Robert Bellah said no. American civil religion involves a god different from the Christian one:
What we have, then, from the earliest years of the republic is a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity. This religion-there seems no other word for it-while not antithetical to and indeed sharing much in common with Christianity, was neither sectarian nor in any specific sense Christian. At a time when the society was overwhelmingly Christian, it seems unlikely that this lack of Christian reference was meant to spare the feelings of the tiny non-Christian minority. Rather, the civil religion expressed what those who set the precedents felt was appropriate under the circumstances. It reflected their private as well as public views. Nor was the civil religion simply “religion in general.” While generality was undoubtedly seen as a virtue by some, as in the quotation from Franklin above, the civil religion was specific enough when it came to the topic of America. Precisely because of this specificity, the civil religion was saved from empty formalism and served as a genuine vehicle of national religious self-understanding.
But American civil religion may surpass Christianity in wisdom and significance:
I would argue that the civil religion at its best is a genuine apprehension of universal and transcendent religious reality as seen in or, one could almost say, as revealed through the experience of the American people. Like all religions, it has suffered various deformations and demonic distortions. At its best, it has neither been so general that it has lacked incisive relevance to the American scene nor so particular that it has placed American society above universal human values. I am not at all convinced that the leaders of the churches have consistently represented a higher level of religious insight than the spokesmen of the civil religion. Reinhold Niebuhr has this to say of Lincoln, who never joined a church and who certainly represents civil religion at its best:
An analysis of the religion of Abraham Lincoln in the context of the traditional religion of his time and place and of its polemical use on the slavery issue, which corrupted religious life in the days before and during the Civil War, must lead to the conclusion that Lincoln’s religious convictions were superior in depth and purity to those, not only of the political leaders of his day, but of the religious leaders of the era.[xii]
Perhaps the real animus of the religious critics has been not so much against the civil religion in itself but against its pervasive and dominating influence within the sphere of church religion.
We know we’re not supposed to put our trust in princes. But what about the princes’ gods?
Old Life 
Definitely not, because princes are likely as not worshipers of the STATE. And by following them in worship, one will be worshiping the Dragon himself.
“And they worshiped the Dragon, for he had given his authority to the BEAST, and they worshiped the BEAST, saying, “Who is like the BEAST, and who can fight against it?”
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“So far the flickering flame of the United Nations burns too low to be the focus of a cult, but the emergence of a genuine transnational sovereignty would certainly change this. It would necessitate the incorporation of vital international symbolism into our civil religion, or, perhaps a better way of putting it, it would result in American civil religion becoming simply one part of a new civil religion of the world. It is useless to speculate on the form such a civil religion might take, though it obviously would draw on religious traditions beyond the sphere of biblical religion alone.”
I am old enough to remember that some terribly smart people actually believed this tripe.
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https://patriactionary.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/honorary-patriactionary-the-arch-druid/#comment-14872
“Let’s rid the world of evil, and God bless America. This is the heresy of Americanism, and its currency explains why “Christian” observance remains so high in “God’s country.” Post-modern American Christianity has little to do with the religion founded by Our Lord. It is a health-and-happiness cult based on the utopian idea that Americans are God’s chosen people, that he has blessed them with a new New Covenant.” – Kevin Michael Grace
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What about do Dabo Swinney and Christians worship the same God?
The announcer said, after Dabo’s “All glory to God” speech, “God is good, but so is DeShaun Watson.”
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DG, Dan-
Hideous beyond belief. I can imagine reading someone’s accusation that practically speaking this is what is developing, but to see it actually positively countenanced and even advocated is really something.
Reminds me of Benson’s novel “Lord of the World.”
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KIN, did you look at the dates? Original piece that DGH posted (I started to say “dredged up”) was from 1967. By the time I read it in 1971 for a sociology of religion class, it was already being criticized from a new left perspective for finding anything good to say about America. One other student in the class had also been in the undergrad political science seminar where we devoted the whole damn term to what is called a ” close” reading of Voegelin’s “New Science of Politics” and we were, instead, appalled by the utopianism.
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Dan-
I did notice the date; this one-world-religion thing has been a long time coming (in a sense, since 18th c Germany at the least). I found a 2007 blog post by the author where he is still speaking favorably of it.
My first personal encounter with this nonsense was at a young age watching one of the Star Trek movies where major world religious leaders/establishers were “revealed” to be pointing to the same “truth” (I’m rather younger than you, my mother not having “given light” to me, to import a Spanish phrase, until just after the 1970s).
Even at that time, although I found the idea intriguing, I had a sense that there was something funny about it. I would prefer my son not be troubled by such foolishness, but how to avoid something so prevalent? Seems like we all have to be philosophers today just to stay sane.
I’ve not read Voegelin; doubt I will. I do highly recommend the Benson novel. It is a dystopian work every bit as interesting as Huxley’s or Orwell’s, but addressing ecclesiastical issues and the spiritual nature of man more than the social, political, or secular psychological.
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Dan, they also thought we were running out of food.
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Muslims and Star Wars’ fans cover their heads when worshiping their gods:
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