I've long believed that the rise of alt right among American evangelicals was fundamentally a Q of discipleship. No surprise that it acts like religion.
But to @DavidAFrench's point, both far left & right are fundamentally (no pun intended) trying to answer Qs of justification. Everyone is asking how do I attain righteousness & how do I keep it? How do I know I'm a "good" person?
The answer almost always rests on personal performance, tribal affiliation, purity tests, & separating from the impure. It rarely includes humility & grace.
And to be clear, the Q is not about specific policy initiatives or finding the best way forward. It's a disposition to opponents & a way of moving through the world that prioritizes individual sense of purity & power over reasonable compromise & common good.
This kind of fundamentalism, whether political or religious, is powerful b/c it plays on base instincts. It leverages fear of others & fear of one's own unrighteousness. The 2nd being a larger fear, imo.
W/out repentance & grace, all we have is self-justifying performance, condemning others while soothing our own guilt. Left to ourselves, this is the only way we know how to deal w/ evil.
This is why the gospel is truly "good news"--it offers a way forward. It shows a path of life through humility, grace, & self-sacrfice. All of which are the antithesis of self-justfiying fundamentalism.
So when folks say that the answer to our political divide is "the Gospel," I believe them. But I'm also not convinced that they understand what the gospel asks of them. I'm not sure they realize that they'll have to give up their own righteousness to follow it.
E.g. It's my annectdotal observation that churches steeped in religious performance & legalism are least capable of acknowledging cultural sins that might touch them.
They can see other's sins b/c it is no threat to their sense of righteousness. But seeing their own complicity in national sins would disrupt everything they've built their goodness on: themselves.
Those most able to face the challenge of acknowledging cultural sins are those who are safe in God's mercy, those who know they were never pure enough & good enough in the first place.
