I’m afraid I don’t understand. Please enlighten me.

You are confusing two senses of the word ‘elite’.

When people complain about liberals or atheists being elitist, they are talking about themselves as “enlightened” – that is, as superior by virtue of having more of the Enlightenment in them.

That is a very different creature from the plain old social class snobbery (which is truly bipartisan).

One, if left unresisted, would lead to a humanist’s version of theocracy – that is, another attempt at the fulfillment of the Enlightenment dream (a command-economy state ruled by moral-value judgements of a priest-like caste); the other leads only to plain old oligarchy, where the leaders are not out to tell others how to live except insofar as it interferes with their power and/or enjoyment of that power.

And I repeat what I wrote earlier, to avoid misunderstanding: Christianity is not the only religious or other source of the kind of moral insight and spiritual depth that can mitigate the problems of a meritocratic society.

For example, I don’t think an understanding of human selfishness and cognitive biases has to be framed as ‘original sin’ to be useful in helping “arrogance” be “checked and humbled”. Note, for example, the marked lack of ‘original sin’ language in this chastisement of the elite.