Our founders were not apostles; they were sweating people with clashing intentions, fretting about their newborn country and Philadelphia's occasional outbreaks of yellow fever. Their document -- admirable as it was -- was not holy writ.

In his convention speech, Mitt Romney made very little of his Mormon faith, his work in the church or how that church might influence how he sees his relationship between God and the nation. And perhaps because of this, his "narrative" was dangerously idolatrous.

There is a long history to the idea that the United States is a Christian nation. The idea has come and gone with the prevailing politics.

Twice in the last three decades, the Supreme Court has specifically identified that phrase as being void of substantive sacred meaning. If you are a believing monotheist, is that how you want God's name treated?

The Christian Right has claimed from its inception that others -- liberals, secularists and humanists -- were eroding the values of the nation that they sought to affirm and protect. In that claim we find the seeds of the current American crisis.

By Tim Townsend St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS (RNS) Just across from the Gephardt Institute for Public Service at Washington University, employee...

if there is a benign form of American civil religion in the making, it has been a long time coming....