That old civil religion:

...This is not even close to the civic religion of presidential prayer breakfasts, congressional chaplains, or publicly-funded creches...

...The belief that religion is part of life (so that one can speak of one's religious life as something distinct from one's political life, work life, and sex life) is common, and as unbiblical as it could be...

...It is a paradox that we are more truly secular and Godless when we accept the state's patronage...

...There are preachers, priests, and rabbis who don't mind this, and lend themselves to Congress and state governments for pious purposes...

...Now, there is some truth to this...

...Nobody pays any attention...

...Which is precisely the point...

...it has passed into the culture in such a way that it can't be considered simply a religious holiday...

...It is a welcome relief, this instance of church-state conflict, because without involving the moral passions which we bring to such issues as bombs or abortion it can allow us to view the relationship between church and state somewhat more calmly than we can where issues of life and death are concerned...

...And an idol, among other things, is a gdd that has a use...

...But do they really reflect on what they are doing when they accept this...

...By Rome's very reasonable standards, the Jewish objection to seeing their God included in the Roman pantheon was at best elitist and at worst rebellious...

...better to be a spear-carrier than never to see the opera at all...

...They know that the result of alliances between religion and political power has not been good...

...A Christianity which allows itself to be used, even to do something so cheery as to promote a free-floating, non-religious "Christmas spirit," accepts the pagan role assigned to it by secular society...

...It was a convenient notion from the time of Constantine to the time of the Enlightenment...

...The display has been going on for years, with no objection (at least not a legally interesting one...

...I don't like the idea that religion at any level should be supported by taxpayers against their will (which is the only way taxpayers really support anything...

...The anti-religion folk want to see the influence of religion on the body politic eliminated...

...Apart from the offense it causes non-Christians, a tax-supported creche is in its way a reminder of the fact that Christianity has been a kept religion, Caesar's pet, and remains now as a sentiment...

...A congressman of my acquaintance, asked if anyone objected to prayers in Congress said, "No, not at all...

...Christianity is at its root about a radical and thoroughly transforming obedience to God...

...The people wanted a king so that they could "be like other people": like idol-worshippers, in other words...

...JOHN GARVEY...

...This may have its share of truth, but we ought to mourn it...

...I don't think it was very good for the Gospel...

...A vague sense that some things are sacred and that it is good to acknowledge the fact is better than no sense of the sacred at all...

...Gods existed to hallow particular events of Roman life...

...Reading Samuel we learn that even having a king-which is to say, a government of the ordinary kind-was a compromise Israel's God was not happy with...

...One woman I know suggested that if we need a holiday we can celebrate in common without having a common religion, we ought to reinstitute Saturnalia...

...They tend to be somewhat less sensitive about more recent, entirely secular, slaughters...

...One of the things which the Empire had against the Jews was the Jewish insistence that their God didn't work that way...

...It is true that a common form of reverence, or even something so thin as a common recognition that reverence is a good idea, wherever it may be found, has been an important social agreement...

...Their reasons are not without foundation: they remember the Inquisition, the Crusades, Cromwell's massacres, missionary colonialism, etc...

...They point to the lack of legal objection to such occasionally tax-supported Christmas symbols as Santa Claus, reindeer, etc...

...If religion is to be taken seriously, it should not become the equivalent of the piety of ancient Rome-that is, it should not be a matter of automatic obeisance run through before you get down to the real business at hand...

...But important as this perception is, it isn't really very different from the pagan religion of the Roman Empire, which agreed with us that gods make good social glue...

...Senate chaplains, prayer in public schools, and tax-supported creches are the last attenuated remnants of the two-swords theory, the notion that there should be a more or less clear division of power between spiritual and temporal authorities...

...But this is one of the two ways civic religion has to go: it becomes a matter of ritual irrelevance, or a prop for the state's agenda-in either case, a less-than-central matter...

...The people who are in favor of putting up the creche argue that in the particular instance involved the public installation and display of the creche is a matter of local tradition more than religion...

...It can be argued that at this point Christianity commonly began to perform the same function for Christendom that pagan piety had performed for the ancient Empire...

...I don't like to see the state allied with Christianity, not because it will be bad for the state, but because it will be bad for Christianity...

...It is like the sprig of parsley nobody eats, though it is supposed to be good for you, laid next to the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich in diners which are putting on airs...

...One common understanding has it that religion is the compartment of life which has to do with personal ethics, worship-seen as a formal and periodic pious observance, presided over by a professional whose job it is to do such things-and those ceremonies and emotions which attend critical moments like matrimonial commitments, births, and deaths...

...The Romans couldn't understand any god that couldn't be used...

...I find the argument that public prayer ought to be allowed in public schools because we allow congressional chaplains a stupid one...

...The question is whether a creche can be installed at taxpayers' expense...

...They were part of the celebration of common and good things...

...The argument against any involvement of church and state has made for some odd alliances, with people who are genuine foaming-at-the-mouth anti-religionists in agreement with Southern Baptists, though for very different reasons...

...it is part of what bound us together...

...A related argument is that Christmas is more a secular than religious occasion...

...When Christianity came along it inherited this unreasonableness and maintained it, in varying degrees, until Constantine made Christianity the imperial religion...

...I like the idea, which is very much in the finest pagan tradition of civic religion...

...There is a widespread assumption that some kind of religion-almost any kind-has a good effect on society as a whole, and the Ad Council frequently presents us with that rather cloudy but heartfelt message...

...Let's get rid of the chaplains...

...Religious people should be very hesitant before they endorse the notion that governments paid for by people from a variety of religious and non-religious backgrounds ought to put up Christmas decorations because Christmas is now as secular a season as it is religious...

...That patronage is a hallowed tradition, and it is still maintained in countries where churches are subsidized by the government, but ancient though it may be it's a shame that it was ever common...