Religiosity among Young Republican Men: An Escape from Homosexuality to White Privilege?

Idealism may exist especially in young adults because they have not experienced decade upon decade of the intractability of a deeply flawed social, political, and economic world’s status quo, which typically permits only incremental change. Zealous optimism can be expressed in a variety of domains, including religion, social issues, and politics. For example, political group-affiliation can stimulate a more intense devotion to religion, and vice versa. Even a passion on social agendas can translate into increased religiosity, and the latter can overreach onto the former. It can be asked of such instances whether the religiosity is genuine, or merely transferred energetic enthusiasm from another domain. The upsurge in religiosity among young Republican men polled by Gallup in the mid-2020s may be more political than religious. Relative to the growing numbers of non-religious-affiliated people in the U.S. as well as the E.U., the uptick among young Republicans should be put into perspective.

In 1979, Ronald Reagan ran a presidential campaign that brought in the “evangelical right” as well as blue-collar democrats. Accordingly, the Republican group went from pro-choice on Abortion to being against the procedure from a distinctly religious standpoint. The election of Pope John Paul II in the same year furthered the turn to the right on social issues as they took hold in the Roman Catholic Church and even went on to displace attention to soteriological matters especially in the American Catholic clerical hierarchy such that Pope Francis felt the need to suggest to his fellow bishops that the moral/social issues be de-prioritized relative to preaching on the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his subsequent resurrection. In the mid-2020s, as shown by Gallup polling, an upsurge in religiosity among young Republican (American) men—the political context being explicit—may have begun, resonating with Reagan’s incorporation of the Moral Majority in Republican politics. What was behind the upsurge, and why weren’t young women enjoying an upsurge in religiosity too?

Gallup’s data in 2024-2025 “shows that 42% of men in the U.S. ages 18-29 said religion is very important to them, a notable increase from 28% in 2022-2023. Over the same time, young women’s attachment to religion . . . stayed low, at about 30%.”[1] The percentages of men and women who claimed to be very religious had gradually declined since the polling had begun in 2000, with the exception of the 42% in 2025-2025 going up from the 28% in 2022-2023 for young men.[2] Moreover, the majority of young men and a supermajority of young women in the U.S. indicated that religion was not important to them. Put another way, the uptick in the religiosity of young men of 14% is dwarfed by the 70% of young women who were not actively religious on a weekly basis. The uptick in Republican-related religiosity among young American men should be viewed in the context of an increasingly secular West.

In fact, the “very religious” self-identification could stem from having the Republican political group-identity, given the strong positive correlation. The question, in other words, involves which domain was primary for the “very religious” respondents in terms of their group-identifications. Each person has several such identifications, one of which is usually primary.

For myself, my primary group identification is cultural; I view myself chiefly as a native Midwesterner. For me to allow this group identification to monopolize my self-identity, hence excluding my political, religious, racial, gender, sexual, etc., group-identities would be highly artificial because in actuality all of them pertain to me. I am conscious of my decision to make one primary. As an aside, a racist could be defined as a person who has decided to allow racial group-identity to monopolize the group-identities that are possible in all other domains, not only pertaining to oneself, but to other people too, even if their primary group-identities are otherwise. Imposing racial group-identities on a person whose primary group-identity is in another domain produces tension, given the dogmatic overreaching, and such imposing may be termed racist.  

Overreaching is evinced in the analysis of the poll by Ryan Burge, a political scientist and Baptist preacher, whose claim that the uptick in religiosity of young Republican men “represents a seismic change in society and the future of the church” is likely overblown, given the fact that majorities of both young men and women were still refusing to say that they were very religious.[3] Burge also overreaches in bringing in race in claiming that young men were more drawn to religion “because it is a space where they feel more accepted in a world where other institutions are ‘less interested in white men compared to women and people of color.”[4] Given the salience of Caucasians still in corporations and Congress, it would be interesting to learn of which “other institutions” Burge had in mind in making his statement. His claim that the domain of religion is “the only place where you don’t have to apologize for being a white man” demonstrates just how artificial (and ludicrous) imposing race in a fundamentally non-racial phenomenon can be.[5]

