In his book Twilight of the Elites, the MSNBC host Chris Hayes divides American politics between \u201cinstitutionalists,\u201d who believe in preserving and adapting the political and economic system, and \u201cinsurrectionists,\u201d who believe it\u2019s rotten to the core. The 2016 election represents an extraordinary shift in power from the former to the latter. The loss of manufacturing jobs has made Americans more insurrectionist. So have the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and a black president\u2019s inability to stop the police from killing unarmed African Americans. And so has disengagement from organized religion.<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s the values of hierarchy, authority, and tradition that churches instill. Maybe religion builds habits and networks that help people better weather national traumas, and thus retain their faith that the system works. For whatever reason, secularization isn\u2019t easing political conflict. It\u2019s making American politics even more convulsive and zero-sum.<\/p>\n
For years, political commentators dreamed that the culture war over religious morality that began in the 1960s and \u201970s would fade. It has. And the more secular, more ferociously national and racial culture war that has followed is worse.<\/p>\n