What is unfolding before our eyes is a new secular religion. For all its claims of “inclusivity,” this new faith is deeply intolerant. It has roots in the American past that would likely surprise its adherents: the Puritan era of our nation’s earliest religious zealots. Progressives are now engaged in doing theology without God.

Since the death of George Floyd, a movement that condemns America as “systemically racist” has convulsed our public consciousness. Sixty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — and despite decades of affirmative action, massive social welfare spending and a two-term Black president — we are told that “white supremacy” deforms America today, as it has throughout history.

The movement to eradicate “white privilege” manifests in demands to defund police and in the toppling of statues — not only of Confederate generals, but of figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, even George Washington.

Educational, business, media, nonprofit and entertainment institutions have taken up the “systemic racism” mantra with breathtaking speed, issuing statements declaring their virtue and right thinking.

Yet something is profoundly amiss in the frenzied movement that has America in its grip. This movement elevates passion over reason and dogma over data. It contemptuously rejects, and attempts to silence, calls for objective analysis as self-evidently racist.

In the process, it requires adherents to turn a blind eye to its stark inconsistencies. For example, while its votaries blocked Interstate 94 and torched whole neighborhoods in the name of justice for Floyd, who died at the hands of police, they are silent about the rain of gunfire and soaring death toll from Black-on-Black violence in Minneapolis since then. As of Friday, the city had had 37 homicides in 2020 — nearly twice as many as this time last year — and at least 274 people have been shot, nearly a 60% increase. Nationally, about 90% of Black murder victims are killed by other blacks, where the race of the killer is known, according to the FBI.

What is unfolding before our eyes is a new secular religion. For all its claims of “inclusivity,” this new faith is deeply intolerant. It has roots in the American past that would likely surprise its adherents: the Puritan era of our nation’s earliest religious zealots. Progressives are now engaged in doing theology without God. “ Woke is the new Saved,” in the words of commentator John Zmirak.

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