating things is that many of these Q believers will be citing scripture or will claim that they and Q are totally in line with the Bible. This is where the subjective nature of Bible reading combined with a church that has become hyper-politicized will come back to bite in a big way. Institutional Christianity has a habit of creating the monsters that then erode it. In previous eras, the church survives because of people who choose to seek service instead of power. People who find opportunity in global crisis instead of oppression. People who express and live out hope instead of fear. And people that transform their societies for the better, rather than condemn them. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, the church needs to spend less time being the thermometer and more time trying to be the thermostat. Grandma would do far better spending her time delivering freshly-made cookies to the newly homeless in the post-Covid economy than spending four hours on the internet trying to find out which Hollywood actor is a cannibal. And she will feel better for it. This shouldn’t be rocket-science for true Christians. In fact, just about everything Jesus says in the Bible will lead someone away from the mentality that it takes to be a Q believer. One mentality is completely centered on self-sacrifice (hence the symbol of the cross), and the other is completely centered on self-protection. You can’t serve two masters.

Until the world knows how to navigate social media better, and the countries of the world regain their social and economic equilibrium, our societies and the church will be forced into a box. We will constantly be presented with a choice: Do I want to spend my time living in fear or do I want to spend my time making a difference in my community? The level of destruction and the duration of this era of crisis will depend on how the majority of us answer that question.  That’s the real Q.

Patrick Nachtigall is the author of the new humorous memoir No Religion Required: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Chocolate Milk, and Untimely Death.  He has also written on the strengths and weaknesses of American Christianity in his book In God We Trust:  A Challenge to American Evangelicals.

Since I love all things ‘80s and never actually left the decade, I am creating my list of the most iconic, defining pop songs between 1980 and 1989.  It’s my blog and I can do what I want.  And it’s helping me stall from doing the exercise and work I am supposed to do today.  These are NOT my favorite ‘80s songs. Most of these songs wouldn’t make my top 10 list of favorite songs.  These are the songs that I think were indispensable to the decade – the ones that captured the sound, the vibe, and became the timeless classics.  Here we go!

“Every Breath You Take” by the Police

This song appeared on the Synchronicity album and I believe is the 2nd most played radio song of all time (behind John Lennon’s “Imagine”).  It was the hit of the summer of 1983 and I believe it was #1 for 8 weeks.  It’s a great song not just because it’s catchy, but because it captures that feeling of being obsessively in love.   Sting and the Police were obviously a big part of the 1980s, but it’s the deceptive simplicity of the song that makes it such an earworm.  Technically, it is the most successful song of the 1980s.

“Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson

It’s a classic bass line that Jackson admitted to ripping off from the great Hall & Oats song “I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do).”  The Quincy Jones production is so smooth and that Rod Temperton/Jackson/Jones music of the early ‘80s was Jackson’s best.  His music declined significantly once Temperton was gone.  Oddly, Quincy Jones didn’t like the song and wanted it cut off of the Thriller album.  The song had a very unique, smooth vibe and Steve Baron made an iconic video to match the song which really helped to kick off the mega success of both Jackson and MTV.  Jackson wrote the song about a stalker, which is also what Every Breath You Take is about.  I can still remember the exact moment I first heard it.  I was on a ferry heading for Seattle, and it was riveting.  Like many of Michael Jackson’s songs, the lyrics have him portraying himself as a victim.  He’s often confessing things, complaining, or a victim in a lot of his songs going all the way back to his music with “The Jacksons.”  Freud would have a field day with that.

“Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Guns N’ Roses

This song exploded in August of 1988.  It was everywhere and GNR became THE band that year.  Of all the heavier rock songs, I think this one wins because the band had a bigger following and more “credibility” than a lot of hair metal and heavy metal bands.  The unforgettable guitar lick that opens the songs and carries it was just a practice exercise that guitarist Slash came up with.  It mixes sentimentality with hard rock and ends on a more ominous note than it starts out with.  I like the song, but it takes me back to a period in my life where life really began to suck super bad.

