The Canadian psychologist and author took to X, formerly Twitter, to promote Tammy Peterson's eponymous podcast.

"Women and particularly young women: Consider my wife @Tammy1Peterson's podcast if you might be interested in an alternative to the demoralising utopian hedonistic power-worshipping blandishments of the feminists," he wrote on Wednesday.

"She and her guests focus on exploring productive sustaining meaningful alternatives. It sure beats the sad and angry hopelessness that constitutes the envious and resentful postmodern/Marxist story."

Tammy Peterson's podcast has more than 73,000 subscribers on YouTube and is described as focusing "on the Divine Feminine: the dark and the light side of womanhood, practically and symbolically."

Earlier this year, Tammy Peterson spoke about having cancer and her path to converting to Catholicism.

Read More

He matched the theatre's ornate decoration with one of his characteristically flamboyant suits — a colour-blocked navy, white and orange number with yellow lining.

As he paced, his speech sometimes resembled an altar call, other times borrowed the intellectual heft of a Catholic college lecture, and at one point offered a secular, pop psychological argument for the existence of God:

"Nonbelievers, he told the crowd in Providence, "wrestle with God as believers do: when they're morally outraged at suffering in the world.

"That's an emotional argument," he said. "And it's the kind of emotional argument that you would mount against someone that you are in relationship with."

We who wrestle

Peterson was in town to kick off his 51-city "We Who Wrestle With God" tour, in advance of his new book of the same name.

The "we" in the tour's title is the closest the former University of Toronto psychology professor and YouTube star has come to admitting his own belief in the God of the Bible.

The question of his faith is an important one to many of his fans.

In 2018 the Canadian magazine Maclean's called them "self-help junkies searching for meaning and order in a rapidly evolving age," but many are traditionally religious, while others have been inspired by his vacillating but consistent affinity for Christianity

The Jordan Peterson effect

Several commentators have even identified the Jordan Peterson Effect: a path of religiously unaffiliated people listening to Peterson lectures, then seeking a church to attend and converting.

"I read online comments from many atheists who said that before listening to his YouTube lectures on the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories: Genesis, they thought the Bible was a ridiculous old book that had nothing to teach the modern mind," Christopher Kaczor Catholic co-author of "Jordan Peterson, God and Christianity," told Religion News Service.

"But after they listened to his lectures, they concluded that the Book of Genesis, indeed the Bible as a whole, is an immensely rich and profound storehouse of wisdom for living today."

A Catholic priest who attended the Providence show confirmed that "a fair number" of recent converts he's encountered at Mass said they came to the faith after listening to Peterson.

These fans have increasing hope that Peterson will announce his own conversion from agnosticism.

Religion central to life

Religion has always been a central concern for Peterson.

After becoming a viral sensation discussing Genesis on YouTube in 2017, he published "12 Rules for Life," a series of essays.

These essays had such prosaic titles as "Stand Up Straight With Your Shoulders Back," and "Tell the Truth — Or at Least Don't Lie,".

They also declared, "The Bible is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilization, of Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of good and evil."

Since resuming his public life after a bout of addiction to an anxiety drug in 2021, Peterson has hewed closer to the church, advising young people to attend church and criticising atheism's influence on society.

His stances on gender identity, his insistence that humans are tasked with creating order in a chaotic universe and his concern for young men's character have also endeared him to conservative Christians.

Sign of hope

Catholic Bishop Robert Barron, himself an internet heavyweight thanks to his Word on Fire ministry, has called Peterson "a sign of hope" for the church and "one of the most influential figures on the cultural scene today."

Kenneth E. Frantz, a University of Oklahoma doctoral student, and Samuel L. Perry, assistant professor of sociology and religious studies at the university, have called Peterson "the new Driscoll,".

They were referring to the evangelical Christian pastor Mark Driscoll, who drew young white evangelical men in particular in the mid-2000s to his brand of muscular Christianity.

(Driscoll was eventually cast out of his Mars Hill Church in Seattle after being accused of creating an abusive environment there.)

"There's a market for secular men promoting traditional masculinity — think Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan," Frantz told RNS.

He admitted, though, that "Peterson probably comes across as softer and more of an intellectual than either of those men."

Media appearances

Peterson recently concluded a 17-part series on the Book of Exodus for The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's right-wing media company.

He has also appeared in recent months on social media touring ancient churches in Rome, Jerusalem and Mount Athos with prominent Catholic and Orthodox Christians. These companions include the Canadian Orthodox iconographer and podcaster Jonathan Pageau.

In March 2023, Peterson was spotted filming an episode for The Daily Wire with Barron in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.

Wrestling with God

"We Who Wrestle With God," the new book and lecture series, builds on "12 Rules," as well as its 2021 follow-up, "Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life," though religion has clearly become more personal than philosophical.

