"As debased religion, civil religion absorbs the language of philosophy as it passes through religion and ideology both. Civil religion is the crossroads at which truths converge... Civil religion is created through the attempted embrace of ideological and religious doctrine, its development keeping pace with the rise to prominence of ideology. In the religious attempt to harness all truth within itself, a new form of religion is loosed, one that is more harmonious with ideology, more resilient in its capacity for rational thought and earthly kingdoms. It is upon this terrain of civil religion that Locke meets God. It is here that the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence become a 'sacred cause'" (Brent Gilchrist, Cultus Americanus, 44).
"The children have obtained what their parents and grandparents longed for--greater freedom, greater material welfare, a juster society; but the old ills are forgotten, and the children face new problems, brought about by the very solutions of the old ones, and these, even if they can in turn be solved, generate new situations, and with them new requirements--and so on, forever--and unpredictably. We cannot legislate for the unknown consequences of consequences of consequences" (Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity, 15).
First and foremost, by debased religion, we should not understand "bad" religion. Instead, this refers to religion that has incorporated other, supposedly distinct spheres within its mapping of the world's meaning. Debased religion is religion that is part of society and interacts with it. It is religion that seeks to explain itself according to other forms of knowledge. To reconcile with and adapt to changing cultural forms of meaning. When the Chruch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints repealed its racial restrictions, for example, it became a debased religion and has twisted itself into ideological pretzels ever since, trying to deny it.
A Chriatian Nationalist view of the Constitution and its authors often portrays them with prophetic foresight. J. Reuben Clark, apostle of the LDS church, did as much when speaking on the subject to bankers urging them to resist FDR's New Deal. The founders used this foresight to protect their fledgling republic not from the consequences of consequences of consequences. They used it to protect against their ideas of a consequence in the past, against state sponsored and enforced religion. In other words, their foresight was, in reality, hindsight. And this hindsight inspired them to protect their political sphere from becoming debased, by blending itself with religion.
This shouldn't be understood as saying the authors and ratifiers of the Constitution were irreligious. Instead, I think it means they saw religion and politics as properly executed within their respective spheres, in theory. Or at least some of them did. Maybe I'm mistaken. One of the difficulties present in this supposition, in my opinion, is that it immediately collapses when put into practice. People are not internally divisible into such theoretical spheres. But, one of the "safeguards" they put in place was the inability to require a religious test for public office.
When Lauren Bobert called for a moment of spoken prayer on the floor of the House, she attempted to institute just such a test. She attempted the coercion of elected Representatives into religious performance. Not the idealized performance of religion in its theorized and isolated sphere, but the performance of debased religion, civil religion.
This civil religion is not fully formed. It is not well theorized, established, or conceptualized. Its internal markers of ethnic identity are in flux. There are deep seated internal contradictions it has yet to acknowledge, let alone face. And as it struggles to develop its Christian Nationalist identity, it is also deeply confronted by a time of crisis. Its identity insecure, its political power with it, Christian Nationalism is confronted by opponents who "know" exactly what it is. In fact, I would say they know it only because its internal composition is unstable, and it can be just about anything. Again, maybe I'm mistaken.
In this crisis of identity and political legitimacy, unable to grapple with its malleability and porousness, and confronted with opposition, there is one thing it knows for sure: who its enemies are. A dystopian fantasy functions to cast onto the world all of our internal anxieties as a means for confronting them. External symbols are able to function as proxies for internal conflict (if you want a perfect illustration of this, watch Fight Club). The shift from internal anxiety to external opponent is easiest when confronted by someone or something placing itself in opposition. In other words, the externalization of these anxieties is facilitated by opposition.
In this crisis, civil religious tests are created not only by coercive means within the House of Representatives, but through the requirement of performance in the public sphere by anyone who wishes to legitimately participate in society as a citizen. This civil religious test for office is transformed into a civil religious test for citizenship. And the failure to comply is penalized.
Looking to the past will not help us if we look to it for a ready-made solution. The founding generation could not prepare us for this because they could not anticipate the consequences of consequences of consequences. They were looking backwards, to the world that produced them, and legislating for consequences already gone. This is our moment, and its problems are uniquely our own. To solve them, we need solutions uniquely our own. The calls for war are looking to the past, misinterpreting it, ripping it from its unique context, and plopping it down on top of our own with the assertion it will fit if we can just kill enough of each other to make it. The calls for public shaming and exile are doing the same thing.
A solution that could be uniquely our own, since it emerges in our lifetimes, is Restorative Justice.
One thing I like about reading your thought pieces is they always lead me to ask myself more questions. The big question for me today is: how can we come up with solutions to problems we've never seen before if a large part of the population is currently living in survival mode?
I understand that we must make the time to put our heads together, to discuss potential changes that can be brought about. I guess I'm just trying to figure out the "how?", if that makes sense.