Yet, many modern organizers will say it’s a collective belief in one another, not God, that sustains a movement. Opal Tometi, a co-founder Black Lives Matter, has described the movement as one created “out of a profound sense of black love. We wanted to affirm to our people that we love one another, and that no matter how many times we hear about the extrajudicial killing of a community member, we would mourn, and affirm the value of their life.”

Black Lives Matter has intentionally positioned itself outside of organized religion in an attempt to challenge the norms of religious institutions, particularly concerning issues of sexuality and male-centered leadership. But the embrace of the secular seems to be a failure on the part of the movement — despite small wins in cities that are mostly liberal, the most lasting impact has been a change of conversation. And even then, the Black Lives Matter mantra has been co-opted by liberals as a political slogan rather than a pointed ideological conviction. Without the centralized leadership, oratorical strength and widespread influence organized religion has historically provided to black liberation struggles, it has been difficult for the movement to sustain itself on a national front.

I fear that absent the structural and rhetorical power offered by organized religion, it will become increasingly difficult for the left to fight the growing ideology of right wing extremism, an ideology that has always been heavily undergirded by its own religious dogma. Religion has long been crucial to the right wing in pushing its legislative agenda. In the early 1960s, for instance, the Supreme Court decisions restricting teacher-led prayer and Bible reading in the public schools helped ignite the religious right to political action , and their influence within the Republican Party has grown steadily ever since.

White evangelical support for President Trump exceeded 80 percent in the 2016 election, and they remain critical to his base. The Trump administration has often cited religious freedom in its efforts to allow medical providers to deny reproductive health care and empower anti-LGBTQ discrimination by federal contractors.

Assuming leftism to be inherently antagonistic to organized religion does a great disservice to both the history of progressive movements and modern progressivism itself, as collective belief provides both a program and a passion essential to anti-oppression movements. In many ways, the political is made more significant when intertwined with the spiritual, as belief supersedes political motivation in pursuit of a world vision that is exalted as the will of God. In the words of Dr. King: “Religious obligations are met by one’s commitment to an inner law, a law written on the heart. Man-made laws assure justice, but a higher law produces love.”

Beyond politics, perhaps what we lose with the decline of collective belief more than anything is this notion of radical love, one that extends beyond identity politics or civic obligation. As I consider the generational decline of organized religion, I imagine the good collective faith can still achieve. These days, when I participate in a climate march or donate money to organizations like the Trans Women of Color Collective, I do so as much out of religious obligation as a political one. Beyond a tendency toward compassion and empathy, religion has ingrained in me the notion that I am indeed my brother’s keeper; that another’s well-being is inextricably bound up with my own.

I think often of that morning 17 years ago, waiting alongside my mother and sisters at the doors of the church, standing in the need of more than prayer. That day I came to know the God of Love only through the Love of God, a love that was extended by strangers beholden to me only by a system of collective belief. If anything has the potential to “Save the Soul of America,” surely that love can.

Bianca Vivion Brooks is a writer based in Harlem.

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