Peterson's wife, Tammy, who recently announced she will finish a conversion to Roman Catholicism at Easter this year, opened for her husband, talking candidly about her cancer and about suffering, praying and grieving her father's death.

"She said, I need to reestablish my relationship with what's highest," Peterson said of Tammy. "I need to realign my aim away from bitterness and resentment towards only that which is optimally good. That's the definition of God."

Peterson himself was noncommittal in answering questions about faith submitted online and voted on by the audience.

One of the most popular asked how we can know if we are wrestling with God or with ourselves. Peterson answered with maxims like, "if you're thinking about yourself, you're wrestling with yourself in misery."

But his secular approach to questions of the divine is part of his appeal, said Benjamin Howard, a disaffected Peterson fan in Vancouver who is launching a website called JordanPetersonIsWrong.com.

Agnostics and atheists like considering Christian values without the certainty of a fire and brimstone preacher.

"In his view, if you acted like God existed, then you will live a better life," Howard said. "In his mind, that's enough to just ignore whether he is real or not."

Vandy D. Chhoeun Jr. came to the show with his girlfriend, who attested that he has become "a better person" after discovering Peterson's YouTube videos in 2022.

"I really had to, like, sit myself down and be, like, you're a horrible person, you need to acknowledge that," he said, saying that Peterson helped him shift from feeling that all of life is meaningless to finding motivation to work toward goals.

Wrestling with God when he's not sure God exists, Chhoeun said, means aiming for the best in all situations. "To be an optimist, basically."

Others in the crowd had similar stories of changed lives, without involving God.

Matt Johnston, who attends the Church of Christ, said he was drawn to Peterson for "his authenticity and saying things that I think a lot of people feel like they can't say in this society."

Johnston weighed 400 pounds when he first came across Peterson's lectures. Now he is down to 200. "I lived one way for so long. I thought that's all, that was it. That's all I could do," he said. "Every little decision, you know, adds up to a better life."

The biggest surprise in Providence for Peterson observers may have been that nearly half of the audience was women. Frantz attributed this to Peterson's daughter, Mikhaila, who has become a fixture in alternative diet circles and traditional femininity circles.

Another audience question asked Peterson, who often talks about the ideal masculine, how he would define the ideal feminine. He recalled a recent trip to the Vatican, where he saw Michelangelo's Pieta of the Virgin Mary holding the broken body of Jesus.

"That's the female crucifixion," he said.

"What's the highest possible offering to God? Child and self. … The woman who does nothing but protects her child destroys her child. The woman who offers her child to God receives her child back and that story is the core of the divinity of femininity and every mother worth her salt knows that."

Alba Sanz, a teacher from Spain who is working out her beliefs about Catholicism, said she is not sure about that definition of the archetypal feminine.

"I thought it was really interesting but also made me think about women who can't be a mom or don't want to be a mom," said Sanz, who came with her boyfriend.

"I have friends who don't feel the need. So, what about them?"

• First published in Religion News Service. Republished with permission.
• Meagan Saliashvili is an author at Religion News Service.

After a diagnosis of aggressive cancer and during a five-week stint in the hospital she prayed the rosary.

Tammy Peterson's story

Tammy Peterson's relationship with the rosary began in 2015. She had a renal cell carcinoma diagnosis and painful arthritis that made it difficult to use stairs.

As her husband gained massive popularity as a media commentator, she struggled with daily tasks.

Then she had a second biopsy and worse news arrived.

Her cancer was far more aggressive than initially supposed. Her doctor gave her ten months to live.

That's when the rosary entered her life.

The rosary

Queenie Yu, a Catholic convert, introduced Peterson to the rosary when she visited Peterson in hospital.

She brought with her a rosary Pope Francis had blessed, as well as a pamphlet on how to pray the rosary and an image of Our Lady with baby Jesus.

"Jordan and Tammy were together at the hospital and they both thought the image was beautiful" Yu recalls.

"And when she saw the rosary, she [Tammy] said ‘Oh it's a rosary.' I said ‘Oh you know what it is' and she replied ‘Yes, but I don't know how to use it'."

She soon learned.

Over the next five weeks, while Peterson was in the hospital, she and Yu prayed the rosary together every morning and shared their thoughts about faith and family.

Today - eight years later, Peterson tells her story about her faith and health scares.

Finding God in illness

"Through my illness, I found God and what could possibly be better than knowing your own Creator?', Peterson says.

She prayed through her physical pain, she adds.

"I'd wake up at night and I'd pray the Lord's Prayer until I went back to sleep. I didn't allow myself to worry," she said.

"I pretty much prayed all night unless I was sleeping."

During her illness, one of Peterson's friends - Father Eric Nicolai - gave her a blessing and novena to Saint Josemaria Escriva who founded Opus Dei.

On the novena's fifth day, Peterson was scheduled for surgery.

