Having just finished thoroughly discussing the ways that governments use secularized versions of religious symbolism and ritual to manipulate the public and generate a sense of loyalty and obedience to it from among the masses, I thought it worthwhile to explore how the different partisan denominations of the politics -the “Left” and the “Right”- function as secular religions as well. The value in this is in explaining why people adhere to their different political beliefs and parties even when all logic, science, and morality demonstrate the inherent flaws, errors, and failings of those political beliefs to either reflect reality or to reform reality and create the outcomes their adherents promise if people would but live them. In short, understanding how political beliefs function like religious beliefs will help us understand why people so strenuously hold on to them when they are so obviously wrong and completely fail to deliver. While I have talked about how political parties seek to generate a cult like devotion among party members for the party’s public leaders, here I will be exploring how people become religiously devoted to their political beliefs and how the enactment of those beliefs mirrors organized religion in very direct ways. This article will be devoted to looking at this phenomena on the political “Left” and a future article will be dedicated to looking at the same phenomena on the political “Right.”
What is the “Left” Anyway?
Before we go any farther, it would be good to define what we mean by the “political Left” so there is no confusion later on in the article. A fairly standard definition of the political Left can be found from Encyclopedia Britannica:
Left, in politics, the portion of the political spectrum associated in general with egalitarianism and popular or state control of the major institutions of political and economic life. …Leftists tend to be hostile to the interests of traditional elites, including the wealthy and members of the aristocracy, and to favor the interests of the working class. They tend to regard social welfare [that is extensive government ran and tax funded welfare programs] as the most important goal of government. Socialism is the standard leftist ideology in most countries of the world; communism is a more radical leftist ideology.
While this definition isn’t perfect -how can you believe in the equality of all people while also demanding there be a special class of people with total authority to dictate to and control the lives of all others, i.e. politicians with state power?- it does cover the basics well enough. Leftists believe that the power of the State should be used to force their views on those they disagree with by making Leftist ideas about race, class, gender, sexuality, etc. the basic laws of the nation. This is where the Leftist sees his or herself as egalitarian. They believe their ideals treat people the most equally and are therefore the most morally correct. Therefore people should be compelled to follow those ideals by law and when that is done everyone will be “equal.”
They tend to see wealthy people as enemies that need to either be brought down or destroyed. This comes from the Leftist sympathy for, if not total embrace of, Socialism and the Socialist belief that there is only so much wealth in the world and, therefore, if someone else has more of it that means you have less. Thus to the Leftist, wealthy people are hoarders of wealth, eating so much of the “wealth pie” that poor people are starving and the way to solve that problem is to force the wealthy to have only their “fair share” of the pie. The way this is done is through State power. The Leftist believes it is the role of the State to seize the wealth of the “rich,” through either direct violence or by the threat of it, and then to share that wealth with the “poor” in the form of state ran welfare programs. This is the other way the Leftist sees his or herself as egalitarian. They believe that by seizing the wealth of the “rich” and using the State to redistribute that wealth to the “poor” that they are then making the rich and poor equal.
Notice I keep using the terms “Left” and “Leftist.” This is because most terms used to describe the Left simply don’t apply. Sometimes Leftists are called Liberals. But the great examples of Liberalism- men like John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, Adam Smith, and Claude Frédéric Bastiat- couldn’t be farther from the modern Leftist’s conception of the power, authority, or role of the State in society. You also won’t find me using the term “Progressive” and the reason is simple- it is pure propaganda. If you’re a progressive, the automatically everyone who does agree with you completely is a regressive moron. (Not to mention the fact that early Progressivism was fundamentally nationalist, racist, and sexist, and therefore very different from modern Progressivism in every way except methods.) Only when using it in the historical context, such as when discussing the “Progressive Movement” will I use the term progressive in a political sense. Therefore, lacking better terms that aren’t either incorrect or propaganda, I will continue to use the terms Left and Leftist to refer to people on the political Left.
