I don’t think people don’t really act their religion, it’s the religion that acts them, or embodies what their ideology is, or what the ideaology of the state is, or ruling class. The best definition I’ve heard for ideology is, “the mechanism that harmonizes the principles that you want to believe with what advances your material interest.”

I grew up fundamentalist in the Mennonite Brethren and Evangelical Baptist tradition, then and was exposed to some Christian Socialist ideas and the New Monasticism movement in my later teen years. The radical pacifism of my ancestors required they migrate around Europe to avoid anabaptist persecution, conscription and military service, and they got very lucky by avoiding both the Russian Revolution escaping to the Weimar Republic (which included bribing train guards with paska buns), and the rise of the Nazis by emigrating to Canada.

I’m now an atheist but find a lot of atheists are not very knowledgeable about religion and use their performative opposition to it in a way to assert moral superiority in a way that gives them power in a political and civil religious sense. To me many atheists are ardent followers of civil religion, accepting the morality of individualism and the default morality of our culture, which itself has a lot of Christian aspects. As a Christian I found myself essentially untouched by all atheist arguments because they didn’t seem to recognize the religious beliefs I had. We actually read some of the New Atheist books like God Delusion in Bible Study, an agnostic religious professor was present at a session to answer questions and provide better resources for anyone interested.