Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

by Michael J. Gorman

No matter what the churches proclaim, Christianity in the United States seems to have two liturgical seasons, the Holy Season, which runs from Advent to Easter (or perhaps Pentecost), and the Civil Season—Civil Religion time—which runs from Memorial Day to Thanksgiving. Civil religion in the U.S. never goes away, but its major feasts are in that six-month period. God-and-country language and rituals are more prevalent, and syncretism in the churches (“when you see the red in the flag, think of the blood of those who died to make us free, and also think of Jesus’ blood that was shed to make us really free”) runs rampant but is hardly ever questioned. But when we consider carefully the nature and scope of American civil religion, it is difficult to avoid the question, “Is this, too, a form of idolatry, ‘the deification of nationalism.’”53 What makes American civil religion particularly seductive is that it borrows so heavily from Christianity; its reinterpretation of the dominant religious tradition(s) does not produce the syncretism of polytheistic paganism but the syncretism of Christianized Americanism or Americanized Christianism. This form of religiosity is so pervasive that we would not be wrong to contend that if America’s original sin vis-à-vis others is racism, as Martin Luther King claimed, then its original sin vis-à-vis God is civil religion. This of course does not mean that either racism or civil religion is unique to the United States, only that American histo...