A Secular Religion
The religious origins of what is typically called the Progressive Movement in the Protestant concept of the social gospel is fairly well established in history. (Likewise, the religious origins of Socialism/Communism.) What is less investigated is how the religious impulse and zeal which drove the original Progressive Movement is still alive and well in the political Left today to such a degree that it can be accurately described as a religious movement. Some will certainly balk at this assertion and argue it can’t be true because Leftists are a very diverse group who do not worship any god or gods and many are agnostics or atheists altogether. Even if you accept this as true (and it isn’t) the truth of the matter is that you don’t need a god or gods to have a religion. Buddhism, one of the largest religions on the planet, making up 7% of the total human population, rejects the concept of God altogether. So no, you do not need to have a belief in a god or gods to be a religion. Likewise, not everyone in the same religion has to believe in all the same gods in they believe in gods at all. Hinduism, at over a billion adherents making up 15% of the world’s population, can in theory believe that all religions are true, meaning all gods are real, but still choose to worship only a few specific deities. Hinduism even has atheistic schools that believe there are no gods at all, yet they are still just as Hindu as those who worship gods. So you need neither to have a god, believe in the same gods, or even all worship the same gods to belong to the same religion.
With that issue settled we can begin looking at the ways that Leftist believe and Leftist beliefs serves as a religion in the lives of its adherents. In this article, Dr. John McWhorter of Columbia University discusses what he calls “third wave antiracism.” He starts by pointing out that the first two waves of antiracism – the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights Movement – were both deeply religious in nature. McWhorter talks about how Christianity was a driving feature of the abolitionist movement and provides Fredrick Douglass’s constant usage of biblical characters, teachings, and events as an example of the religious nature of the abolitionist movement. This is also shown in the articles we have published here from William Lloyd Garrison. The religious nature of the Civil Rights Movement also seems obvious. Two of its most dynamic leaders, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X was a Muslim minister. From the abolitionist movement to the Civil Rights Movement the goal wasn’t just about civil rights but moral reformation. Dr. McWhorter explains:
The new quest, then, will focus to a new degree on how people think. Blight notes that even in Douglass’s time, his “message to whites, therefore, was morally change yourselves. The new order was as much for whites to give as it was for blacks to take.” That facet of the quest has taken center stage since. The historian Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn has noted that after the 1960s, in civil rights “the desired goal was no longer civic equality and participation, but individual psychic well-being.” This would include that of black people as well as nonblack ones, with their racist bias qualifying as a kind of mental imbalance in itself, as thinkers from Douglass through James Baldwin have taught.
The substantial difference would seem to be the secularism of the modern Leftist movement, but Dr. McWhorter explains this isn’t the case:
In fact, however, third-wave antiracism is a profoundly religious movement in everything but terminology. The idea that whites are permanently stained by their white privilege, gaining moral absolution only by eternally attesting to it, is the third wave’s version of original sin. The idea of a someday when America will “come to terms with race” is as vaguely specified a guidepost as Judgment Day. Explorations as to whether an opinion is “problematic” are equivalent to explorations of that which may be blasphemous. The social mauling of the person with “problematic” thoughts parallels the excommunication of the heretic. What is called “virtue signaling,” then, channels the impulse that might lead a Christian to an aggressive display of her faith in Jesus. There is even a certain Church Lady air to much of the patrolling on race these days, an almost performative joy in dog-piling on the transgressor, which under a religious analysis is perfectly predictable.
Add in the tendency to let pass certain wrinkles in the fabric as “complex”—the new religion, as a matter of faith, entails that one suspends disbelief at certain points out of respect to the larger narrative. Beyond a certain point, one must not press too hard when asking a priest why God allows bad things to happen to good people. In the same way, one must not ask, “If black people are strong survivors, then why do they disallow the utterance of the N-word even in referring to it rather than using it?” And if one does dare to ask, the answer is inevitably heavier on rhetoric than reasoning. Antiracism requires one to treat the word as taboo—blasphemous—in all its manifestations and go in peace, as it were.
When someone attests to his white privilege with his hand up in the air, palm outward—which I have observed more than once—the resemblance to testifying in church need not surprise. Here, the agnostic or atheist American who sees fundamentalists and Mormons as quaint reveals himself as, of all things, a parishioner.