Completely aside from race, it is possible that the “very religious” respondents in the Gallop poll tended to self-identity as Republicans primarily and as Christians in the religious domain only secondarily even though they viewed themselves as very religious because the latter was infused with political energy and idealism. The salience of religion in the Republican party since Reagan incorporated the social-issue-oriented Moral Majority could explain the paradox. In fact, to the extent that “religion” in the Republican party has actually been more about social issues such as abortion and homosexuality than theology, the respondents may have actually been “very social-issue-oriented” rather than theological. Pew Research Center surveys in 2025 “found about 4 in 10 men under 30 say divorce is morally wrong, compared to only 2 in 10 young women. Even more men under 30, about half, say abortion is morally wrong, compared to only about one-third of women the same age. Young men are also likelier than young women to say homosexuality is morally wrong, although both groups are substantially less likely than older men and women to hold this view.”[6] Higher numbers regardless of age would be more critical of homosexuality were more people aware of the profligate norm that gays in the Castro district of San Francisco were imposing on each other in insisting on rampant sex outside of relationships, including separate emotional/romantic attachments rather than just separate anonymous sex, which boyfriends and husbands are expected to accept. Monogamy and commitment, as well as fidelity, became dirty words in that sub-culture when the “woke” ideology took over sexual “ethics.” It is interesting that that sub-culture went in that direction even as the Republican group was becoming more socially conservative. Seeking meaning, whether in a political or a religious group, can be distinguished antithetically from the lack of emotional connection and the related loneliness that go with a refusal to channel momentary urges in ways that do not eclipse emotional intimacy and trust. It is indeed a tale of two cities.

Regarding the “very religious” young Republican men, I suspect that both social issues and theology were in the mix because of the overtly Christian-leanings, to say the least, that entered the Republican group in 1979. Pope John Paul II’s stance against the U.S.S.R., especially pertaining to his home state of Poland, combined with the pre-existent firm anti-Communist stance of the Republican party, contributed to the tight link between Christianity and the Republican group. In fact, the ideal of a “Christian nation” has not been uncommon in the Republican group since Reagan, who interestingly referred to America as a “city on a hill,” an expression that Augustine used to denote the Heavenly City as against the Earthly City. With the very earthly city of the Castro well-entrenched in San Francisco becoming increasingly primitive instinctually, it is no wonder that civilized Americans would envision a city on a hill above the degenerate, utterly selfish filth of unrestrained instinctual urges. Such an envisioning would not be exclusively religious.

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1, Deepa Bharath, “What a New Gallup Poll Shows about Young Men’s Religious Revival,” Apnews.com, April 16, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.

Pope Leo on the Cinema: A Distinctively Religious Role?

As “part of the Vatican’s efforts to reach out beyond the Catholic Church to engage with the secular world,” Pope Leo spoke with actors and directors on November 15, 2025 about the ability of film “to inspire and unite.”[1] He spoke to the filmmakers about film itself as an art, and what it can do socially. What it can do in a distinctively religious sense was oddly left out. I submit that leaving out how film can contribute to spirituality wherein a transcendent is explicitly included, while instead discussing the social functions of film not only limits the potential of film, but also ironically marginalizes a significant potential of film ironically in the pope’s own field.

Speaking generically about the medium of film, Pope Leo stated that it “articulates the questions that dwell within us, and sometimes, even provokes tears that we didn’t know we needed to shed.”[2] There is nothing distinctively religious or spiritual about these features of movies. Two of the pope’s favorite movies, “Ordinary People” (1980), which was filmed in the pope’s hometown, Chicago, and “Life is Beautiful” (1997) are known for their psychological aspects: a family dealing with one son’s suicide and another family dealing with the Nazis in Europe. In fact, neither film includes anything religious or spiritual. Admittedly, since the works of Sigmund Freud were published, it has been tempting in Western culture to reduce religion to psychology, or to conflate the two distinct domains if they were the same. The increasing secularizing of North America and Europe in the twentieth century no doubt played a role in reconfiguring religion as it were isomorphic with another domain. Had the faculty and librarians at Harvard, including Larry Summers and Ben Friedman (both economists), not been so rude and even brazenly passive aggressive toward me while I was conducting research there on the category mistake by pulling the weeds out of the religious garden to find what lies underneath as the native fauna distinct to religion, I might have written a treatise on religion sui generis. At a certain age, however, a person can simply ask oneself, do I really want to contribute to the American academic academy? But I digress.

