Who can blame them? The progressive ideology that in recent years has swept through mainstream American Protestantism is often impenetrable to those from non-Western countries.

And yet, it is just such immigrants who are keeping Christianity alive in our secular world — everywhere from France’s Afro-Caribbean megachurches to London’s Black Majority Churches. In America, the number of citizens identifying as Christians has fallen from 90% to 64% in the last 50 years, while immigrants are becoming more influential: more than two thirds of them are Christians.

American progressives are increasingly stoking fears of an incipient “white Christian nationalism” bringing about a Cromwellian theocracy. But white Americans have actually been secularising at a slightly faster rate than other ethnicities. While black Americans have also experienced secularisation, they are still more likely to go to church and pray than the average American. And African immigrants to the US are more religious than American-born black people. The rise of Latino evangelicals in America has also been receiving mainstream coverage.

“Conservative Christians”, the bogeyman for white progressives, are therefore increasingly likely to be people of colour — the very people whose voices progressives apparently want to amplify. Christians of African origin are far more likely to hold conservative views on sexuality, while Latino evangelicals are quickly becoming a Republican bloc.

White conservatives, meanwhile, have a tendency to bemoan the secularisation of the West and the decline of traditional values, while supporting restrictive immigration processes — perhaps not realising that non-Western immigrants are more likely to be socially conservative than American-born citizens, or perhaps because their economic or tribal instincts trump their religious ones. Both progressives and conservatives are therefore mired in contradiction.

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Despite the fact that liberals are secularising faster than conservatives, for the last decade, the leadership of the United Methodist Church has been adopting views on sexuality and gender identity that are in line with those of secular progressives, triggering a slow-motion denominational schism. Some years ago, I attended a UMC conference with my parents at which some attendees wore rainbow armbands in support of a movement to ordain gay clergy. Almost all of them were white. None of the representatives from immigrant congregations, and few from black congregations, wore the armbands. “Before I came to America, I thought this was a nation built on Christian values,” commented one attendee. “Why are these people going against God’s will?”

A progressive Christian might see this as a contradiction: if Jesus came from Heaven to help the marginalised, why do these marginalised Christians antagonise a fellow marginalised group? Liberal white people, who usually preach multicultural ideals, cannot answer this question honestly without making it sound like Western culture has the “correct” view on sexuality — the major irony being that progressives dismiss Western culture for what they see as regressive views.

While progressives blame “the Christian Right” for society’s ills, religious conservatives often complain about “woke Christianity”. They point to examples such as Allendale United Methodist Church, which had a “non-binary” drag queen deliver sermons and bills itself as “a church that is committed to anti-racism and radical solidarity with folx on the margins”. They argue that such acts are based on ideology stemming from the secular world rather than theology based on Biblical exegesis.

A similar dynamic can be observed in the UK. Earlier this year, the Church of England floated the idea of using gender-neutral pronouns for God, and allowed prayers of blessing for gay couples. The backlash was swift. Many bishops in Africa and Asia rejected the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury — and criticised the Anglican church’s (largely white) leadership. But even within the UK, there was fierce opposition to progressive Christianity from ethnic minorities, who are keeping Britain’s Christian population from declining.

However, the religious conservatives probably have less to worry about than the progressives, in the long run. If progressive Christian churches align themselves more closely to the values of secular society than to religious ones, they will cease to exist. A similar phenomenon can be seen in American Judaism. Orthodox Jews, who take their faith seriously, and mostly vote Republican, are currently in the minority, but they are estimated to grow to become the dominant branch of American Judaism by 2050. This is partly due to birth rates, but also because non-Orthodox Jews, who mostly vote Democrat, are secularising quickly; they are far more likely to partner with non-Jews, stop observing Jewish traditions, or to cease to identify as Jewish altogether. Christianity, too, looks set to depend on the most orthodox sustaining the faith.

It is ironic that Christianity is now seen as “problematic” by progressives, because the roots of liberalism, which opened the door for progressivism, partially derive from Christianity — or Protestantism, to be specific. It was the Reformation that shifted religious practices away from a central authority to that of individuals. As Tom Holland has pointed out, almost every country that has legalised gay marriage has been shaped by centuries of both liberalism and Protestantism.