Dr. McWhorter then goes on to explain why third wave antiracism isn’t as convincing a project for most people as either the abolitionist movement or the Civil Rights Movement were. I don’t think I can improve upon his arguments or points. I will only try and contribute, especially to his point about how political Leftists will “suspend disbelief” over “complex issues” out of “respect to the larger narrative.” In other words, there is only so far that reason can be pushed before religious tenets contradict each other and the believer finds him or herself faced with the choice of which tenet to violate. We see this in established religions all the time.
An extreme example: Everyone agrees that murder is wrong. But, according to the Bible, God has commanded His followers to murder women and children, repeatedly. (See Joshua 5 and 1 Samuel 15) So in a rhetorical argument those who believe in the Bible as an inerrant text are faced with a fatal contradiction: Murder is evil and wrong, but what do you when God tells you to murder hundreds of people? Your choices are either rebellion against God – a sin so terrible it damned Lucifer forever – or murdering babies – one of the few actions so evil it is universally agreed by everyone to be horrific and those who do it deserve to go to Hell. Either way you go, for the believer in biblical inerrancy there comes a point where reason has to give way to faith and a trust that God will make everything be right and when He contradicts Himself you simply have to choose to believe and obey, even if it means supporting things he or she believes are evil.
Likewise, for the political Leftist there is much said today about being against war, being against racism, being against sexism, standing for women, believing rape survivors, etc. So much so that it is almost a trope to see white Leftists piously virtue signal their desire to truly end racism and try and destroy other Leftists whose professions of faith aren’t pure enough on any subject. The true faith must be testified to and the blasphemers must be excommunicated. Yet, for all this, for all the protests, declarations, and promises, the Leftists in America are gearing up to vote for Joe Biden and it seems that increasingly people are coming to believe that Biden is a Leftist himself. You know, Joe Biden. The man who raped Tara Reade. The man who worked with a segregationist to pass policing laws that create the very conditions that have led to the deaths of George Floyd and many others like him at the hands of murderous police and which protestors are in the streets fighting, sometimes literally. The man who helped pass laws that led to a drastic increase in the mass incarceration of Hispanics and African-Americans, in turn helping to further destroy black families and black communities. You know, the guy who claims that he originally authored the PATRIOT Act in the 90s, thereby claiming the responsibility for its blatant violation of the rights of privacy of millions of Americans. You know, the warmongering cheerleader who as Vice-President helped Obama wage wars all across the Middle East, murdering innocent brown men, women, and children by the hundreds of thousands. (I guess they don’t count though because most of them weren’t Americans.) You know, that Joe Biden (to say nothing of his horrifically racist police state loving running mate.)
Why do Leftists support Biden? When faced with the choice of either disobeying the edicts of their ideological faith in both Party and State or murdering babies, racism, and rape the choice became clear – they would support racism, rape, and baby murdering over facing even the possibility of losing. Reason has gave way to faith so that faith can lead them to political victory and victory means the chance to usher in Judgment Day for their enemies and to install their righteous gospel as the focal point of all lives through law. It is apocalypticism in essence, which makes sense given how so much of modern Leftist politics comes out of Socialism, itself an apocalyptic political religion. Like Joshua at Jericho, Leftists must follow their religion even when it violates everything they claim to value and think is moral or true.
The Need To Be Right
On some level, it has always been this way, not just among Leftists, but Rightest as well. Politics has always had the element of the religious about it. Up until very recently in history most of the leaders of the world either claimed to be god-kings or to be appointed by God/the Gods with a divine right to rule. And when the modern state developed it secularized not by jettisoning those concepts, rather the state itself became the object of veneration and source of divine authority. But acknowledging that only really serves to beg the question, why is it that humans treat politics this way, why do we treat politics like a religion?
