{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreig43kqaniij3txrix26eeezyevoqcwnm5e7jnoou5caxedan3vut4",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:xmviqbn3a2rrkhizx4gf7g6t/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkmvpxjkgyu2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreig2lwwweipcuicuriijglugynv74nqvej3rao7wmsw5kreg73hhyy"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/jpeg",
    "size": 21568
  },
  "path": "/2026/04/28/usa-civil-religion-vs-theological-specifics/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-28T21:19:59.000Z",
  "site": "https://juicyecumenism.com",
  "tags": [
    "civil religion",
    "excited controversy with his theological statements",
    "got theologically specific",
    "Spirit of Democratic Capitalism",
    "preached",
    "USA Civil Religion vs Theological Specifics",
    "Juicy Ecumenism"
  ],
  "textContent": "Texas Democratic senatorial candidate James Talarico excited controversy with his theological statements. He called God “nonbinary.” And he surmised that the Virgin Mary, at the divine announcement of her pregnancy, was affirming her right to “choose.”\n\nTalarico is a student at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA). Only a student at a very progressive seminary could think that such statements are politically effective.\n\nClearly Talarico wants to reach religious voters. But such assertions are likelier to offend than to win favor. Perhaps a political consultant advised him to talk this way. Perhaps his professors talk this way. But few religious people talk or think this way.\n\nIn the American political tradition, politicians do not typically make detailed theological statements, like Talarico. American Civil Religion, dating back to our Founding, has kept God and religion in public life, but inclusively. Political speeches, public declarations, inscriptions on monuments, and other aspects of civil life cite God and faith, but typically they avoid specifics.\n\nIn American Civil Religion, God blesses America and judges America. God offers America high standards and gives her the tools to reach them. God calls America to justice and righteousness, alongside mercy and understanding. God loves all people and despises evil. God brings people together. God mourns the dead and honors their memory.\n\nWho is God exactly? American Civil Religion does not specifically explain. The listener can decide, informed by his or her religious beliefs and religious traditions. American Civil Religion was mostly developed by American Protestants who came from different traditions. Some of them were Unitarians. So, they kept it vague and elastic. Later, Catholics, Jews and others were able easily to embrace American Civil Religion. But the system entailed avoiding in public life theological specifics.\n\nOver Easter, several U.S. agencies got theologically specific. The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department broadcast on social media: “He is risen.” The Defense Department broadcast: “The tomb is empty. The promise is fulfilled. Through His sacrifice, we are redeemed. We stand firm in faith, courage, and truth.”\n\nIn contrast, the Justice Department declared more generally: “Today, as millions of Christians gather in their churches across the nation to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, this Department —- is proud to protect and defend religious liberty.” It simply stated that on Easter Christians celebrate Christ’s resurrection without, as a government agency, declaring it as theological truth.\n\nThe distinction is important. All citizens of the United States are legally equal no matter their religious beliefs. All pay taxes. Our laws do not privilege Christianity or any other religion. Most Americans identify as Christian. It’s right for official statements to acknowledge this reality and share good wishes. It’s also usually fine for public officials, when clearly speaking for themselves, to share their own faith.\n\nAmerican Civil Religion does not silence theological specifics. Individuals and religious groups can declare what they believe. Government statements, and typically most statements from politicians, should speak more broadly, as they try to speak for the nation, or, politically, to mobilize a wide political coalition.\n\nFree speech and religious freedom of course allow Talarico and everybody else to publicly declare their beliefs. But politicians are wise to keep their language broad and somewhat vague. IRD co-founder Michael Novak, a Catholic philosopher, wrote in his _Spirit of Democratic Capitalism_ :\n\n**_In a genuinely pluralistic society, there is no one sacred canopy. By intention there is not. At its spiritual core, there is an empty shrine. That shrine is left empty in the knowledge that no one word, image, or symbol is worthy of what all seek there. Its emptiness, therefore, represents the transcendence which is approached by free consciences from a virtually infinite number of directions. (Aquinas once wrote that humans are made in the image of God but that since God is infinite He may be mirrored only through a virtually infinite number of humans. No concept of Him is adequate.) Believer and unbeliever, selfless and selfish, frightened, and bold, naive, and jaded, all participate in an order whose center is not socially imposed._**\n\nNovak continues:\n\n**_But is the center of pluralism in the United States really so empty? Human beings, according to the Declaration of Independence, are endowed with inalienable rights by the Creator. Abraham Lincoln and other presidents have freely reverenced the Almighty. On coins and notes of deposit one reads: “In God we trust.” Is not God at the center? For those who so experience reality, yes. For atheists, no. Official religious expressions are not intended to embarrass or to compromise those who do not believe in God. They have a pluralistic content. No institution, group, or person in the United States is entitled to define for others the content signified by words like “God,” “the Almighty,” and “Creator.” These words are like pointers, which each person must define for himself. Their function is to protect the liberty of conscience of all, by using a symbol which transcends the power of the state and any other earthly power. Such symbols are not quite blank; one may not fill them in with any content at all. They point beyond worldly power. Doing so, they guard the human openness to transcendence._**\n\nAmerican Civil Religion in its vagueness protects our freedoms from coercion. But in its citation of God it reminds everyone of a transcendent power that stands over the state and over us all. How we define that transcendent power is up to our beliefs and our own religious traditions. For the state to define God is to give government authority over deciding who God is, which no state should have.\n\nEvangelist Billy Graham wonderfully evinced this understanding when he preached at the National Cathedral service following 9-11. It was an interfaith event, with all prominent state officials present. He clearly shared his own faith:\n\n**_As a Christian, I have hope, not just for this life, but for heaven and the life to come. And many of those people who died this past week are in heaven now. And they wouldn’t want to come back. It’s so glorious and so wonderful. That is the hope for all of us who put our faith in God. I pray that you will have this hope in your heart._**\n\nNote he did not say who made it to heaven. Yet he pointed to the Cross.\n\n**_Here in this majestic National Cathedral we see all around us the symbol of the cross. For the Christian, the cross tells us that God understands our sin and our suffering, for He took them upon Himself in the Person of Jesus Christ. From the cross God declares, “I love you. I know the heartaches and the sorrows and the pain that you feel. But I love you.”_**\n\nAnd Graham concluded:\n\n**_My prayer today is that we will feel the loving arms of God wrapped around us and that as we trust in Him we will know in our hearts that He will never forsake us. We know also that God will give wisdom and courage and strength to the President and those around him._**\n\nThere’s no question how Graham identifies God with Christ, Whom he hailed. And yet he spoke for all, to all, at the grim moment in American public life.\n\nPresident Bush also spoke from the pulpit of National Cathedral that day:\n\n**_On this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over our nation, and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come. As we have been assured, neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, can separate us from God’s love. May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country._**\n\nBush avoided theological specifics, for which he deferred to the preacher/evangelist Graham. As president and chief magistrate, he relied more squarely on American Civil Religion, asking God “to watch over our nation.”\n\nPublic officials and politicians will serve the nation best by working with American Civil Religion. They are not clergy or theologians. They have no ecclesial authority over the American people. But they should acknowledge that their own authority is not absolute and operates under a greater transcendence. Talarico and many others can learn from this tradition.\n\nThe post USA Civil Religion vs Theological Specifics appeared first on Juicy Ecumenism.",
  "title": "USA Civil Religion vs Theological Specifics"
}