In her recent column “Can ‘We the People’ Survive the AI Revolution”, Peggy Noonan explored what it will take for our nation to endure the next 50 years. Ms. Noonan offered three prescriptions. The second? A “deeply rooted faith in God.” Her advice to the 29% of Americans who “don’t have that” was to “get it.”
Ms. Noonan is misdiagnosing the moment we’re living in.
The existential threat to our democracy is not a lack of faith, but growing hostility to religious pluralism from the White Christian Nationalist movement, which seeks to redefine American identity in sectarian terms.
Ms. Noonan was moved, rightly, by New Yorkers chanting, “My mayor is Muslim, my bagel is Jewish, the Pope’s on our side, Knicks in five.” She heard it as evidence that Americans are not as hopelessly divided as some claim. On that, I agree.
But the beauty of that moment was not that they shared the same theology. It was that they did not.
So much of today’s division is driven by the insistence that Americans must share the same beliefs to belong. While Ms. Noonan may reject White Christian Nationalism, telling millions of nonreligious Americans to simply “get” faith in your god rests on the same flawed assumption: that a certain religious belief is a prerequisite for good citizenship and our nation’s future.
The United States has endured because we share a commitment to freedom — not to any one faith. The promise of American democracy is that people of every religion and none stand as equal citizens.
If we make it to 2076, it will be by embracing that pluralism, not demanding conformity.