That was when her doctors shared exciting news - her medical issue had resolved itself. She no longer needed surgery.

Conversion

Peterson was raised in a Protestant family. Her parents stopped attending Church however, leaving her without any religious direction.

Since her association with the rosary she's set her sights on the Catholic church. She's recently announced her intention to begin classes in the Order (formerly Rite) of Christian Initiation of Adults (OCIA).

The OCIA is the programme the Church uses to prepare adults who hope to become Catholic.

Her husband Jordan supports her choice.

"She's trying to aim up" he says.

"This is an extension [of] what's happened to her in recent years, of that vow she took when she first decided we were going to get married.

"It's a crucial thing to commit to the truth."

Through her trials and health battles, Tammy Peterson says she has gained a powerful testimony to her faith in the Lord.

She plans to become a baptised member of the Catholic Church at Easter once she has completed her OCIA classes.

Source

• ChurchPop

These are just a few of the things that Jordan Peterson, author of the best-selling book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, has been called.

He is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who first became well-known for his opposition to the forced use of gender-neutral pronouns, and has become an international celebrity.

His book was recently banned by booksellers in New Zealand after the attack on the Muslim mosque, blaming him for appealing to white supremacists.

Peterson responded that such accusations are "self-serving" and false. His straightforward and logical presentations do not sit well with the radical left, which wants to dictate and force their ideologies onto the culture.

Thus, referencing Peterson in a school speech competition has been known to get a student disqualified. He and they do not see things the same way.

What about God?

When asked if he believes in God, Peterson has answered, "I believe in acting as if God exists."

And when asked if he believes that Jesus died and rose from the dead, he said it would take more than 30 hours to answer that question.

So, why should anyone, much less Catholics, listen to what he has to say?

Catholics believe in the importance of both faith and reason.

Pope St. John Paul II said, "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth."

In other words, without reason there cannot be true faith, and without faith, there cannot be true reason. And "there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason" (CCC 159).

When passing down of the Catholic faith from generation to generation, we often use faith as a starting point, and this leads to reason.

What sets Jordan Peterson apart is that he starts with reason, which can support faith because faith supports reason.

Genesis tells us we are made in the image and likeness of God. Peterson lays out a foundation of how to look at the human person as a whole, through reason, and thereby allows us to see the image of God reflected in each of us.

Peterson's basic argument is that if we are to have meaning in our lives, we need to value that which is good.

We need to sacrifice for it.

He uses the concept of hierarchies.

If we set the ultimate good (God) at the top of our hierarchy, that will order our lives in a way that gives us meaning. And the reason this gives us meaning is because we were made to do it.

His end sounds familiar, but his means are not.

He uses mythology, religion, literature, philosophy, biology and psychology to construct his argument to cover the whole human person.

He calls us to a life of responsibility, honesty, and the constant pursuit of the ultimate good.

This is exactly the message our society needs to hear. It is taught in the Catholic and other Christian churches, but the problem is that so many people are not engaged in such religions. Instead, a twisted notion of freedom with no consequences and relativism surround us. Continue reading

• Image: National Post

Dr Jordan Peterson, a clinical behavioural psychologist currently on a talking tour in New Zealand, has drawn protests over his criticism of the #MeToo movement and his huge online following of disaffected young men.

"If you're stuck, so to speak, in a small isolated community and there's very little to do and no economic future and a fragmented community because so many people have left, high rates of poverty and single families and multi-generational histories of alcoholism and so forth, you set the stage for nihilism and suicide," Dr Peterson said.

"The idea that these communities are viable is simply not the case."

Dr Peterson has grown in popularity with conservative thinkers partly due to his strong criticism of university academics and school curricula.

He said boys in particular are not encouraged the way they used to be and the talk of 'toxic masculinity' has missed its mark.

"The unshakeable belief of the radical left is that the West is an unquenchably oppressive patriarchy and what that implies is that it's the fault of men," he said.

"And what that implies is that any males ... who are ambitious and who desire to take their place in the uppermost reaches of various hierarchies of authority are actually contributing to the despoiling of the planet and the fundamental oppression of women and minorities.

"And almost of all of that is complete nonsense." Continue reading

For counselling and support

• Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time
• Lifeline - 0800 543 354
• Samaritans - 0800 726 666
• Chinese Lifeline - 0800 888 880
  (for people who speak Mandarin or Cantonese)
• Youthline - 0800 376 633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz
  (for young people, and their parents, whanau and friends)
• What's Up - 0800 942 8787
  (for 5-18 year olds; 1 pm to 11 pm)
• The Lowdown - visit the website, email team@thelowdown.co.nz or free text 5626 (emails and text messages will be responded to between 12 noon and 12 midnight)
• SPARX - an online self-help tool that teaches young people the key skills needed to help combat depression and anxiety.