Issues

Within the contexts of the monotheistic, prophetic, revealed faiths, civil religion can be problematic from atheological perspective. Being identified with a political culture and a leadership hierarchy of an existing society, civil religion's priestly role, can interfere with the prophetic mission of a religious faith. This has been the challenge religion faces upon entering the public square throughout all ages and cultures. At times of national crisis civil religion commonly renews itself by becoming a platform for rebuking the sins of a people or its institutions, and by calling on citizens to be true to the nation's deeper values.

The United States of America, while a group of British colonies, was settled in part by religious dissentersfrom the established Church of England, who desired a civil society founded on a different religious vision. Consequently, there has never been a National Church in the United States and individual state churches have not existed in the United States since the early nineteenth century. Religious denominations compete with one another for allegiance in the public square. These facts have made public displays of religious piety by political leaders important to a large sector of the population; lacking an established church, they need public assurance of those leaders' religious beliefs.

This assertive civil religion of the United States is an occasional cause of political friction between the U.S. and its allies in Europe, where (the literally religious form of) civil religion is less extreme. In the United States, civil religion is often invoked under the name of "Judeo-Christiantradition", a phrase originally intended to be maximally inclusive of the several monotheisms practiced in the United States, assuming that these faiths all worship the same God and share the same values. This assumption tends to dilute the essence of both Judaism andChristianity; recognition of this fact, and the increasing religious diversity of the United States, make this phrase less heard now than it once was, though it is far from extinct. Some scholars have argued that the American flag can be seen as a main totem of a national cult.^[6] Arguing against mob violence and lynching, Abraham Lincoln declared in his 1838 Lyceum speech that the Constitution and the laws of the United States ought to become the ‘political religion’ of each American.^[7]