Conservatives tell me all the time that they don’t confuse the country with God. They tell me this even when they are complaining when I won’t let them sing the Star Spangled Banner during worship when the 4th of July falls on a Sunday, but they tell me this. Now, however, I’ve got a video that shows that there is a parallel civil religion that runs alongside of “traditional faiths” in this country – a religion in which the country is worshipped alongside God (for now). This comes from a site which is named, “Born Again American.”
Look, I appreciate the desire of this site to call people to wake up to their civic responsibilities in a representative democracy – I really do. I’m trying to wake up my self and, as my previous post illustrated, I do think that my Christian faith is part of that conversation. Appreciative or not, however, this video is emotionally powerful but ultimately dangerous to the very plurality which allows people of all faiths to freely practice in this country. When the nation becomes god, it becomes very jealous.
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You know, looking around their site, I see no indication as to what they mean by “Born Again”. There is no Christian message on there at all.. I don’t get it.
That’s kinda my point – the only active divine force in the site/song is the nation. The Bible is there to make some folks feel better about it – but it ends up as highlighting the syncretism of the song/site.
And did you notice that a Muslim and a Jewish leader are standing at Mt Rushmore singing along about being born again? What don’t I know about this? Danger Will Robinson!
Interestingly enough, Frank, “Danger Will Robinson” was exactly how this video was introduced to me…
To me it doesn’t seem like they are even trying to be religious they are just using our outdated lingo in a new context. To me this says less about mixing Worship of God and Worship of nation (though that is a big problem) and more about how our evangelical speak or christianeese is out dated and being redefined for non Christian purposes. The danger here is automatically assuming christianeese always applies to Christianity when in this context it clearly doesn’t.
Hi, Im from Australia and therefore might have a different outsiders perspective.
I would suggest that most of what is now hyped as “conservative” in the USA. And indicated by the site you refer to, and the fact that Russ Limbaugh et al is now the official face of “conservative” USA—etc etc etc.
Is a full-blown “individual” and collective psychosis.
The politics and “culture” of death masquerading as the “answer” to the obvious problems that the USA, and the world altogether faces.