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It is also ironic that white progressives support multiculturalism over assimilation, because it is the latter that would align the beliefs of immigrant communities with the values of the utopia dreamed of in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion trainings. In other words, though liberalism paved the way for immigration and multiculturalism, immigration and multiculturalism actually weaken liberalism; though Christianity paved the way for liberalism, Christianity could prove liberalism’s downfall.

The tension between a multicultural utopia pushed by secular progressives versus the socially conservative, religious-inflected attitudes many non-white groups hold has led to quite a few awkward skirmishes. While most black people vote for the same party as white liberals, 37% of black Democrats say their religious views influence how they think about transgender topics, compared to only 11% of white Democrats. While 66% of black Democrats say a person’s gender is their sex determined at birth, only 27% of white Democrats say the same.

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Conservatives in America are also tying themselves in strange knots. A common refrain is that Islam is incompatible with Western civilisation. And yet, some conservative Christians find themselves allied with Muslims against what they both see as America’s decadent hyper-individualistic secular culture. In a number of American cities, Muslims have joined conservative Christians to protest the inclusion of explicitly LGBT-themed books in elementary schools, leading to accusations that “some Muslim families” are “on the same side of an issue as White supremacists and outright bigots”. To progressives, a “bigot” is a stereotypical white Christian conservative; to see non-white Muslim families standing beside them in droves caught many off guard. An all-Muslim city council in Michigan was once held up by liberals as a symbol of diversity, until it voted earlier this year to ban Pride flags being flown on city property, to the delight of many social conservatives. Slate has gone so far as to call Muslim voters “the new Republicans” — an unexpected twist after two decades of Republican fear-mongering against Islam.

At the same time, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a Hindu, has gone from a virtual unknown to third place in the Republican primary, by picking up the support of many conservative Christian voters. Ramaswamy does not shy away from his faith, but rather emphasises the similarities between certain schools of Hindu and Christian thought. Many conservative Christians, it seems, would rather ally with conservatives from other religions than Christians on the other side of the political divide.

It has taken a cosmic convergence of contradictions to get to this point. White progressives, with their absolute devotion to immigration, have inadvertently championed immigrants from cultures that outrightly reject progressivism. With their just-as-absolute devotion to multiculturalism, those same white progressives have created a trap for themselves where they are unable to criticise a non-white person’s culture, values or beliefs — even when they actively go against sacred progressive views on gender and sexuality. Meanwhile, white conservatives find themselves forging alliances with people they never thought they’d work with — people whose entry into the country they might have objected to. Old alliances are dissolving — and battle lines are drawn anew.

Boba has a reputation for being a drink that’s all sugar and no substance. Likewise, a boba liberal is an Asian who uncritically subscribes to the Democrat party line that “diversity is our strength!”, while making shallow tributes to Asian-American identity, such as celebrating representation in Hollywood. While it is commonly used by conservatives, “boba liberalism” was actually named by the other sworn enemy of liberals: Leftists. It was coined by a socialist Twitter activist, who wrote that “Boba Liberalism is thinking t-shirts, products, and merchandise are the main way of affirming one’s racial identity”.

The term is also used to describe Asians who are deemed to have been “whitewashed” — to have abandoned their “authentic” Asian identity to assimilate into the middle class. But how do you decide what counts as “authentic”, when the whole concept of Asian-American identity is built on a shaky foundation? African Americans are mostly descended from individuals who crossed the Atlantic centuries ago as slaves, and are therefore disconnected from their ancestors: they had no choice but to create a new culture from scratch, which gives it a coherence. Asian Americans, by contrast, have only existed in significant numbers for the past few decades. They have stronger ties, as well as living relatives, with other hugely varying nations. Bureaucracy may still lump together East and South Asians, but the two groups are two distinct races in everyday life. Ironically, in an era when racial minorities are encouraged to think about themselves as categories on a census form, boba liberalism is pushing a pan-Asian identity that does not actually exist.

The recent New York Times article “What Does It Mean to Be an Asian American Brewer?” is a classic example of how that identity is pushed. The author emphasises how few Asians there are in the industry, and points how those breweries which have succeeded began using Asian motifs, such as Chinese Zodiac symbols, only once they became popular. The only real difference between an Asian and a non-Asian brewery, apparently, is that an Asian brewery engages in self-Orientalism so that the mostly non-Asian customers can get feel like they are getting an “exotic” experience, even though the beer tastes just like any classic American beer.

