In contemporary American political religions, only violence sacralizes. We impart holiness to things by imagining them to be under assault.

It is the byproduct of a certain Taylorian vision of the secular age as characterized by interminable optionality. Religion is always there, but it is always optional. One takes it or leaves it. It is no longer the inescapable and pervasive atmosphere of our lives.

And so we can only impart to religion the urgency of the sacred by imagining its optionality being suspended; saying, someone wants to take this away from you.

Because perhaps religious pluralism allows the freedom to believe what you like, but can only deliver the existential and political urgency of that belief by fantasizing about its repression.

So, perversely, Americans consummate their religious liberty by fantasizing about its imminent negation.