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

by Michael J. Gorman

it the conviction that both America and Americans should always enjoy and operate from a position of strength and security. Weakness is un-American; Americans want to be number one. For many, these kinds of secular strengths are seen as manifestations of power from God. American civil religion values human liberty and rights as a divine gift and considers it, perhaps on par with strength, as one of the highest national values. The protection and furtherance of freedom is therefore a divine mandate and mission. The operative notion of both political (corporate) and personal (individual) freedom is that of God-given (inalienable) rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, an idea derived both from the Enlightenment and from one of the most important sacred texts of this civil religion, the Declaration of Independence. A corollary myth is a form of secularized Calvinism, the notion that hard work mixed with a degree of generosity toward others will inevitably result in greater and greater freedom and prosperity, often understood as a sign of God’s blessing. (The so-called “prosperity gospel” is an offshoot of this myth.) Yet another key sacred myth in American civil religion is that of militarism and sacred violence.47 This is the conviction that part of America’s exceptional and messianic place in history is its divinely granted permission, indeed its divine mandate, to use violence (killing of native peoples, invasions, wars, etc.) when peaceful means are undesi...