Baptizing America

Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: America Civil Religion in Time of Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 104.

despite many scholars, journalists, and religious leaders documenting the role Christian Nationalism played in the events of January 6, 2021, the official response a year later was just to try a softer, cuddlier version of the ideology. It was almost like our nation’s leaders weren’t paying attention to what had actually occurred a year earlier.

And it means, as the Flag Code instructs, “in the position of honor at the clergyman’s or speaker’s right as he faces the audience” with “any other flag so displayed … placed on the left of the clergyman or speaker or to the right of the audience.”

Consider the shift in religious demographics since the publication of Bellah’s piece on civil religion in 1967. According to Gallup, 92% of Americans identified as Christian in 1967.15 That left 3% as Jewish, 3% as another faith, and only 2% claiming no faith. In terms of demographics, the U.S. was basically a nation of Christians. And it was parti

PRRI in 2023 found that 31% of White evangelicals agreed that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That made evangelicals the religious group most likely to agree with needing political violence. But White mainline Protestants were second at 25%.

Later, a historian on the faculty of the Catholic University in America telephoned me to say that the baptism of the president must be the first baptism of a chief of state since Clovis I, king of the Franks in the sixth century.”

“Christian Nationalism is not a politically enthusiastic version of Christianity, nor is it a religiously informed patriotism. Christian Nationalism is a prosperity gospel for nation-states, a liberation theology for White people.”

The “Christians Against Christian Nationalism” movement spearheaded by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty unpacks the idea as this: “Christian Nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian Nationalism demands Christianity be privileg

civil religion is “a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity.”