How Politics Replaced Religion in the American Soul

We once argued about politics at the dinner table and then cleared the dishes. 

Today, people cut old friends out of their lives. Families avoid each other’s calls. Marriages strain under the weight of partisan loyalty.

Something crucial has shifted. Politics hasn’t just grown louder; it’s become personal, even sacred.

Our phones tell the story. Before we are fully awake, screens light up our faces. 

News alerts demand emotional attention: fear, outrage, vindication. The feed is never neutral; it invites us to feel before we think. 

These small hits of alarm and adrenaline shape us. Social media was once entertainment; now it’s formation.

Psychologists call this identity fusion, when political belief merges with personal identity. If someone questions our view, it feels like they’re questioning our worth. 

Neuroscientists add that outrage activates the body’s threat systems, flooding us with chemicals that make us feel purposeful, even righteous. No wonder we can’t look away.

This isn’t just theory. 

A University of Nebraska–Lincoln study found that one in five Americans now report politics has harmed their physical or mental health. Another shows that partisan exposure triggers the same stress responses we experience in danger. 

Our bodies respond to disagreement as if survival is at stake. Part of this comes from the weight we’ve placed on politics.

We want to belong. We want to matter. 

Filling the Void

We crave assurance that the world still makes sense. When traditional sources of meaning weaken (i.e. faith communities, civic organizations, neighborhood ties), politics rushes in to fill the void.

Sociologist Robert Bellah saw this coming, warning in 1967 that the United States had formed a “civil religion” that told us who we are and what we should revere. Philosopher Eric Voegelin cautioned that when transcendence is lost, ideology becomes a substitute for salvation. Lesslie Newbigin observed that modern societies expect the state to provide not only security, but purpose.

Today, that trend is accelerating. Elections feel existential. Politicians speak in messianic terms. 

Ordinary disagreements take on the heat of heresy.

If politics becomes the source of identity, opponents become mortal threats. We divide the world into righteous and wicked and tell ourselves we’re simply being informed. This intensity is eroding our trust in one another and in our institutions. 

According to the Pew Research Center, more than 70 percent of Americans now believe the other political party is immoral or dangerous. That’s not a difference of opinion; that’s panic wearing a partisan mask. 

When fear guides us, democracy begins to crack. We cannot cherish the common good while treating our neighbors as enemies. We cannot sustain a republic without relationships.

What Now?

So what do we do? First, we admit the stakes are real. Policy decisions can harm people. Civil rights can be upended. Leaders can damage the foundations of democracy and undermine the obligations that hold us together.

But caring about politics does not require worship. Political engagement does not need to cost us our compassion. 

The question is not whether we act, but whether we can act without losing sight of each other’s humanity. To get there, we must pay attention to what is shaping our hearts.

The work starts small. It looks like choosing conversation over cancellation. It looks like spending time with someone who votes differently, not to persuade them, but simply to know them.

It looks like treating curiosity as a civic virtue and refusing to let algorithms tell us which people are worthy of love.

This is not a call to withdraw. It’s a call to return to empathy, to community, to the belief that democracy depends on our ability to recognize the dignity of those with whom we disagree. 

We will not agree on everything, but agreement has never been the requirement for shared life. Connection is.

So, before the next election cycle ramps up and before the next fear-soaked headline arrives, perhaps we should pause long enough to ask: What is shaping who I am becoming? If partisan politics monopolizes that answer, anxiety will keep running the show. Outrage will keep writing our scripts and fear will keep deciding who is in and who is out.

We deserve better than that. Our neighbors deserve better, too.

A healthier democracy will not appear because one side defeats the other. It will grow because ordinary citizens choose to remain human, to see each other as more than votes and views.

Politics matters. It always will. But it cannot be our source of hope.

May grace hold what fear has hardened.