Invoking God in America
By Joseph Margulies
last 4 paragraphs:
...But Bellah knew only too well that America's civil religion "has not always been invoked in favor of worthy causes." As much as we may wish it otherwise, the religious language of national identity can just as easily sanctify something wretched as exalted. The language of civil religion has been invoked to justify every dark chapter in U.S. history, from the slaughter of Native Americans to discrimination and nativism to our periodic military misadventures.
Likewise, today's celebration of the civil rights era should not blind us to the reality of the times, when civil rights workers were threatened, beaten and killed by those who understood America's civil religion in far darker terms. Chambers found himself on the receiving end of this violence; his home, office and car were all firebombed.
America's civil religion will be with us always, but we must listen to the form it takes. Today, tens of millions of Americans merge an angry God with a chest-thumping nationalism to justify endless misadventures in the war on terror, thereby giving political cover for the apparently limitless expansion of the national security state.
As the late Sen. William Fulbright warned nearly 50 years ago, "power tends to confuse itself with virtue, and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor." This is again the greatest challenge to America's civil religion, and if recent events are any indication, the future is ominous. Robert Bellah and Julius Chambers would have understood it perfectly well.
the rest
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-oe-margulies-civil-rights-civil-religion-20130813,0,2741700.story
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