Photo credit: Evan Agostini, AP

I’m watching the television tributes to the original news anchorman, Walter Cronkite. Growing up, the “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” was a nightly ritual in my family home.

And I am remembering that night as a young child when I watched Cronkite sign off (”…and that’s the way it is”) for the last time. And I remember my childlike terror, the sinking feeling of “how in the world will we know what’s happening in the world anymore.” I get momentary shivers of the same feeling today. It’s becoming harder and harder to get the kind of “news” Walter Cronkite used to deliver.

What has all this to do with religion? Admittedly, this has much more to do with the “civil” in this blog’s title than the “religion.” (And with the fact that this blog is hosted by a news organization.) But just like democracy, “civil religion” depends…

Isidore of Seville is the Patron Saint of the Internet. Photo courtesy of www.bc.edu

Online conversations are great, but sometimes they’re no substitute for the real thing.

So, in the spirit of real (as opposed to virtual) interaction and engagement, you might want to stop by Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Webster Groves this Sunday for our Adult Forum. The topic? “Faith Online: The Pleasures and Perils of a Religion Blog.” Yup, that’s right, a few of the contributors from Civil Religion will be showing up “live and in person” to talk about the intersection of faith and technology, and more specifically the pros and cons of being a part of what goes on in these pages.

Confirmed panelists include Tim Townsend, religion reporter for the Post-Dispatch and founder of this blog; Travis Scholl, an editor at Concordia Seminary and an ordained Lutheran minister; Khalid Shah, a small business owner and teacher who…

Abraham Lincoln (center, at pedestal) delivering his second inaugural address. Evidently, somewhere in the top row stands John Wilkes Booth.

In our own ways, we mark today the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. As we should.

And it’s worth noting here the legacy Lincoln left on what we now call American civil religion. Historian Mark Noll has written a very good summary of Lincoln’s “puzzling” religious faith.

I don’t think it is a stretch to say that in many ways he is American civil religion’s founder, in the sense that he crystallized many of America’s varied religious impulses into a non-sectarian whole. And his second inaugural address is its central text (although the Gettysburg Address is up there too). What is striking is the second inaugural’s utter lack of triumphalism, Lincoln’s attempt to pave a middle road between North and South while still acknowledging the evil of slavery, and the way he so eloquently expresses…

Those of us who have been contributing to this blog for the last several months welcome three new contributors who are joining us. Watch for their posts - coming soon.

Here are their bios:

Anthony Bradley

Anthony Bradley, 36, is assistant professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Covenant Theological Seminary (Creve Coeur) and Research Fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He holds a PhD in Historical and Theological Studies from Westminster Theological Seminary and is frequently called upon by members of the broadcast media for comment on current issues and has appeared on NPR, CNN/Headline News, and Fox News, among others.

Khalid Shah

Khalid Shah, 50, is an American Muslim who came to the U.S. 32 years ago. He and his wife have lived in the St. Louis area since 1990, and have been active in a variety of interfaith activities as well as in the local Muslim…

OK, this is a little melodramatic and contrived, but it is a question I was asked at an interreligious lecture, and I believe that this question reveals a lot about one’s religious vision. So I would like to hear from our readers and from the other bloggers how you would answer this question:

You and a companion are lost in the Sahara desert after a car crash on a deserted road, and no one knows to come and look for you. After a day waiting and hoping someone would come, you and your companion decide to start walking with your last two canteens of water. Your companion drinks all of his water right away, you use your sparingly. Late in the day, he falls and breaks his leg. He is delirious from the trauma, cannot travel any more, and cannot even stand for you to carry him because of the pain.…

I recently ran across this historical reminder from theologian Jürgen Moltmann’s classic The Crucified God, and it struck a chord in light of current events:

The early Christians had constantly to defend themselves against the charge of irreligiositas and sacrilegium. In so far as they refused to make the obligatory sacrifices to the gods of the Roman state they drew on themselves the charge of ‘atheism’. This was not meant merely as an abusive description of Christians, but was a formal accusation which resulted in exclusion from society as ‘enemies of the human race’. Justin readily admitted his Christian atheism, which consisted of a denial of the gods of the state, and with regard to these ’so-called gods’ confessed himself to be an ‘atheist.’

The pseudo-criminal charge of atheism was part and parcel of the sporadic persecution of the early church in Roman society, resulting in martyrdom for even the “atheist” Justin Martyr.

Reading this…

A couple of months ago I received a call from Tim Townsend asking if I would be interested in taking part in the Post Dispatch ‘blog about religion’. I did not take me long to call him back and accept the invitation. I was not naive about the task at hand. In 2 short months before that, my personal blogging experience gave me a taste of what it means to share my thoughts with the public. I have already experienced some harassment and insults by some readers, but it was, and still is, a worthwhile experience.

With the Post Dispatch Civil Religion blog, the challenge for me was a bit different. Now I have many distinguished co-bloggers who have a lot more expertise in writing and most have formal religious training. But more importantly, I am the only Muslim in the group. I may even be the only Muslim voice many of…

“The dogmas of civil religion ought to be few, simple and exactly worded, without explanation or commentary,” wrote Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762. “The existence of a mighty, intelligent and beneficent Deity, possessed of foresight and providence, the life to come, the happiness of the just, the punishment of the wicked, the sanctity of the social contract and the laws: these are its positive dogmas. It’s negative dogmas I confine to one, intolerance, which is part of the cults we have rejected.”

Those tenets of the civil religion that Rousseau laid out nearly 250 years ago seem appropriate guidelines for the Post-Dispatch’s new religion blog.

Rousseau coined the term civil religion to describe the necessary basics of belief that keep a civilization together in accord with a social contract the civilization lives by. And while we certainly intend to discuss such beliefs on this blog, we also liked the name Civil Religion because it…