Civil Religion and the "other"

I've been thinking about civil religion a lot lately for my paper for this class.  One thing that strikes me is the role of civil religion in constructing a national identity.  Alan mentioned in a previous post that civil religion usually involves some form of "exceptionalism"--which I think is entirely true.  I also wonder, then, if civil religion is usually formed with some "other" in mind.  National identities are often (perhaps always) crafted in relationship to some "other."  Any idea of Americans as a "chosen people," for example, implies the presence of other nations that were not chosen.  What role does civil religion play in this construction?  Bellah is optimistic about the potential for civil religion to unite various groups under the promise of a shared American creed.  But is civil religion necessarily exclusionary?  Bellah points out that the founding fathers referenced God but not Christ.  For him, this is a sign that American civil religion was not limited to Christianity.  But it seems hard to avoid the corollary--that these references invoked a Judeo-Christian God.  Did this mean that Americans who did not fall under this umbrella somehow belonged outside the boundaries of the nation?  Here, perhaps, Bellah's optimism about civil religion should be tempered.  Instead, we might want to ask: does our conception of civil religion keep pace with the changing face of the nation?  And, if it lags, what does this mean for our understanding of what it means to be an American citizen?