In his talk, the pope went so far as to make a political or cultural statement regarding the ability of film to not merely console, but also challenge people by including marginal voices. In its “noblest sense,” he said, the “popular art” of motion pictures is “intended for and accessible to all.”[3] Rather than urging theater-owners to charge poor people less, the pope was advocating that different points of view, presumably on social, economic, and even political matters, be included in screenplays. To be sure, such a function of film—to widen popular debates to include more perspectives—would be of great value to a society, given the phenomenon of “group-think,” which George Orwell discusses in his book, “1984,” and the self-interested strategies of business and political elites to artificially narrow what is debated to keep truly challenging perspectives from being aired.

Nevertheless, a religious leader overreaches in putting such an emphasis on secular, ideological concerns, including “affirming the social and cultural value” of people watching movies together in a movie theater without mentioning that high ticket prices keep out the poor and so they should instead be watching movies alone, assuming they have laptops and wifi. That the advent of computer technology has made an expensive ticket at a movie theater optional suggests that the pope’s nostalgia in addressing filmmakers in 2025 was partial, as is the case with any ideology. That he inadvertently put unneeded pressure on poor and even lower middle-class people to pay steep ticket-prices so they can be included in “uniting” with other people merely in being in a dark room together reacting similarly to scenes in a movie, supports my point that he should have stayed with his knitting, which is a saying in the book, In Search of Excellence by Peters and Waterman, whose main point is that companies should stick to what they are good at, rather than wander off in a Zhuangzian fashion into other lines of business to get more in profits as a Mohist would.  

The pope’s focus on matters that were not directly in his forte not only rendered him subject to correction, but also came with an opportunity cost in terms of the foregone benefit that a talk on the potential of film in theology or spirituality would have had instead. Even in saying that “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946) and “The Sound of Music” (1964) were two of his other favorite films, the pope did not mention films among his favorites that are centered on religion, and even more surprisingly absent, on the Gospels in particular, such as “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), “The Passion of the Christ” (2004), “Jesus” (1999), “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988), “King of Kings” (1961), and even “The Nativity Story” (2006), "Mary" (2024), and “Ben-Hur” (1959). “Jesus of Nazareth” (1977), albeit a television mini-series though with an astounding cast, was undoubtedly formative for the pope, as he was a college student when the show first aired. I remember well watching that limited series as a boy. As a college student then, the pope would not have missed such a series.  I remember what the very religious college students in the years soon after the pope had graduated; they were very focused on their religious faith. One Baptist student curiously in ROTC used to come (uninvited) sometimes into my dorm room while I was studying at night to pray for me because my roommate was an evangelical Christian. This was nothing compared to the Calvinist cult I would encounter at Yale’s divinity school and then the “woke” cult at Harvard’s divinity school. But I digress (again).

I contend that Pope Leo missed an opportunity in 2025 to address filmmakers about how film can address theology, as well as related though distinct things like metaphysics, the supernatural, science, and morality. For example, theology in terms of two different interpretations of the Kingdom of God is salient in the film, “Mary Magdalene” (2018), especially when Mary and Peter debate two very different yet valid interpretations of what the Kingdom of God is. The question of the woman’s place among the disciples is an element of the film, but as Mary and Jesus are not romantically or sexually but only spiritually close, the feminist angle between Mary and the rest of the disciples is kept secondary. For the pope to have highlighted that angle, his take on contemporary culture could have eclipsed distinctly theological questions regarding the Kingdom of God. Even the Catholic Church’s stance against women becoming priests is not theological, and the closeness of Mary to Jesus in the film, plus The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, can inform that Church’s stance on that issue. But I digress (again).

Besides theology in and through film, how a character’s experience of distinctly religious (or spiritual) transcendence can be acted and depicted in a film visually would have been an excellent topic for the pope’s talk. That films have effectively portrayed two different realms, even simultaneously as in the film, “The Others" (2001), in a secular, otherworldly context, means that the medium of film could do a lot more when it comes to visually and verbally hinting at a distinctively religious or spiritual transcendent, which can be grasped (to a point) as something that is inherently beyond the limits of human cognition, perspective, and emotion.[4] Ironically, religious leaders may be most useful in speaking to a secular audience by highlighting how the domain of religion is distinct, rather than in trying to be influential in secular, ideological terms. Pope Leo should have stuck to his knitting, for the potential of the art and medium of film in depicting spiritual and institutionally-religious matters is great, and on this point I most certainly do not digress.

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1. Nicole Winfield, “Pope Leo XIV Celebrates Cinema with Hollywood Stars and Urges Inclusion of Marginal Voices,” APNews.com, November 15, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. I am drawing here on the work of Pseudo-Dionysus, a late 6^th century Christian theologian who stressed the ineffability of God.

