By Samuel Benson
Opinion Writer
Deseret News
As vaccine distribution continues and we inch closer to a normal summer, America’s religious communities face both good news and bad news.
The good news for churches? COVID-19 did little to hamper their congregants’ loyalties. Nine of 10 Protestant churchgoers, one recent poll says, plan to return to their pre-pandemic congregation as soon as it is safe. Ten percent (10%) of all American adults — religious or not — plan to attend church more post-pandemic than they did before.
The bad news, though, is the rise of a new religion: politics, which attracted its own set of converts during the pandemic.
The problem, some would say, is not just the rise of politics and fall of faith. Politics are not inherently bad, nor are all Americans theists. But as politics replace faith, fueled by hate, the irony (and danger) of it isn’t lost on religious politicians themselves. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Latter-day Saint, decried this pandemic-era mentality and the shift from pews to PACs: “We may not have any real friends, and we may not know our neighbors, but at least we can hate the same people together on Facebook. And that’s bringing people together in this new type of religion.”
Cox’s recent podcast interview with Daily Beast columnist Matt Lewis is well worth a listen, but his comments on the intersection of politics and religion deserve special consideration. “We used to be a religious people that engaged in politics,” he lamented. “Now, politics has become a religion for many people.”
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