Over time, politically conservative Asian Americans have also come to enthusiastically adopt the term “boba liberal” — mainly because it gave them a chance to “own the libs”. Like Asian Leftists, conservative Asians view boba liberals as not possessing an authentic Asian-American identity, but for the Right, disparaging boba liberalism is not a way to critique capitalism. It is a way of taking aim at a small but influential group of progressive Asian-American activists who are supposedly selling out other Asians, especially working-class Asians, in order to win brownie points from elite, generally white liberals.

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After all, Boba liberalism is, essentially, an Asian version of white liberalism — or wokeness. The core of this identity is self-flagellation, the sacred mission to “do the work” of atoning for being born white, the original sin. As Tom Holland has suggested, wokeness is a direct by-product of European Christian morality. And modern-day white liberalism has largely abandoned Christianity, but persistent is the desire to make up for the offences of one’s ancestors, and to see that the last shall be first and that the first shall be last.

As the most educated in society have adopted the tenets of this new religion, people who want access to elite spaces feel immense pressure to convert. Asian Americans from middle- to upper-class families are typically from majority-white neighbourhoods, and the urge to join the club is immense. (This demographic has the highest rates of getting into elite colleges.) Since white guilt is in vogue among their white liberal peers, they have created their own version.

Boba liberals cleave to the idea that that “anti-blackness” is endemic in Asian-American communities. In Liquor Store Dreams, for example, the Korean American filmmaker So Yun Um turns her parents’ experience of running a shop in a majority-black neighbourhood into a critique of this supposed anti-black racism. Her parents were working-class immigrants who toiled for decades to give her a better life, but she has risen above them socially, becoming a filmmaker — and is now castigating them to gain acceptance in her new class.

In an interview to promote the film, she tells the story of a Korean American friend who was accosted and robbed on the street by a black person. Her friend felt conflicted because he didn’t want to bring race into how he viewed the incident. The rest of the interview focuses on the myriad ways Korean Americans are said to perpetuate anti-blackness. When discussing attacks on Asians, for instance, she says: “If you’re in a predominantly black and brown neighbourhood, if an accident were happening, who else would be the assailant? It wouldn’t be a white person because a white person doesn’t live there.” Note her use of the word “accident”, rather than, say, “attack”. By doing so she is unintentionally perpetuating the obviously racist idea that a black person can’t help being an “assailant”; it denies black Americans agency. There is no similar call for black Americans to “unlearn anti-Asianness”, because in a boba liberal’s mind, how can they possibly take responsibility for their actions?

While boba liberals may experience anti-Asian racism themselves, they know there is little social capital to be gained from discussing it. The common assumption is that Asians are mostly well-off and do not need liberal saviours, unlike black Americans. The latter are often portrayed in popular culture as living tough lives in “the hood”. But working-class Asians tend to cluster in ethnic enclaves that receive very little media attention. The dominant Asian stereotype is of the “crazy rich Asian”. Boba liberals will intentionally distance themselves from these working-class Asians. Anyone who doesn’t toe the progressive party line on every issue is actually an ally of white supremacists.

Unsurprisingly, then, boba liberals often support affirmative action over merit-based admissions policies. In other words, they support a process based not on a clear set of consistently applied rules, but on more nebulous, unspoken criteria set by elite ideology. This benefits them, because they understand the “right” things to do and say to gain access to institutions such as Harvard. Working-class Asian Americans have little-to-no social capital and have the “wrong ideas”, however, and thus prefer merit-based admissions policies that don’t require intricate knowledge of elite codes.

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But being against affirmative action is considered “wrong” by affluent progressives; for them, the policy is an accessory they can tout to signal that they believe in the value of having a superficially multiracial ruling class. And just as affluent white liberals feel ashamed about white MAGA voters or Brexiteers, boba liberals are embarrassed by working-class Asians and their “incorrect” views.

As Rob Henderson has pointed out, Asian Americans are adopting “luxury beliefs, which are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class while often inflicting costs on the lower classes” — which he sees as “an indicator of assimilation” into upper-middle class America. A similar phenomenon is happening among Latinos: the college-educated now use the term “Latinx” as a class signifier, a term that is deeply unpopular with the vast majority of Latinos. It seems, then, that racial solidarity is not as powerful as class solidarity. America’s liberal elite have all converged on one value system that sets them apart, while pretending to be “diverse” through shallow imitations of identity.