There are necessary corollaries to that belief, which long shaped the political debate. That individual success is a means of advancing the general good. That there are limits to what any of us can accomplish on our own. That our actions must serve some higher purpose. And that, individually and collectively, Americans can and must do great things.

Hillary Clinton, a devout Methodist, tends not to discuss her Christian faith before general audiences, or to infuse her rhetoric with the language of religion. In that, she follows the path of many recent Democratic nominees. (Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, argues that this aversion to the language of public religion is what turned evangelicals into Republicans, writing that it is “more accurate to conceive of much of grassroots white America as being repelled by a secular left, than as attracted by the particular policy visions of a religious right.”) On Monday night, Clinton limited herself to passing references to the black church and faith communities as civic institutions.

Nor, more significantly, did she invoke the language of civil religion. She did stress that “we have to bring communities together,” and refer to the “future we’ll build together,” but there was little emphasis on either America’s distinctive mission, or on the individual or collective responsibility to achieve it.

Trump, on the other hand, didn’t just abandon the rhetoric of American religion; he repudiated it. He spoke sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the majestic plural, but always to explain what he himself intended to do, and never to summon his fellow Americans to join him in the work. The solutions he offered all rested, to greater or lesser extents, on actions he would take as president.

He promised to impose law and order. To renegotiate trade deals. “I will bring back jobs,” he said. “I’ll be reducing taxes tremendously.” He didn’t ask Americans to make any sacrifices. He didn’t tell them what they might achieve together. He didn’t affirm that his own actions are subordinate to some higher purpose.

To the contrary. When Clinton criticized him for profiting from the misfortune of others in the housing crash, he defended himself: “That’s called business, by the way.” When she hit him for stiffing his creditors, he said he’d just “taken advantage of the laws of the nation.” When she attacked him as a tax-dodger who failed to shoulder his share of responsibility for the common good by paying federal income taxes, he replied: “That makes me smart.”

It’s easy to get so caught up in the madness of 2016 that all of this seems normal. But the Clinton-Trump debate was decidedly Marxian in its assumptions—all about material concerns, with little regard for higher purpose. To see the contrast, look back just four years, to the first presidential debate of 2012. Obama stressed that his policies were “designed to make sure that the American people—their genius, their grit, their determination—is channeled and they have an opportunity to succeed.”