Civil Religion or Civility?

Sara Robinson has posted an essay on the Campaign for America's Future website about "Born-Again Americans and that Old Time (Civil) Religion." She thinks some updated version of an old civil religion will help unify our nation. Here's a quote:

But now, that long era of cynical detachment is finally coming to an end. The rousing conversations we've had the past few years about the appropriate role of religion in civic and political life are a cardinal sign of the coming change. Should a politician's religion matter? How firm should that church/state wall be? Don't religionists have a right to make their case in the public square? And especially: How can we be a moral society if we don't give a privileged role to religion?

Ask your over-65 elders how they answer these questions. Odds are good that they'll regard them as simply preposterous. Even the old Goldwater Republicans likely remember the way that old-time civil religion provided a universal framework that allowed the GI generation to discuss morality, spirituality, and meaning without resorting to the specific viewpoint of any one religion. They valued the common ground it provided -- and the shared vision of a common future that rose from it -- because it allowed them to come together and do what needed to be done in their time.

The fact that we entertain these questions at all now reveals a deep and damaging ignorance at work. We're so far detached from the historical language of that creed that we can no longer talk about morals or values in anything but specifically religious terms -- terms that often do far more to separate us than they do to bring us together. Worse: I've had heated discussions with well-meaning religious progressives who've thoroughly bought into the conservative assertion that you can only discuss morality in religious terms, because is no morality apart from God. (They simply don't believe any other kind of moral discourse is even possible, because they've never seen it done.) If we continue to affirm that dangerous idea, we can kiss our future as a secular society good-bye.

We've entirely forgotten (because two entire generations have grown up having never heard it) that we once had a shared set of American narratives and cultural values that gave us the space to have deeply moral, value-laden conversations that weren't rooted in our ideas about God or our individual identities as Protestants or Catholics or Jews or Muslims, but in our shared dreams as Americans. When we lost the language and narratives of that creed, we lost the glue that bound us together across religious and cultural lines, and allowed us to work together as one national community.

I get nauseated whenever the political left starts talking about using religion to unify the nation. It's obvious that they don't take religion any more seriously than do the neo-conservatives who have long used religion as a tool to garner votes.

For some reason Sara does not realize that we are already dealing with an updated version of civil religion. It's called Christian Nationalism. The Religious Right is permeated with it and it packs a more powerful punch than any mythologizing that the left will ever be able to offer.

Mainstream Baptists are "born-again" Americans who take religion seriously. That's why we refuse to dilute it with patriotism, nationalism, or sentimental "dreams." Genuine faith will not be used as a tool by either the right or the left.

We don't need an updated civil religion. We need to keep church and state separate and re-affirm some basic civility toward people whose faith is different from our own.