While Christianity, especially in its mainline Protestant denominations, has been in continuous demographic decline in the U.S., there has been a steady growth of what some observers have termed “neopaganism.” The trend may have seen its most public manifestation when a group of self-described witches gathered in a Brooklyn bookstore and “metaphysical boutique” to put a hex on Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate hearings on his confirmation to the Supreme Court. There are also “spiritual but not religious” practices, often associated with bodily health, and often available only at a price—ranging from healing crystals to the evocatively named SoulCycle exercise classes.

Together, do these point to a form of paganism, or an emerging post-Christian religious reality? What is the chance that some sort of quasi-pagan spirituality will become America’s dominant religion? Ross Douthat, Tara Isabella Burton, and Steven D. Smith—all three of whom have written books on this subject—discuss these and many other related questions. (Video, 86 minutes.)

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.