Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Has woke political activism become a substitute for religion?
In this clip from my conversation with British politician Miriam Cates, I describe what I witnessed outside Columbia University during the campus encampments. The chants, slogans, collective rituals and emotional intensity reminded me of something surprisingly familiar: religious worship.
Having grown up in a Hasidic Jewish family, I was struck by the similarities between the search for meaning and belonging traditionally provided by religion and what some young people now appear to find in political activism.
Miriam Cates and I discuss woke politics, Christianity, Judaism, declining religious participation, loneliness and the collapse of traditional community—and whether a generation that has moved away from religion is simply searching for something new to believe in.
#ArielWhitman #Woke #ColumbiaUniversity #Religion #MiriamCates #Christianity #Judaism #youtubeshorts
Has woke political activism become a substitute for religion?
In this clip from my conversation with British politician Miriam Cates, I describe what I witnessed outside Columbia University during the campus encampments. The chants, slogans, collective rituals and emotional intensity reminded me of something surprisingly familiar: religious worship.
Having grown up in a Hasidic Jewish family, I was struck by the similarities between the search for meaning and belonging traditionally provided by religion and what some young people now appear to find in political activism.
Miriam Cates and I discuss woke politics, Christianity, Judaism, declining religious participation, loneliness and the collapse of traditional community—and whether a generation that has moved away from religion is simply searching for something new to believe in.
#ArielWhitman #Woke #ColumbiaUniversity #Religion #MiriamCates #Christianity #Judaism #youtubeshorts