Dr. Colin Turfus, makes what I think are some excellent observations about why humans treat politics as religion:
I want to argue here that the essence of religion, what impels people to believe in God and what causes that belief to impact on how they live their lives, is the fact that it addresses a fundamental human need for moral certainty. It is not only religious “zealots” who get obsessed about good and evil. All human beings do: some more, some less, some in the name of this God some in the name of that, and others in the name of some other cause, which might even be atheism, or atheistic communism. For, ultimately, how are we able to make value choices?
…It is not these myths of origin which give moral force to the “commandments” but rather the commitment of a moral community. …Our moral compass takes its bearings not from abstract reasoning but from our life experience, which is more than just our own inner world and personal desires, but also our perception of the inner world of others and of their desires and expectations.
We all want to be right. We want to think the right things, say the right words, do the right things. We have a fundamental need to be morally correct, to be right. Furthermore, we want to be right because it makes us an acceptable part of the human community. Religion is not just abstract commandments with a fantastical origin. Religion is about how those ideas and beliefs determine what is right and then binds together a community of the righteous, those who all agree with and live according to the shared definition of righteousness, of right-ness, those commandments lay out. Humans in general don’t just want to be right, but we want to be right with everyone else who is also right, our “moral community.” Politics and political parties function as massive “moral communities” in every nation where you’re a member not just because it gives you some advantage, but because you believe that party and those positions are right, making everyone else wrong. And that makes value choices, decisions about what is right or wrong easy. You simply have to follow the party and the platform. The political ideology will do all the thinking for you. You need but obey.
Dr. Turfus continues:
We seek meaning and value but these things only come in our relationship with the world beyond. We require moral certainty because doing “the right thing” usually comes at some cost to us and we want the assurance that our efforts will be appreciated as such.
But more than that, we also become evangelists for our moral framework. In the event that not everyone recognises our actions in pursuit of our values as worthy, we seek to dissuade them from their criticism, first by entreaty and then if necessary by coercion, usually in collusion with like-minded others. Similarly, we engage in polemical criticism of those whose behaviours we see as not aligned with our moral compass, although rarely to their face; instead we share our views with those whom we expect to be sympathetic to them on the premise that the amplification of criticism of the behaviour may eventually result in its modification. However equally important for the person making the criticism is on many occasions the burnishing of credentials (also known as “Pharisaism”), whereby public demonstration of our commitment to the highest moral standards serves mainly as a means of enhancing or protecting our reputation (usually at the expense of those being criticised).
In other words, we want the world to realize we are right and we signal that through seeking to attack and destroy those positions that are counter to our own while at the same time demonstrating to the public, and especially our “moral community” of likeminded believers, that we hold the truly righteous positions. In Dr. Whorter’s words we have to make an “aggressive display of [our] faith” – i.e. we virtue signal. All those student demonstrations, people yelling in each other’s faces, the mass internet hate, none of them are about conversion. They’re all about preaching to the choir as it were, about saying to the rest of the True Believers that you are right, that they are right, and that anyone who disagrees is an apostate and an infidel that needs to be excommunicated and destroyed. It is why Leftists so often seek out and destroy other Leftists whose ideas are even slightly at variance with the accepted dogmas. Everything is black and white, either you believe exactly as they do or you’re a hateful, bigoted monster to be slain. It is about creating and reinforcing their “moral community.”
As Dr. Turfus explains:
And, as with moral crusades in the past, virtue and vice having been distinguished and the latter having been exposed, it is for the high priests who are the custodians of moral certainty to prescribe how atonement and salvation are to be achieved. So it is that, following each new scandal or injustice uncovered, the clamour increases for a new commission or regulatory body with quasi-legislative inquisitorial powers. For those charged with such onerous responsibilities as custodians of public morals, it is never enough that the letter of the law is adhered to or duties half-heartedly discharged. The public must be seen to celebrate and take pride in the new moral framework which has been imposed on them, join in chorus to condemn those who hold to the old ways and testify to the great social improvement and enhancement of justice which is being achieved thereby. And, should they fail to do so, they should be “called out” as the collaborators and facilitators of wrongdoing which they are.
