Tried With Fire

After many nights of working in the evening, I've had a break. It's been nice to be able to relax after the dishes are done and read "depressing books about where America has gone wrong." That is my daughter's opinion of some of my reading material. It's not that I like reading depressing books. I want to understand the mindsets and fears that led us to where we are today. My current "depressing" book is One Nation Under God by Kevin Kruse. "Grimly fascinating" would be a better descriptor, though. It's fascinating to learn how easily America was satisfied with civil religion. The generic nature of God didn't seem to bother many people as long as "God" was mentioned in some vague way. But this casual appropriation of God is rather grim and led to a syncretistic mishmash of outward practice minus any theological foundation. During Eisenhower's campaign for the presidency, he "vowed to take the vague religion ...

There's always been a level of syncretism in this nation where Christianity and patriotism become so intertwined that America begins to don the mantle as God's chosen people. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to be on the rise again. Thus I found this quote from George Marsden very interesting: 1 America's religious heritage also contributed to a sort of deification of the national enterprise. In recent years, this tendency, first seen during the American Revolution, has been tagged "civil religion." Civil religion is the attributing of sacred character to the nation itself. Throughout history rulers had claimed divine sanction either by saying they themselves were divine (as Roman emperors did) or that they were chosen by the God or gods of the nation... But now America had a problem. How could they claim religious sanction for their nation? Thomas Paine, for instance, was a notorious infidel. After the Revolution he authored scathing attacks on Christian...