America has become much more secular. White evangelicals are increasingly de-institutionalized.
This is a bad development, which helps explain the rise in extremism, racism, political violence, and antisemitism.
There are reams and reams of evidence suggesting that, at least among conservatives, religiosity inoculates among extremism. Antisemitism is less common among frequent church-attenders, and so is unhealthy attachment to guns. Religiosity seems to reduce violence. Converting in prison seems to reduce recidivism.
I would argue that progressives in America are much less tolerant and pluralistic on politics and ideology because their politics and ideology have become their religion.
Humans are created as tribal and religious beings. If you strip away traditional organized religion, something will take its place.
An essay today at Crisis magazine tells this tale in a personal and shocking way.
The author is Peter Cytanovic. You probably don’t know his name, but you know his face — as the face of Trump-era white supremacism. He was famously pictured carrying a torch and yelling angrily in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
He says he subsequently converted to Catholicism and has reformed.
Here are the most important passages from his essay:
“Although I was raised in a loving home, it was economically strained, and there was a part of me that understood that there was injustice in the poverty I saw around me. Yet, I did not have the language or moral formation to articulate what made it unjust.”
“I was not Catholic or religious at all. Both my parents were born Catholic but left the Faith. I was a ‘none’ who was culturally Christian as a vague abstraction. I wanted justice, but I did not know what justice truly was. I enrolled at the University of Nevada, Reno, but I had no plan, no goal, and that absence of direction became the soil in which my radicalization took root…”
“The nihilism I had in youth evolved into a zealous rage against the world. I never formally joined a neo-Nazi organization, nor did I desire to, but I increasingly embraced hateful ideas that I justified as necessary to protect what I perceived as my community: the white community…”
“The Christian ideal replaced pagan racial solidarity with a deeper and more humane communion, one grounded not in exclusion but in love of neighbor, rooted in Christ.”
I wrote on this very topic after the Charlottesville protests, which culminated with James Alex Fields running down a crowd of counter-protestors, and killing Heather Heyer:
“James Alex Fields grew up without a father. He was kind of from Kentucky, kind of from Cincinnati, and lived in the outlying suburbs of Toledo. As far as we can tell he didn’t go to church. He was neither Midwestern nor Southern. He tried to join the military, but couldn’t cut it…”
“Fields, as far as we can tell, lacked the community, the tribal ties, the identity in which most people find their sense of purpose and of support. And so he donned the identity of white nationalism.”
“Many Americans enjoy identifying as Mormons, as Jews, as Portlanders, as Middlebury students, as Greek Americans, as Ballou High School students, or any of a million ethnic, religious, social, or geographic identities…”
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“Absent a strong identity and tribe, would it be surprising if a man chose his most abstract traits, his race and his nationality, and made those into his identity? So we get a sort of invented identity — call it white nationalism — that’s far more toxic than any smaller identity or tribe. Being invented, this identity is more likely to be based in ideology than in organic custom, ritual, or community.”
Even most secular progressives seem to grasp today that religion has been a force for good in the country.