God said, “Ask me of anything and I will give it unto you.” I said, “Give me Life.” God de-manifested himself, and the whirlwind was starting to depart. 3:2Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee. The American Israel theme is clearly behind both Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society. What does it mean to be American? As S. M. Lipset has recently shown, American religion at least since the early nineteenth century has been predominantly activist, moralistic, and social rather than contemplative, theological, or innerly spiritual. Here again, we can all agree with the recommendation, but we may disagree about the meaning of “research.” Dennett limits research to scientific investigations studying religious activities and organizations as social phenomena. In conclusion it may be worthwhile to relate the civil religion to the most serious situation that we as Americans now face, what I call the third time of trial.

Genetics, hormone levels and disrupted sleep patterns may all share in the blame. Together with the less overtly religious Fourth of July and the more minor celebrations of Veterans Day and the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, these two holidays provide an annual ritual calendar for the civil religion. With the Christian archetype in the background, Lincoln, “our martyred president,” was linked to the war dead, those who “gave the last full measure of devotion.” The theme of sacrifice was indelibly written into the civil religion. For the majority of the American people who are unable to judge whether the people in South Vietnam (or wherever) are “free like us,” such arguments are convincing. These unseen guardians, who are otherwise protective, will cause misfortune to rain upon your family if an umbrella is opened in their presence. Luckily, there are measures we can take to protect our personal info. As usual in religious polemic, they take as criteria the best in their own religious tradition and as typical the worst in the tradition of the civil religion. In a long chapter entitled “Morality and Religion,” he blames religion for many of the worst evils of our century. Book Chapter What Is God’s Name in the Old Testament?

In reifying and giving a name to something that, though pervasive enough when you look at it, has gone on only semiconsciously, there is risk of severely distorting the data. Humanity is one single family under Allah, and there can be no sanction for those barriers. Türkiye continues its efforts for the comprehensive reform of the OIC, which is the only political platform which unites the Islamic world under a single roof and stands out as the intergovernmental organization with the largest number of members after the UN, in order to ensure that it can realize its true potential. Memorial Day, which grew out of the Civil War, gave ritual expression to the themes we have been discussing. An analysis of the religion of Abraham Lincoln in the context of the traditional religion of his time and place and of its polemical use on the slavery issue, which corrupted religious life in the days before and during the Civil War, must lead to the conclusion that Lincoln’s religious convictions were superior in depth and purity to those, not only of the political leaders of his day, but of the religious leaders of the era.

I believe this is the meaning that goes beyond sect or religion and beyond peace and war, and is now part of our lives as a challenge, obstacle and hope. If the war goes on and expands, if that fatal process continues to accelerate until America becomes what it is not now and never has been, a seeker after unlimited power and empire, then Vietnam will have had a mighty and tragic fallout indeed. Those nations that are for the moment “on our side” become “the free world.” A repressive and unstable military dictatorship in South Vietnam becomes “the free people of South Vietnam and their government.” It is then part of the role of America as the New Jerusalem and “the last best hope of earth” to defend such governments with treasure and eventually with blood. It is certainly true that the relation between religion and politics in America has been singularly smooth. The American civil religion was never anticlerical or militantly secular. American civil religion is still very much alive. The establishments within the Federal Government, Congress, media, academia, and policy forums, still do not have a clue about what is happening before their eyes. It would seem that the problem of a civil religion is quite general in modern societies and that the way it is solved or not solved will have repercussions in many spheres.