The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

“Politicians say it at the end of every speech as if it were some sort of verbal tick that they can’t get rid of…. They should admit that ‘God Bless America’ is really just some sort of an empty slogan, with no real meaning except for something vague like ‘good luck.’ ‘Good luck, America, you’re on your own,’ which is a little bit closer to the truth.” — George Carlin, It’s Bad for Ya, 20081 “God bless America. Let’s try to save some of it.” — Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast, 20062 Richard Nixon, Eisenhower’s vice president, tried to revive the popular piety of the 1950s when he became president in 1969. He was attempting, as one Catholic lay theologian put it, to resurrect the “corpse of civic religion.”3 The presidential tradition of troubling deaf heaven with bootless cries by closing presidential remarks with the phrase “God bless America” dates to Nixon and is rooted in one of the worst scandals to mar the presidency. Nixon used religion to distract Americans from Watergate.