Dorothy Day: Drawing on the Profane to Grasp the Sacred

Rather than spending her adult years in a convent, Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Workers Movement in the twentieth century, could distill religious experience through her activity in the world—the sacred essentially coming up through the profane. This is not to confound these two spheres, just as Christology has held since the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) that the two natures, human and divine, of Christ do not mix within his one essence. In fact, even within the religious sphere, Day could distinguish qualitative differences between God as personified and as impersonal in nature.

Day wrote of her pre-Catholic religious “idea of God as a tremendous Force, a frightening impersonal God, a Voice, a Hand stretched out to seize me, His child, and not in love. Christ was the Saviour, meek and humble of heart, Jesus, the Good shepherd. But I did not think of Jesus as God.”[1] That she was reading Imitation of Christ at the time says a lot about how she situated Jesus as an exemplar. Whether viewed as a holy man or as the Son of God beyond nominally so in the Gospel story, Jesus is distinguished from the idea of God as impersonal. This resonates with the relation between loving devotion to Jesus as evinced by spiritual nuns, and viewing God as impersonal resonates with both Shankara, the ninth-century Hindu theologian who claimed that deities are merely manifestations of the all-pervading, impersonal Brahman, and Pseudo-Dionysius, the sixth-century Christian theologian who emphasized that God goes beyond the limits of human thought, perception, and emotion (i.e., sensibility). The latter applies especially to Day’s statement, “I made up my mind to accept what I did not understand, trusting light to come, as it sometimes did, in a blinding flash of exultation and realization.”[2] This can be interpreted as meaning that divine revelation lies beyond human understanding, and yet it is sad just how many people claim to know God’s will.

It was said of Day that she was too religious to be a Communist. This is ironic because her need for God was in the midst of her activities, political and even biological. The risk here was in committing the category mistake of conflating the religious sphere with others even though her religious experiences came when she was in the midst of activity in other domains. We can keep the religious domain as distinct and unique in some ways by interpreting her as being able to perceive her activities as analogies to dynamics in the spiritual domain that are qualitatively different from activities within Creation.

Relating herself birthing a child to God as Creator, Day wrote, “God is the Creator, and the very fact that we [i.e., she and the baby’s father] were begetting a child made me have a sense that we were made in the image and likeness of God, co-creators with him.”[3] Although the episode evinces that she could see something in nature (i.e., giving birth) as in some way being similar, and thus analogical, to a theological point, referring to herself as a co-creator ignores the qualitative difference between propagation in the world and God creating existence and all that is within it.

She was on firmer ground in thinking about how vegetable seeds grow “into flowers and radishes and beans,” she wrote, “It is a miracle to me because I do not understand it.”[4] The word miracle is distinctly religious, so its application sans God to a biological process itself should be resisted. So too, by the way, the word evil is distinctly religious, and thus ethicists who define it as grave injustice miss the mark. Day’s use of the word, miracle, should thus be taken as analogical only, even if the meant something more by it. The distinctly religious meaning to be grasped is that the divine transcends the limits of human cognition and thus is at least in part inherently mysterious to us. Unlike not understanding how a seed eventually grows so, producing even flowers and vegetables that hardly resemble the original seeds and yet are their final causes (Aristotle), not understanding God is inherent to God being uniquely transcendent as it extends beyond Creation; vegetables do not. Religion is distinct from the biological (scientific) domain. This holds in relation to other domains too, including that of ethics.

Ironically because she founded the Catholic workers’ movement, Day, like Kierkegaard, situated religious experience above the sphere of morality.  Of morality, Day said, “I saw them wrestling with moral problems, with the principles by which they lived, and this made them noble in my eyes.”[5] Lest this be presumed to be the highest form of nobility to Day, while she watching a woman kneel at her bed to pray, Day was convinced “that worship, adoration, thanksgiving, supplication” are “the noblest acts of which [a person is] capable in this life.”[6] Nobility in a religious sense is more noble than is ethical nobility In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard situates the divine decree made only to Abraham that he sacrifice his only son, Isaac, above the universally-accessible ethical stance that the sacrifice would actually be murder, for which Abraham would be culpable.

