And here’s the thing: Going to church may make a Trump vote more likely, but it’s a vote that comes from a different set of beliefs than a Trump vote cast by a member of the irreligious right. Polling has found the “more often a Trump voter attended church, the less white-identitarian they appeared, the more they expressed favorable views of racial minorities, and the less they agreed with populist arguments on trade and immigration,” wrote The New York Times’ conservative columnist, Ross Douthat, in 2018. The differences were particularly sharp on matters of race and racism, Douthat observed, with “[s]ecularized Trump voters” pairing “an inchoate economic populism with strong racial resentments.” Unchurched Republicans were nearly three times as likely as churchgoers to say their whiteness is “very important” to their identity.

It may be tempting for those outside the right to dismiss this evolution as irrelevant if the presidential votes are the same regardless. That would be a mistake. As French conservative Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry wrote for The Week in 2017, “[i]f you didn’t like the Christian right, you’ll really hate the post-Christian right,” because “the Christian gospel’s relentless focus on the intrinsic dignity of every human being, and on Christ’s focus on the outcast and the outsider, at least can put a brake” on racism and other types of identitarianism.

As the right secularizes, that constraint is fading. A post-religious right has no reason to attempt to see inherent worth in its political opponents. It needn’t have “opponents,” in fact, just enemies. It can shrug at “s–thole countries” and “grab ’em by the pussy” and anything cruel or foul or even illegal as long as the other side is on the receiving end, because winning is what matters. All is transactional. All is consequentialist. Own the libs. Claim the power. Revel in the thrill. (A headline at American Greatness, entirely sincere: “I won’t take the [COVID-19] vaccine because it makes liberals mad.”)