The strong religious component in AA meetings needs no explanation, and this teacher is openly calling for him and his colleagues to, essentially, come together and pray, self-flagellate – complete with dismissing those in disagreement as not belonging in the setting, having no place among them. Just imagine this blithe, tribalist kind of dismissal coming from anyone you had as a teacher in your life, and yet now, zealots like this man are normal in institutions of instruction. This man likely doesn’t realize that he, despite likely happily guffawing at the thought of Jerry Falwell and looking upon Ultra-Orthodox Jewish people as curiosities, is on the vanguard of a religious faith himself. If this kind of thing is just “like a religion” rather than being one, then I assume that those who feel that way would comfortably classify Roseanne Barr’s likening of Valerie Jarrett to apes as “like racism,” Donald Trump’s referring to black people as “the blacks” and regularly assigning the label of “dumb” to black people as “like racism.” Why the binary logic with racism but suddenly an almost aesthetic sensitivity to gradations when it comes to religion? What we have been seeing over the past year in terms of how serious people are comfortable presenting themselves and their thoughts is analogous to watching creationism taught alongside evolution. It’s scary, whether or not I’m an atheist and whether or not I’m up on my Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and Niebuhr.