Know Your Enemy: God, Death, and the Pandemic

Know Your Enemy: God, Death, and the Pandemic

Sarah Jones discusses her recent essay, “An Atheist Reconsiders God in the Pandemic.”

Over 650,000 white flags planted on the National Mall in September to memorialize Americans who died of COVID-19 (Al Drago/Getty Images)

Know Your Enemy is a podcast about the American right co-hosted by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell. Read more about it here. You can subscribe to, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher, and receive bonus content by supporting the podcast on Patreon.

Matt is joined by Know Your Enemy favorite Sarah Jones to discuss her recent New York Magazine essay, “An Atheist Reconsiders God in the Pandemic.” They discuss their shared religious upbringing and college years among fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, why Sarah became an atheist (and Matt didn’t), and the reasons she reopened the question of God’s existence during the pandemic—and what she did and didn’t find along the way. Other topics include: C.S. Lewis, the nature of rituals, how we hold our beliefs, and more!


Sources and further reading:

Sarah Jones, “An Atheist Reconsiders God in the Pandemic,” New York Magazine, October 11, 2021

Andre Dubus, “A Father’s Story,” from Selected Stories (Vintage)

T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” from Four Quartets (1943)

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (HarperOne)


…and don’t forget you can subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon to listen to all of our bonus episodes!


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