Surveillance replaces religion only when the watcher is believed impartial.

Evidence

But these social institutions and traditions that replace religion do not come for free—they are costly, fragile, and need constant fine-tuning and upkeep. It is no surprise that in totalitarian communist states, Big Brother in the Sky was quickly replaced by Big Brother in the Party. The Party’s eyes and ears were everywhere. These institutions and tactics, which belong to the toolkit of police states, partially suppressed and replaced the functions of religion, but they were far less effective in undermining religion than the social democracies of Northern Europe. In Communist states, unlike Northern Europe, no one believed in the impartiality of the Big Brother. Everyone was under surveillance, but people trusted no one, especially not their next-door neighbor. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 556

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s analytical goal: the perceived impartiality of the omniscient observer (Rodrigues’ Big God / Norenzayan’s mechanism) explains why totalitarian surveillance underperforms. Bolsters the cross-source argument.
• QUESTION: Does the impartiality requirement explain why Rodrigues (who doubts God’s love/justice) found the fumi-e apostasy so shattering versus a believer who trusted the watcher?