Unlike Confucian nations like China, Japan, Korea and etc, Western democracy and Christianity develop together hand in glove for about 2000 years. Whether Western democracy can thrive in the absence of true Christians is indeed a question of utmost importance.

"Is Meritocracy A Sham?" was an excellent article written by Russell
Walter Mead. Echoing Christopher Hayes' Twilight of the Elites, Mead had detailed why meritocracy did not work in the US. However, if one looks deeper, the article's title may as well be "Is Western Democracy A Sham in the absence of Christianity"

Mead identified two distinct strands of thought toward good
governance, populism and technocratic progressivism. Populism has
various definitions according to different writers. As opposed to
technocratic progressivism, populism carries the assumption that
governing a country does not need special talent. The “little people”
if banded together, would have no problem bringing down "the big
beasts of the capitalist jungle: the Carnegies, the Morgans, the
Rockefellers and so on." Hence governing is frequently no more than
allowing the people to do what they do as individuals and as groups.
People who subscribe to populism such as William F. Buckley and Mead
would, in principle, have no problem or prefer to be "governed by
names selected at random from the phone book."

In contrast, people like "Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson ...
thought that most of society’s problems were technical rather than
ideological. Good administration and effective, non-political
management by well educated technocrats could solve society’s most
important social and economic problems ..." This view entails social
mechanisms/institutions to cultivate as well as to select the best and
the brightest as leaders. Meritocracy, to the extent that it is open,
is not in conflict with democracy.

What went wrong with meritocracy? Echoing Christopher Hayes' "Twilight
of the Elites", Mead wrote, "Wealth and entitlement corrupts the meritocratic elite. Members of this elite can no longer see society easily from the perspective of ordinary people and so their decisions increasingly reflect their own interests rather than those of the people they are supposed to
represent. They lose the ability and perhaps also the will to be
impartial arbiters between the masses and power; they identify with
power and start to use their own influence to tilt the system farther
and farther away from the populists and toward the old power centers."

However, Mead looked for a deeper cause. And he identified atheism as
the deep cause. Meritocracy failed because atheism led to arrogance.
Atheism also led to the abandoning of one's god given mission for
one's talent. He also emphasizes the importance of original sin and
hence indirectly resurrects the notion of "salvation by work."

To access previous discussion:
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.atheism/c/Po4J55nBELQ/m/Vjlk5KvcTJYJ