Religious or not, social justice is a hot commodity in the current climate. And Warnock could not have better credentials. He is the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Ga., the former congregation of Martin Luther King Jr. As for his personal story, he grew up in a housing project in Savannah and his mother worked as cotton picker. Of course, he believes "unequivocally in a woman's right to choose," and is "a proud ally of LGBTQ+ rights." But while these positions might ordinarily be off-putting to Christian voters, he has a useful decoy, handed to him on a silver platter by the Republican Party -- self-identified Christian nationalists.

In his first sermon upon being elected senator, Warnock spoke of "the ugly side" of the "great and grand American story," and recalled how the "crude and the angry and the disrespectful and the violent break their way into the People's House, some carrying Confederate flags, signs and symbols of an old world order passing away." Continuing the Biblical imagery, he said: "You cut the head off a snake, it shakes and moves violently, not because it is living but because it is dying."

It would be easy to dismiss this hyperbolic oratory as mere political theater, but consider the numbers. Warnock won Georgia; so did Biden. What does that say? On the 2020 presidential election, Politico's Gabby Orr reported that

between 47 percent and 50 percent of Catholic voters support Trump -- a small decline from 2016, but enough to cost him the Rust Belt states that mattered most to his path to victory. Nationally, the president carried white Catholics by a 15-point margin, according to AP/VoteCast data, marking a significant decline from his 33-point margin over Hillary Clinton four years ago.

Trump's slippage with white evangelicals was less pronounced -- surveys showed him carrying 76 percent to 78 percent of the white, born-again Christian vote -- a slight decrease from 2016, when he won support from about 8 in 10 white evangelicals. But it had far-reaching implications for the president in states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, where current vote totals show him losing by less than 1 percent.

Speaking broadly and in terms of general political perception, the "Christian Right" has compromised itself by making a fundamentally Faustian bargain with the 45th president. Biden effectively seized on this, and successfully framed his campaign as the battle for the "soul" of the nation. To attack Biden's wishy-washy, feel-good Christianity -- or the gospel of social justice -- requires a credible and functioning alternative. To attack his sincerity is a strategic mistake. Let he who is without hypocrisy cast the first stone. The religious Left is here to stay. If Republicans want to understand why, they might start by looking in the mirror.