Peter, I appreciate you for pointing out what many of us here might not realize.  It is so easy to forget that other people in this forum come from such a different background and may not understand all the cultural baggage that comes along with our posts.

In my experience I can confirm that many things you hear about the very prideful and arrogant views of U.S. citizens are very true.  There are many people that feel the goal of the U.S. should be to enforce our political agenda on the rest of the world.  The worst part is that most of these views come from Christians.  Many of you have seen my rejection of what I call “Christian fundamentalism” which I’ve learned has different connotations overseas.  When I use that word it generally refers to this poisonous mixture of literalist biblical interpretation (creationism, “end times” / futurist eschatology) combined with extreme right wing politics.  There are many of these people in our nation and it is painful to deal with them.  Some of my avid rejection of literal biblical interpretation is a knee jerk reaction to my experience with these types of people. I have to apologize to many you that have been incorrectly lumped into that group in my posts.  It is a real problem here in the U.S.  There have been numerous books (the left behind series for example) that prey on these people and feed their intensity and sense of religious superiority.  This problem is definitely growing and our country is becoming more polarized.

For us Christians here that feel that the war is wrong we often feel left out of the conversation.   The word “Christian” is fast becoming synonymous with words like “war monger”, “patriot”, “unforgiving”. “exclusivist”, etc.  In the last 20 years the right wing politicians figured out that if they adopted one or 2 key political issues (anti-abortion, anti-homosexual) that they could “steal” the Christian vote from the other party.  Well it worked!  In the process what happened was that we no longer have a large section of Christians that actively take stands for social and economic justice issues.  The reason I am so insistent on sharing my non-literal view of the bible is because I see first hand the problems that result from an exclusive fundamental view of the bible. 

From a personal perspective I value the message of Jesus as a highly political message about justice and sociopolitical healing.  Unfortunately most Christians here just do not understand this and these issues are overshadowed by some very crafty political bait and switch tactics.  I think Christians should be political activists just as Jesus was a political activist but mostly in the U.S. large numbers of Christians are on the wrong side of the fight. 

Peter said - There seem to be other issues as well - which in the US are to do with the way a biblical faith relates to civic and political responsibilities. There seems to be something of a debate taking place - between those who feel that Christians should unite with any sympathetic groups around key moral issues for change (the ‘religious right’ phenomenon?), and those who feel the opposite - that the key is for the power of the state to be rolled back, and private, alternative organs take on the provision of education, social care etc (ie the church provides as much it can for the social well-being of the nation - and its own people - as possible).

I think in this statement incorrectly states the positions in the debate.  It is difficult to explain because the right and the left in our country tend to flip flop on certain issues that you would think could be seen as counter to their views.

Peter, a little background on my own work prior to my response.  My research interests are in American public Christianity, which I mean to be the way in which Christianity plays out in the public sphere.  American Civil Religion is a big part of this.  So is Christian influence on public policy, especially foreign policy.  I have been doing heavy reading on the civil religion aspect for almost a year now and am currently in a 6 member research team studying dispensationalist influence on US/Israel foreign policy.

Before I get to what I really want to say, I will say this about what I know of Dominionism theology in the US: there isn’t much, at least not in the forms you mention.  At best it is a fringe movement and perhaps a good example is this group. "Most" Christians still believe America to be a Chistian nation or, at least, to have been divinely inspired.  This can take the form of rabid patriotism (i.e.: jingoism with a religious twist) or simply a more "tame" reading of the country as one in another long line of empires that will be judged if it denies the authority and takes for granted the blessings of God (I have studied several Independent Fundamentalist Baptist publications and have found this latter view prevalent). 

I wonder, in regard to the difference between religious practice in the UK and the US, if an economic reading is appropriate.  What I mean by that is that our First Amendment could be read as a "deregulation of the religious market" in which such deregulation would result, in capitalist theory, in an increase in religious competition and a general "increase" in the religious economy.  After all, we do currently have 23,000 denominations in this system. The UK, of course, has establishment of religion: religion is controlled, funded, and marginalized by the state (at least that is what I see from here).  Here, well, here we have lassaiz-faire religion to be quite honest. [I am getting close to what it feels like to be a Christian in the US from my perspective.]

I am currently reading the religious writings of our 3rd president who is widely considered as the "author of the US," Thomas Jefferson.  He, of course, authored our Declaration of Independence with its seven (?) references to a Divine Being as the base authority of liberty (here, sociologist Robert Bellah makes the case of the birth of civil religion in our political documents).  He also was a prime author of the Constitution — the only legally binding document of the two — with its *zero* references to a Divine Being.  That’s the preface.  But what gives?

Jefferson, turns out, was Unitarian in theology.  He was (this is for Danutz!) the first of the American Liberal theologians, predating the height of the movement by 120 or so years.  His own view of Christianity was one that should seem quite familiar to us all: the church (to include some of the writers of the NT such as Paul) has really f-d up Christianity and made a mockery of its founder.  He, of course, was brazen and intelligent enough to do something about it.  So, in 1803, during his first term and with some spare time on his hands, he sat down — IN THE WHITEHOUSE — and starting chopping up the Synoptics with a pair of scissors, taking out everything that did not include references to Jesus being divine, any miracles ("against the laws of nature") and any signs of the resurrection.  Then he pasted these "pure" snippets of "true religion" on pages which he bound.  It’s called "The Jefferson Bible" and in his version, it only contains 13 chapters (you can see a table of included here).  He did one version with only Jesus sayings (which we don’t have) and the current version that we do have with Jesus’ sayings and actions.  The latter he had printed up and passed around to his cabinet.  Also, in 1904, the US Congress had it printed up and passed around to each Congresman.

Why bother?  It especially offends the senses considering this was the man of the "disestablishment clause" who also said that religion was a private matter, politics public and that "it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my bones" whether my neighbor believes in God or not.  So what gives?

Like Rousseau, Jefferson believed there were three things that provided social cohesion, social order (the "Jefferson Creed"), quoting:

1. That there is one only God and He all perfect,

2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments,

3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion.

You can have a solid society, says the American creator, if you have these basic elements.  The important part: He also happened to consider these the central doctrines of Jesus, the "diamonds in the dunghill" of Christianity.  He even had the audacity to say that he was the only kind of Christian ever intended by Jesus: one who followed his teachings (sometimes he called himself a "denomination of one").

Charles B. Sanford in The Religious Life of Thomas Jefferson states that:

Jefferson was guided by his beliefs about what constituted good religion and true Christianity.  His belief in a God of justice ruling humanity through the moral law and in the importance of the following the ethical teachings of Christ in the larger affairs of the nations was at the root of his concern over the evils of war and the excesses of the French Revolution. — p. 133 (emphasis mine)

So much for disestablishment.  At least in how we think about it today.  I’m not even sure we all could agree that a man who rejects the orthodox teachings on salvation, to cite one of many possible theological complaints, was really a Christian or not, but *his* religion — the firstfruits of American theological liberalism — was considered by him (the author of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the First Amendment) ended up shaping his thoughts about social order and human liberty.  This was the birthday of American Civil Religion, this is the inhaling prior to the big sneeze that you referred to, and I hope to prove it in a paper in one of my classes this semester.

But more broadly I hope it sheds a bit of light on your questions about the vitality of American Christianity and civil religion.  I haven’t bothered to tell you anything about what I am studying on dispensationalism and Israel, but I think I will hold off unless you ask (if you haven’t already nodded off).