Whereas religion sees the promised land as being above, in God’s kingdom, the utopian left sees it as being ahead, in the realization of a just society here on Earth. Absent some new religious awakening, what are we left with? It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British-but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Without it, Americans-conservatives and liberals alike-no longer have a common culture upon which to fall back. Without the common ground produced by a shared external enemy, as America had during the Cold War and briefly after the September 11 attacks, mutual antipathy grows, and each side becomes less intelligible to the other. But Americans must go back to the Civil War for violence of comparable scale-and for most Americans, the violence of the Civil War bolsters, rather than undermines, the national myth of perpetual progress.

Not so long ago, I could comfort American audiences with a contrast: Whereas in the Middle East, politics is war by other means-and sometimes is literal war-politics in America was less existentially fraught. As James Baldwin, the rare American who did leave for good, put it: “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” Americans who dislike America seem to dislike leaving it even more (witness all those liberals not leaving the country every time a Republican wins the presidency, despite their promises to do so). On the right, adherents of a Trump-centric ethno-nationalism still drape themselves in some of the trappings of organized religion, but the result is a movement that often looks like a tent revival stripped of Christian witness. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they shall be called Woman because she was taken out of the tree and did eat.

Abraham Kuyper, a theologian who served as the prime minister of the Netherlands at the dawn of the 20th century, when the nation was in the early throes of secularization, argued that all strongly held ideologies were effectively faith-based, and that no human being could survive long without some ultimate loyalty. During the 2021 PlayStation Showcase event, Eric Williams, who worked on every previous installment, was confirmed as the game’s director, continuing the previous era’s tradition of having a different director for each game-Barlog served as a producer and creative director. No wonder the newly ascendant American ideologies, having to fill the vacuum where religion once was, are so divisive. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. As it turns out, time travel might not be fiction. You might respond, “OIC,” short for “Oh, I see!” Or, you might respond “LOL” and go on about your business. An American who moves to Germany, lives there for years, and learns the language remains an American-an “expat.” If America is a civil religion, it would make sense that it stays with you, unless you renounce it.

But if secularists hoped that declining religiosity would make for more rational politics, drained of faith’s inflaming passions, they are likely disappointed. Violence has a way of taming passions, at least as long as it remains in active memory. Does Islam Support The Terrorism And Violence? “If an immigration officer at Heathrow had ever said ‘Welcome home’ to me,” Zafar says, “I would have given my life for England, for my country, there and then. When Americans have expressed disgust with their country, they have tended to frame it as fulfillment of a patriotic duty rather than its negation. As Jeff Gedmin, the former head of the Aspen Institute in Berlin, described it to me: “You can eat strudel, speak fluent German, adapt to local culture, but many will still say of you Er hat einen deutschen Pass-‘He has a German passport.’ No one starts calling you German.” Many native-born Americans may live abroad for stretches, but few emigrate permanently. And Americans who do leave still find a way, like Baldwin, to love it. Many on the right find solace in conspiracy cults, such as QAnon, that tell a religious story of earthly corruption redeemed by a godlike force.