“Tainted Love” by Soft Cell

Along with the Human League and Gary Numan, around 1981 we began to get a glimpse of what New Wave was going to sound like.  There are more cool examples like Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” or bigger hits like Devo’s “Whip It,” but Tainted Love was not only synth heavy but had the heavy British accent to go along with it.  It sounded space-age to me and the “beep beep” sound repeated in the song still sounds good.

“Careless Whispers” by George Michael

Even though it was on Wham!’s Make it Big album, it was called a George Michael song–a precursor to his eventually going solo.  The lyrics of the song are so adult and sound so autobiographical and true that it is very surprising that George wrote it when he was 17 and had never been in that kind of a deep relationship.  Many people older and more experienced would never be able to come up with lyrics that convincing and emotional.  The song is beautiful, sad, wistful, and beautifully sung by Michael.  But of course, it’s that unforgettable sax solo which makes it a regular listen in elevators and lounges around the world.  I love the video which captures the song perfectly and was filmed in Miami.  The humidity wrecked havoc on George’s hair which is why he wears a hat in parts of the video.  He flew his sister to Miami to fix his hair and it cost $10,000.  It’s considered the most expensive haircut ever. This is also the first song I ever danced with a girl to.  She asked me.  I’d like to thank that girl (who wishes to remain nameless) right now for validating my masculinity in an 8th grade dance at Twality Jr. High.

“Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” by Culture Club

You may not remember, but there was a whole big androgynous craze in the mid-1980s.  Marilyn, Dead or Alive, Annie Lennox, Prince, Michael Jackson and Boy George played around with gender.  America was shocked that evening when Culture Club appeared on “Solid Gold.”  I remember that night watching this geisha girl who called herself “Boy.”  Of course, shortly thereafter it became clear that Boy George was a boy.  But it’s also the song itself with a very unusual mellow introduction, a Sade-like smooth middle, and then a funky bass-driven middle part.  The whole “Kissing to Be Clever” album is still one of my favorites of the 1980s and isn’t dated at all.  It’s a wild mix of calypso, rap, smooth jazz, and I don’t know what else.  It’s a beautifully produced album that captures the comfort with classic soul music that a lot of white ‘80s music had–particularly from England.

“With or Without You” by U2

This makes the list because it was kind of the beginning of UK new wave and soul starting to disappear from the charts.  By 1988 and 1989, it was pretty much gone.  It was replaced by harder rock, the Teddy Reiley Atlanta New Jack crap, and rap.  U2 had already been around but this first single off of arguably the 1980s most defining album, The Joshua Tree, made my broken-hearted Spring Break of 1987 a wee bit better.  The song is one that we can all relate to at times in our life and the slow build to the crescendo before it fades out more quietly again is lovely.  Edge’s guitar part is so simple but so memorable and captures that U2 sound perfectly.  He talks about using notes sparingly and viewing each note as “expensive.”  The song that launched them into the stratosphere from the album that launched them into mega-stardom belongs on this list.

“Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen

It’s probably no one’s favorite Springsteen song, but it captured mid-1980s vividly.  Dying small-towns and ignored Vietnam Vets finding their voice lent power to the lyrics and of course it was made to be an ironic anthem–the kind of a whole stadium could sing along to–and they did!  This was used by Ronald Reagan to rally the country, which made Springsteen mad because it’s not a song about American triumph, but about America’s forgotten people.  It’s definitely a powerful song and Springsteen’s final scream at the end is as raw and real as it gets.

“Walk This Way” by Run DMC

I loathe this song and was not into Run DMC.  But this song has to be on the list of iconic songs because it brought rap into the commercial mainstream, brought rap to MTV, resuscitated Aerosmith’s dying career, and gave rap credibility within the rock audience.  An old Aerosmith song was re-imagined by the groundbreaking Run DMC.  It was produced by Rick Rubin who went on to have an incredible career.  MTV was criticized heavily for avoiding black artists and it wasn’t until this 1986 song and video that black music got it’s own shows and heavy rotation.

