Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
March 26th, 2021
Shadi,
I'm glad that someone wrote a piece about this topic and that this person was you. First, it's something I've thought a lot about. What the heck happens in a famously religious country like America when people become a lot less religious? And second, you're one of the few writers in the left-of-center space who is religious and seems to actually make a real effort to understand religious people, both here and in the United States. So kudos!
I remember watching the documentary film "Jesus Camp" in college and not 100% buying the thesis -- that there is this vast right-wing Christian fundamentalist movement that has the capacity of taking over America. It turned out the film might as well have been a massive red herring; the Christian Right's overreaches during the Bush presidency may have even contributed to a lot of people turning away from organized religion.
What fills that vacuum? You've suggested that it's politics. I think it's certainly true that for a growing number of partisans, politics is now serving as a form of self-identity. Heck, we're even increasingly sorting ourselves into partisan *neighborhoods,* based on political party.
My big question about this is how much it actually relates to the decline in religiosity. Are less religious people the most polarized? I would argue that many of those on the right who are highly partisan maintain their traditional religious commitments; they're avid church-goers, and identify as Christian. I'm not so sure we can draw a link between intense political polarization and political self-identification and a decline of religion on that side.
On the left, the picture is a lot more clear. Probably the most ideologically extreme and politically adamant section of the political left is (this is a generalization and I hate generalizations, but here goes...) college-educated white folks. This is also the least religious portion of the Democratic coalition. Wokeness is definitely serving as a form of religious thought for many of these individuals, filling a void that psychologists like Jonathan Haidt (an atheist) has argued we all kind of have because he believes religious thinking serves an evolutionary role for our species.
Whatever the role of religious decline is in driving polarization, you've suggested in your piece that we should be looking to an Americanist creed to bring us together.
I'm wondering if you've seen the December 2020 report from More in Common showing that among all groups, "progressive activists" tend to be the least proud in America. Now, the same report shows that such activists are a small sliver of Americans -- they're in the single digits -- but as we both know, they're incredibly influential in the media, business, politics, law, etc.
Do you think that people have to have pride in America in order to embrace the American creed? You've noted that even critics of American society like James Baldwin also testified to their love of it. But I'm unclear if the bulk of today's activists feel similarly. What do you think?
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