Contemplate the swelling numbers of followers for Instagram wellness gurus, the hundred of thousands of denizens of QAnon message boards, the gaudy and growing subscriber lists for conspiracy theory YouTubers, and the cult-like explosion of critical race theory. Now consider that these believers aren’t coming from nowhere.

These are people, or the type of people, who used to go to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque. Some of them, as individuals, were never part of an organized religion, but they are the children or generational counterparts of churchgoers.