“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cindi Lauper.  This song was so full of melody and pep, I thought she was a British act when it came out in 1983.  I find the song annoying now, but it captured the positive, colorful sound of a lot of ‘80s music.  Full of melody, full of interesting little sounds, and sung by a colorful character which the ‘80s was full of (Adam Ant, Boy George, Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, Billy Idol, David Lee Roth etc.).  She’s So Unusual was her first and best-selling album.  The Hooters were the backing band on the album. “Time After Time” is the better song, but GJWHF gets the nod.

“Take On Me” by A-ha.  It’s still one of the best music videos ever made, and the song makes the list because it is the quintessential, catchy ‘80s pop song.  The Norwegian trio would never have a bigger hit even though they would go on to make many more albums over 30 years.  The irony is that this simple, catchy, stripped-down song is nothing compared to some of the gorgeous ballads that guitarist and writer Pal Waaktar-Savoy has written.  Songs like “Love’s Never a Forever Thing,”  “Summer Moved On” and “Hunting High and Low” are just a few of the truly gorgeous pieces of music Pal has written.  But he will always be remembered for Take on Me and it’s peppy, Scandinavian cartoon sound.

“What’s Love Got to Do With It” by Tina Turner.  There always has to be an old veteran that makes a comeback in any decade.  Tina Turner’s Private Dancer album was a monster and she emerged as a strong, empowered woman after having lived in the abusive relationship with Ike Turner.  She ended up selling out large arenas she never could have with Ike, became a Buddhist, and moved to Zurich.  This song was her comeback hit and just has that classic ‘80s sound; lots of melody, interesting transitions and sounds, and a talented artists playing and singing.  I’ll always associate it with July 4 at Fort Vancouver in 1984.

“Purple Rain” by Prince.  I remember buying the album and wondering what was with this slow, gospel-like song.  Then the song continues to build and build and Prince’s voice gets more urgent and strained, until it ends up in one of the all-time classic blistering guitar solos in rock music history.  The 8 minute song was too long for the radio, but stations played it anyway.  It was at this point that we all realized that Prince was not only an amazing guitarist but maybe one of the greatest rock guitarists in all of rock history.  He had the greatest vocal range of any singer.  His deep voice and low notes are very resonate, but he has a lovely tenor voice also, an amazing falsetto, and then there’s the “insane man scream” as Dave Grohl calls it.  The song was an amazing climax to the song and the movie.  But tell me which song on the radio in the last 20 or 30 years comes close to this level of musicianship, passion, and complexity?  Despacito?  Please.

Well that concludes my overview of the 12 songs that define the 1980s which was fun and meaningful to exactly one person:   me.

What song do you think exemplifies the 1980s that I missed?

At the end of the Cold War in 1991, it looked as though democracy had conquered the world. The 1990’s brought a wave of new nations throwing off regimes and authoritarianism and moving toward having free elections. Particularly across Africa and Latin America, genuinely free elections also led to a wave of pro-globalization, free-enterprise leaders from Chile to Liberia. But the 2000’s not only brought the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attack; it also bought great wealth disparity, areas within countries that missed out on the benefits of globalization, new ease of travel and migration, and the birth of social media. While many factors have led to the striking decline in democracy and the chaos we are seeing from Hong Kong to Ukraine to Washington D.C; there are four major issues that keep cropping up around the world as factors that fuel this phase of anti-democratic and anti-globalization movements.

1) The Country-City Divide

It was surprising when peaceful, and booming Thailand suddenly had a coup and a revolution. The 1990’s and 2000’s had been very good to Thailand. Tourism was booming, Thailand provided the bulk of China’s rice, and the nation’s infrastructure was growing at an astounding rate. Thailand had quickly joined the globalization train and Bangkok and the South of the nation was economically booming. Prime Minister Thaskin Shinawatra had ushered in a series of economic reforms that had brought large economic gains to Thailand’s poor Northeast, but which was also a time when much of the rest of the nation saw far greater growth. A coup occurred in September of 2006. Thaskin’s younger sister Yingluck was deposed as Prime Minister in May of 2014. While there were many issues that led to the instability of these years, the rural-urban divide was very clear in the conflict. Today the rural-urban divide is growing in the United States, France, Britain, China, Austria, Hungary and many other nations.

