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).

Podcast edited by Serena Long.

Click the play button above to listen to this podcast. You can also listen to the Church Times Podcast on the Church Times app for iPhone and iPad, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, and most other podcast platforms.