Terry Mattingly at GetReligion suggests that, in the era of Obama, it’s time to “get (civil) religion.” But, Mattingly asks, why weren’t scholars of religion talking about civil religion with respect to the last president? Didn’t he wear religion on his official sleeve, too?
Here’s a term that you should get used to hearing once again, during the era of President Barack Obama—“civil religion.”
You could, of course, make a case that the Bush White House Mach 2.0 featured a heavy dose of that brand of generic, lowest-common-denominator religion that is so popular with historians and scholars. It’s the kind of vague faith that helps hold a complex culture together.
But there’s the rub: Civil religion is the kind of term that is popular with historians and scholars, the kinds of people who don’t think too highly of red-zone yahoos like George W. Bush, who major in prickly moral absolutes. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that they tend to admire people like Obama, who major in nuance and displays of academic dialogue.
Continue reading at GetReligion.