Dr. Turfus compare s all this to a “witch hunt,” but I think there is an even better term for it. It is a modern Holy Inquisition, out to hunt down the blasphemer and torture form him or her a confession of sin and cry of repentance through a modern auto de fé or to burn them at the stake. You think that is a bit much of a comparison? Well, consider this: Let’s say I lose my job because I disagree with the Leftists about transgenderism. After all, no one wants to be the business that employs a bigot. Now I can’t pay for my home, afford my car, or feed my family. I’m faced with the choice of repent -renounce my heretical beliefs- or starve, and not just me but my family as well. Is that not torture? Is that not public punishment until either I change or be destroyed? Or say I refuse to make a cake for a gay couple because I believe gay marriage is wrong. Now the state shutdowns my business and I lose everything I’ve ever worked for in my life and suffer all the other problems above, all because I disagreed in a way that harmed no one. My life is destroyed not because I have caused physical or even meaningful emotional harm to the life, liberty, or property of anyone. My life is to be destroyed because I do to hold to the same faith tenets or express my faith in those tenets in the exact same way that the Leftists believe I should. And everyone who doesn’t celebrate this is an immediate suspect and target themselves.
The Counter-Reformation
C.S. Lewis once wrote (pg. 150):
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
Tyrants and dictators will at least be satisfied when you give them what they want, your money or your obedience. But the “moral busybodies,” who believe it is their appointed goal to usher in a Secular Zion by force of law are not satisfied with mere obedience. They wish to reach into your heart and soul and to change them, to convert you to their cause and their purpose. And given the impossibility of their mission, as Dr. McWhorter noted, that means that they never rest or leave you alone. They are always looking out for you to say or do something that shows you are an apostate so that they can pounce upon you and “save” you and society. And because they are always right they will always feel justified and righteous in their actions, no matter how much they lay waste to the lives of others. After all, who cares about Nazis/racists/homophobes/transphobes/misogynists/ad nauseum? If you do, you’re probably one of them anyway. If I didn’t know better I would think I was living in Plymouth, circa 1621.
The cure for all this is layered. On the basic layer it is simply a political counter-reformation that rejects this form of modern Puritanism. It isn’t a return to the “politics of old” (the idol of the conservative, which we will discuss in the near future) because, as I’ve touched on before, this kind of political religiosity is about as old as human history can trace back. If we are to truly move forward and reject the modern Inquisition we have to create something new, a society that truly values liberty, that truly believes in inalienable human rights, that truly believes in the consent of the governed, that rejects violence as a means of governance and law as a method for creating the ideal New Man. Instead we merely must embrace in adult life what we teach our children -that hitting other people and taking their stuff is bad. The centuries old ideas of true Liberalism would suffice to check the Leftist religion and grind its eschatological goals to a halt.
At the deeper level though this will only have a limited outcome. As Dr. Turfus noted, people hunger for truth and righteousness, for “moral certainty.” Therefore what is needed is a spiritual Counter-Reformation, to heal the souls of the world. If we are to keep people from turning to the State as God and politics as secular faith then we have to teach them about the One True God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. And not the watered down doctrines coming out of academia or the convoluted and corrupted doctrines of apostate Christianity. Now more than ever the message of the Restoration -that God lives and speaks and you can know Him as He knows you! – is as important and as powerful as the day it was first given. C.S. Lewis once said (pg. 28):
Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the Enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.
Yes, the world is occupied by our Enemy, an enemy who has vowed to gather the armies and navies of the world and use them to reign upon the Earth with blood and horror. But we are all part of the masterful counterstrike by the Lord of Hosts and in these last days He has established His beachhead in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and given us the the weapons necessary to defeat our ancient foe. As we are further and further converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and place His Kingdom as the foremost goal of our lives, public and private, then we will spread His rule abroad, not through strength of arms but, in the words of Gandhi, through the power of soul-force and the Spirit of God. In doing so people will learn the true moral direction, not just from the words of books thousands of years old, but through the modern teachings of modern Prophets and Apostles, through the modern Word of God espoused today and thereby finally find the answers to the questions they didn’t even know they had and, at last, true and lasting Peace through the Prince of Peace.