Although Dorothy Day illustrates that it is possible to have religious experience in the midst of our daily activities in the world rather than spending years in a monastery being necessary—and in this way she would side with Mahayana over Theravada Buddhism—her way of viewing the profane in a religious way risks conflating the two, as if the sacred and profane were co-creators rather than the profane being created by God. In general, this category mistake ignores the qualitative difference between the religious domain and other domains, such as science and even morality. Ultimately, conflating the heavenly and earthly cities risks putting humanity, and thus oneself, rather than a transcendent reference point, at the center.

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1. Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of Dorothy Day (New York: Curtis Books, 1956), p. 20.
2.  Ibid., p. 163.
3. Ibid., p. 153.
4. Ibid., p. 152.
5. Ibid., p. 123.
6. Ibid., p. 123.

Turning a Church into an Ideological Billboard

By lapsing headlong into partisan politics, especially on controversial matters such as “social issues,” otherwise known as “culture wars,” a congregation unwittingly, and, from a religious standpoint, arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) constrains (i.e., limits) its potential membership unnecessarily because people who would be open to and even relish the religious dimension but are opposed ideologically to the partisan stance on a political, or social, issue would not be likely to attend the ostensibly religious services. No one likes to feel ideologically uncomfortable or, even worse, despised. This is particularly likely when a congregation turns its building into an ideological billboard. I suspect that this is a distinctly American phenomenon (i.e., taking things too far). Behind the extravagance lies the sin of pride, wherein a person erroneously believes that he or she cannot be wrong ideologically. This presumption of ideological (or political) infallibility carries with it the erroneous perspective of one’s partisan stance representing a whole (i.e., truth) rather than being partial, as with respect certain values being privileged above others.

A Unitarian-Universalist "Church" wherein a few causes of political activism take pride of place, replacing religious faith and choking off tolerance. 

Perhaps it is only natural to prefer that other people line up with one’s own beliefs, whether religious or political/ideological. The presumptions of inerrancy and completeness, or truth, typically undergird this self-centered perspective. It is easy to conflate one’s own ideological stance on partisan “social issues,” such as abortion, gay marriage, and even stem-cell research, with religious truth even though the latter transcends human ideology. In other words, whereas truth has the property of wholeness, ideological positions are partial, hence partisan politically. Conflating the two, a congregation can even usurp its distinctly religious message by focusing on political issues of the so-called American “culture wars.” Beyond taking up space in sermons, ideological positions can become totalitarian, even in turning a church building into a billboard advertising the partisan stance on a privileged social issue.

A Methodist church smothered in ideological political causes that punctuate even the liturgy and constrain church membership. The photos below are of the same church.

In Christian churches, the emphasis on partisan stances can bring with it a certain intolerance, and even hostility if resentment of an opposing partisan position is fueling the importance being placed on the favored stance. Sometimes the hostility can be quite simple, as the partisans often are so fine-tuned to picking up on subtle cues on whether another person is in the same ideological camp. Even the words a person uses can be picked up by others who are bent on judging for themselves. By 2023, the politically-correct camp had been dubbed “woke,” and an “anti-woke” opposition had become more vocal in some American cultures. This in turn may have intensified efforts by “woke” congregations to go so far as to turn their church buildings into billboards.

In visiting one church, of the Methodist sect (or denomination) of Christianity, that had so many gay flags in the social hall that their sheer number seemed to imply an ideological vehemence: You had better agree with us! The excessiveness itself sent a message. The rainbow colors were literally wrapped around stone pillars on the exterior of the building, and during June several gay flags were flying on the church grounds. Again, the excessiveness itself sent a message, but at this level the message was as much psychological as it was ideological and partisan. The liturgy was not exempt, as the prospect of building up to a religious experience was broken up by commercials. One announced, “We are all in favor of reparations” going to a church of an unmentioned denomination whose members were Black Americans. How does the speaker know that everyone in the sanctuary agreed on that controversial, political issue? I was not surprised that most of the seats were empty. This is the true religious cost, which economists would call an opportunity cost: the benefit foregone by making a choice.

The choice to privilege partisan political issues comes at a cost in religious terms. People who might otherwise visit or even regularly attend a church whose liturgy, rooms, and building are placed in the service of particular political stances on “social issues” will bypass the church if those stances are not ideologically palatable, especially if the sense is that they are being “shoved down their throats.”

