As Christian America comes unglued, there are new possibilities for inter-religious dialogue with an unlikely religion. In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America Kevin Kruse tells a compelling story of how the National Association of Manufacturers and business allies helped create a powerful synthesis of American and Christian identity, or more properly politically conservative Christian identity, to try and both dismantle the New Deal of FDR and provide a bulwark against much feared socialism.... Read more

Despite the fact that the emerging tribes in the US seek to secure their identity with primal narratives, narratives similar to those that secure the identity of all primal human groups, they and their members remain deeply anxious. This anxiety arises in part because although the narratives claim to be primal, they are in fact both chosen and constructed. Charles Taylor points out that the naïve belief in God that characterizes non-modern societies is unavailable in a secular age. In... Read more

There is in the modern world, even beyond the North Atlantic realm, a deep consciousness that public identities, the ways in which we are known not only to ourselves, but others, are chosen, not given. And they are chosen in the midst of uncertainty and instability. And these two things: the breakdown of stable public identities, and the consciousness that identity and affiliation are chosen rather than given, shape the formation of what I call anxious new tribes and their role in... Read more