Globalization rewards cities and the few rural areas that have strong global connectivity, solid infrastructure, a well-educated populace, and experience dealing with immigrants and multiple-ethnic groups. Many rural areas throughout the world do not fit that bill. Modernization and wealth passes them by. Quite often they see their small-towns dry up as the younger generations feel to the cities where there are greater opportunities for jobs and a high salary. Rural communities are often more isolated and homogeneous which means they tend to have more traditional values. Those values often get over-turned by the influence of global media, international migration, new religions and secularism, and new expectations of openness and inclusivity.

The result is rural areas rejecting globalization, turning toward nationalist movements, and looking for political figures and parties that promise quick solutions to a problem that cannot be solved quickly. Lack of education, experience encountering multiple ethnicities and economic hardship encourage a radical inward turn that political parties can exploit.

2) Wealth Inequality

The second major factor driving democracy’s retreat is wealth inequality. The massive influx of wealth that globalization has unleashed has corrupted many governments and created a corporate class that dominates their respective countries–usually by-passing the established legal systems. Periods of globalization always lift overall living standards but create great wealth-disparities. These eventually reach a tipping point, as they did in the United States during the Roaring 20’s and the Great Depression. A failure to re-balance the economies tends to lead toward fascism or the complete overthrow of the upper-ruling class.

We now live in a world where the wealthy in Lagos, Manila, and Rio De Janeiro have more in common with each other than the do their own countrymen. A class of people has arisen that can move their assets around, buy properties in multiple countries, get the best education for their children, and buy immense political influence in order to live above the law in their respective countries. The number of billionaires in places like India, Russia and Nigeria is sky-rocketing. Housing costs in places as traditionally poor as Angola can be as bad as in major American or Japanese cities. What this has done is erode the middle class in many nations around the world. Democracy is particularly vulnerable to collapsing when there is no middle-class. Housing, educational, and medical costs are increasingly out of the reach of the average person in even a wealthy nation. The Scandinavian countries and Switzerland are exceptions; but those countries have more pro-actively set policies in place to protect the Middle Class and prevent great wealth-disparity. We should expect to see more reactionary Nationalistic movements in some places (where they will ultimately fail in bringing any economic transformation), or an increase in government spending to balance out the extreme disparity. As occurred in the United States after World War II, the road back to a Middle Class will most likely involve great investments in infrastructure, education, and property management.

3) Immigration

Many nations now have political parties that are anti-immigrant. On a recent visit to Peru, the frustration with Venezuelans escaping into their country was palpable. Nations like Germany, Lebanon, Italy, and the UK have been inundated with refugees, migrants, and foreigners looking for jobs. In some cases, like in the United States and Canada, there is no real cause for concern. These countries actually need a large number of foreigners settling within their borders. Other countries like the U.K., have probably let far too many immigrants in, in relation to their size. The dislocation that their population feels–particularly in the rural areas is justifiable. But the most interesting and discouraging fact is that countries and regions that have the least immigrants are often the hot-beds of racism, prejudice, and xenophobic movements. Many homogeneous parts of the United States, Poland, and Hungary are examples of places where hatred of foreigners is very strong even though barely any foreigners live in those communities. The more homogeneous the territory, the more they tend to panic about being “overtaken” by immigrants. Nevertheless, that makes these people vulnerable to politicians and movements that prioritize turning globalization and open-border policies. The tragedy is that within those countries, the more likely a region is to embrace multi-ethnic community, the more likely it will have a dynamic economy.

4) Social Media

Finally, the advent of social media has made governing more difficult. Today the actions of a politician can be recorded and distributed immediately all over the world. There is little time for reflecting or nuance. Twitter and Facebook have not only shortened people’s attention spans, but made discussion on important global issues reduced to angry soundbites.

Social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, have become great instruments for demonizing people, and promoting conspiracy theories to mobilize rage against others. “Fake News” is not only a phenomenon in the United States, it is now a global problem. India has seen a wave of very dangerous messages distributed to its voting population through Facebook. The Rohyinga people in Myanmar are victims of terrible rumors that lead to them being hunted down like animals by the Buddhist majority. And Russia plants local-looking Facebook news stories throughout Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the United States. They look like they are written by citizens of those countries, but are in fact written from troll farms in Russia that know how to use the vernacular and hot-button issues to so division.

