The elite culture is so wedded to individualism, choice, secularity and freedom from restraint that it cannot accept the fact that religions are communities that operate in and out of the political arena on shared moral beliefs. As [Stephen] Carter writes, the churches are intermediate institutions (situated between the individual and the state) "to which citizens owe a separate allegiance."

Religion is a form of organized resistance to the state and culture. Its social and political function is to resist conventional wisdom on grounds of clear principle: "A religion is, at its heart, a way of denying the authority of the rest of the world."