Bellah offers France as a counter-example of how civil religion can manifest in modern nation-states, arguing that the lack of institutionalized religion allowed America's breed of civil religion to "build up without any bitter struggle with the church" (13)
Is our situation really that unique? Sure, we don't have the established religion and the militantly anti-clericalists or secularists that other societies have faced, but hasn't our free marketplace of ideas forced civil religion to compete with other problems, such as anti-governmental ideas, new religions, and independence movements to make up for that? Is America the perfect pasture for the growth of civil religion as Bellah suggests, or is it just a seperate pasture with
separate problems?
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