Every country, like Thailand, has its complexities and particular problems that have led to this unstable moment. Democracies are always flawed, and are always on a spectrum with some being quite transparent (Sweden), while others are controlled in a very centralized way (Japan), while others are dominated by corporate interests (The United States), and still others are barely hanging on (Liberia). Some are really crime syndicates masquerading as democracies Russia). The spectrum always exists, but these 4 factors are in danger of crippling Democracy unless the people themselves demand nuanced correctives that bring both peace and prosperity. Democracy can never be taken for granted; as Churchill paraphrased when he said, “it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms.” We may be learning this lesson the hard-way.

YOU’VE NEVER READ A BOOK LIKE THIS!

A survivor of a Japanese internment camp, the first person to cross the Atlantic in a kayak, and a para-glider that jumped off of Mt. Everest in a massive snow-storm; none of these people or things have anything to do with Patrick Nachtigall, yet he has the shameless audacity to write his personal memoirs.

Rarely is a book about spirituality and religion as funny and insightful as Patrick Nachtigall’s No Religion Required: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Chocolate Milk, and Untimely Death. From an orphanage in Costa Rica to a leper colony in rural China, this is the hilarious true story of a lifelong traveling, religious pilgrim wrestling with the strange and profound claims of Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity. Adopted by Christian missionaries as an infant in Central America and wanting to follow in their footsteps in rural China, Patrick turns his memoir into an exploration of the dark side of institutional religion and how it sits side-by-side with humanity’s never-ending quest for spiritual fulfillment. Patrick uses academic expertise, personal experience and humor to re-examine the role that religion has played throughout history and in various cultures.

Blessed with a gift for storytelling as well as tremendously attractive legs, the various intimate true stories from Patrick’s life pose bigger questions for us all about “Why we believe in the supernatural?” “Why religions can so easily become poisonous?” “How religions deal with the dark side of life and suffering” as well as “How religions inspire us to do good.” Throughout his various misadventures around the world, the question lingers whether religion is even necessary in the 21st Century. Is religion something we have outgrown? Does it cause more problems than it solves? Is there room for both science and religion?

While many spiritual memoirs are dry, hard to relate to, and fail to challenge the author’s own religious assumptions, No Religion Required provides an honest, transparent examination of the author’s preconceived notions about religion, spirituality, and the Christian beliefs he was raised on. Drawing from his experience in over 80 countries and having lived and worked on 5 continents, Patrick is uniquely qualified to ask the questions that most haunt humanity in our increasingly secular and technologically-dependent world. No Religion Required promises to be one of the most enlightening books you will ever read whether you are religious, agnostic, or an atheist.

WHAT ARE THE CRITICS SAYING?

“To be honest, I was an irritable, self-centered narcissist involved in a life of crime before I read No Religion Required.”

-Mother Teresa

“There’s was not a single good idea I ever had that I didn’t steal from this book.”

-Albert Einstein

“The only time I am short for words is when I have to describe how vexatious it is to realize how bad my collected works are compared to this bloody masterpiece.”

-William Shakespeare

“If only I had read this book as a child, my life would have turned out so much differently.”

-Adolph Hitler

“I don’t read in English, so I have no idea what the book says.  Oh well, my loss.”

-Saddam Hussein

“I shudder when I think of how little I accomplished in my life after reading No Religion Required.”

-Mahatma Gandhi

The 29 years I spent in the limestone quarry at the Robben Island Prison waiting for my freedom was nothing compared to the pain I endured waiting for this book to come out.”

-Nelson Mandela

ORDER THE KINDLE VERSION NOW (Hardcover, Paperback, and Audio version Coming Soon)

YES!!!  I am an intelligent, kind person that smells good.  I want to order the book immediately, so I will do so here.

NO.  I am a stubborn, hate-filled person who hates puppies and babies.  Therefore I will not buy the book and prefer to be rickrolled here.

READ IT AND WRITE A REVIEW, SHARE ABOUT IN SOCIAL MEDIA, TELL FRIENDS, AND MAKE T-SHIRTS!