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In the days after George W. Bush's 2004 reelection, political analysts highlighted the Democratic Party's failure to speak the language of faith in a way that resonated with American voters, particularly Protestant evangelicals. This disconnect was partly due to substantial differences on hot-button social issues, but more from the perception that the Democratic Party was indifferent or hostile to genuine, serious, heartfelt religion. Pundits argued that candidates who ignored religion did so at their own peril. So Democratic strategists began "finding" or "recovering" faith, while Republicans simply tried to keep it.

It was natural, then, for candidates' religion to become a major theme this primary season. From Mitt Romney's Mormonism to Barack Obama's African American Christianity, each candidate's faith was proclaimed in stump speeches or examined by the press. But instead of providing the promised boost, religion became a liability, and candidates have expended as much energy divorcing themselves from religious connections as they have making them. What happened?

This year's primaries suggest a new truism about American political campaigning: While generic religiosity brings life, particular religious connections risk political death—or serious injury. Religious particularity arguably killed Romney's campaign. At the very least, it didn't help his cause. The same could be said of Mike Huckabee. While his evangelical pedigree as a Southern Baptist minister appealed to some voters, it scared even more. And the persistence and potency of the Jeremiah Wright controversy put Obama's campaign in the ER. Amputation was the only remedy. Even John McCain, who is generally mum on religion, had to sever himself from pastors Rod Parsley and John Hagee.

In a pluralistic religious environment, showing your cards—or creeds—can be a bad move politically. Identifying particular religious commitments or accepting pastor endorsements may bring candidates closer to a narrow slice of voters, but it often distances them from even more Americans.

From its founding, the United States has been a laboratory for religious pluralism. For over 200 years we've been wrestling with how exactly to relate religious belief to a system of government that prides itself on religious freedom and the separation of church and state. The advice of a French political philosopher seems to have held the day.

A little more than a decade before the American Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau spoke of a nation's need for "civil religion," an overarching set of shared values that could unite citizens of all faiths and no faith. Civil religion could harness religious fervor for the common good and check its socially destructive tendencies.

In its most utilitarian form, civil religion is indifferent to particular religious content. As Dwight Eisenhower put it in his 1954 Flag Day speech: "Our government makes no sense, unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith—and I don't care what it is."

While 21st-century American civil religion is not indifferent to content (the nation is likely not open to a Muslim form of civil religion, for example), its creed can be summed up in three words: God, America, freedom. It doesn't really matter whom Americans call God, so long as that God is for freedom and for America. In fact, now the word faith has replaced God, as the object of faith has become increasingly less important.

For American politicians, the formula requires using the language of faith without communicating much more than "I'm for faith, America, and freedom." This affirmation risks little and invites voters to fill in the blanks with their own meaning.

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August 2008, Vol. 52, No. 8