By Spencer James, Hal Boyd, and Jason Carroll

From a global pandemic and nationwide protests to a contested presidential election, this year seems tailor-made to expose America’s partisan fault lines. Those hoping for a blue or red wave to unite the country on election night were undoubtedly disappointed. What the returns revealed instead was a divided electorate.

Even before the election results underscored America’s political gulf, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her faith became something of a national Rorschach test for where Americans line up on the partisan spectrum. Some viewed Barrett’s Catholicism, and her involvement with the charismatic Christian community, People of Praise, as tantamount to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. For others, Barrett’s faith was evidence of her character and integrity—a signal that she’d live up to her oath to “impartially discharge the duties of the office.”

What explains this divergence?

The data suggest that our national divide is deeper than just knee-jerk partisanship—it involves a confluence of religio-geographic trends in the United States that all but guarantee the kind of political gridlock we saw manifest this month at the ballot box. The United States is not a purely secular nation—nor is it a fully religious one. The country stands out among its international peers as distinctly balanced. And acknowledging this reality may be the first step to burying the country’s cultural weapons of war and embracing a posture of greater political pluralism and cooperation.

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