The politically progressive Missouri pastor and author Brian Zahnd recently tweeted, “Donald Trump is exposing American civil religion for what it is — ugly religious nationalism; the empty chaff of a counterfeit Christianity.” But American civil religion is hardly coterminous with Trump. It’s something much larger than any one man, an inclusive theism and natural law ethics that informed the Founders and our public documents, a civil religion that has allowed Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Mormons and other sects to participate fully in American democracy without having to minimize their faith. Without claiming to offer redemption, it offers a moral and spiritual framework for public life without a coercive theological litmus test.
Ideological anti-Americanism is old hat for many, but criticizing civil religion as spiritually vacuous is a more recent development. Neo-Mennonites who stress over “empire” imagine civil religion is primarily a tool for imperial overreach. Evangelical purists despair over a country morally adrift. They conjecture that once Christians discard civil religion and attachments to old “Christian” America, the true church will be liberated for authentic Gospel expression.
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