Presumably a faith message is important at Christian churches, and it does not reach those people who happen to hold the contrary partisan stance on a privileged social issue. Congregations that succumb to the hegemony (i.e., dominance) of partisan political issues unwittingly self-weaken faith-outreach. To believe that people must have the “correct” partisan stance on ideological issues to be saved by Jesus Christ is to use an exogenous litmus test, or “gate,” to arbitrarily (i.e., dogmatically) limit the saving of souls because in the Gospels Jesus does not specify that people must have certain ideological stances to be saved. In fact, Jesus distances himself from the zealots, who incorrectly interpret Jesus’ version of the Kingdom of God as coming forth externally, through conflict, rather than in individual transformations of the heart.

Because an orientation to contentious ideological issues tends to involve hostility towards people who disagree, and even anger simply because some people do disagree, a congregation oriented to partisan positions may not be conducive to the spread of the Kingdom of God. At most, the kindness or compassion of a partisan is usually limited to ideological compatriots, whereas Jesus preaches that kindness, and even love, be extended to a person’s detractors and even enemies. This is the true cost when a Christian congregation becomes unduly and overwhelmingly partisan, whether on the “right” or “left” of the ideological political spectrum. Partisan “love” is partial, whereas neighbor love is wholistic, as is truth itself.

Sure enough, after a month of being in the choir of a very ideological Methodist church, I ceased my association with that church. I had found that there were too many bosses in that choir, one of which apparently didn’t like me, for he said before we were to sing on a Palm Sunday, “Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” I countered that perhaps someone should tell me that I don’t talk enough when something needs to be said. He then ordered me to “line up” even though the choir was not yet lining up at the back of the sanctuary. That that member of the choir literally had keys to the building—but not to the Kingdom!—meant that I would be facing an uphill battle, and are Christian churches really the place for battles anyway? So I kicked the “dirt off my sandals,” upzipped my robe, and went grocery shopping rather than sang that Sunday. I had previously picked up on hostility from some other members, including two in the choir who had scolded me for not standing on a certain step during a practice. “You stand there!” one pointed. It was barely a step. That congregation was not fertile ground for a mustard seed to take root—too much stone draped in ideological flags.

At least for the Methodists the claim can be made that matters of faith can be distinguished from a social ideology, so there is hope that the adoption of a transcendent reference point could be used from which to view the dominant ideology and the related political activism as partial, and even as human, all too human. The litmus test for inclusion could therefore be based in religious faith rather than on a position on a “social issue.” One of the benefits of a faith-perspective is that human artifacts cannot be placed that the center of our existence. Humility can thus replace arrogance. This is not possible where the transcendent nature of distinctly religious faith has been vacated and replaced with the ideological content of political activism.

The Unitarian Universalist “religion” accomplished such a transition in the twentieth century. Originally, Unitarianism, as preached by Emerson, was a rejection of the Christian Trinity from within that religion. By 1980, humanism had become the dominant strain in Unitarian-Universalist societies. My parents were such humanists, and my limited exposure to a UU congregation as a teenager left me with the perplexing question of how a religious organization could survive without being religious. My mother later told me that I used to protest the hypocrisy as a young teenager. Later in life, when visiting UU congregations, I found that the rejection of religion had taken hold, and in its place, the human ideology of political correctness (or “woke”) had pride of place. One UU minister insisted that religious Unitarianism was in vogue. Unfortunately, he mistook the term religious. For example, he insisted that egalitarian economic systems are sacred. He quickly closed himself off from being open-minded when I suggested that to regard a human construction as sacred is self-idolatrous. This is the message of Moses when in returning from the mount he discovers the worship of a golden calf. So too, a person who “knows” that one’s political ideology on social issues is nothing short of truth is essentially engaging in self-worship. The evisceration of a transcendent dimension cuts off a means by which such a person can be humble with respect to one’s own ideology and thus open to the possibility that a person can be wrong, and is at most partial and fallible. In succumbing to temptation, the UU organization closed down a place for Christians who believe in Jesus’ preaching yet do not accept that he is the Son of God.

By 2023, much had been written about the ideological polarization of the American people. That divide had reached congregations on the “right” and “left,” just as segregation had taken hold. Religious faith is not reduceable to an ideological position; rather, the former transcends the latter. To the extent that ideological advocacy is salient in religious congregations, especially spread across their respective buildings, a dearth of religious faith can be assumed. In the most extreme cases, the ideological positions masquerade as the proper content of religious faith. The “faithful” become like gods on Earth, and the societal bipolarity becomes even more difficult to smooth over in reconciliation.