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How to Keep America Great: Silence the Dissenters, Praise the Lord, and Pass the Remote [1]
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Date: 2025-09-05
America, as we’re told in every patriotic commercial featuring bald eagles, barbecue grills, and truck discounts, is the shining city on a hill. It’s a place where dissent is treasured—so long as it’s the right kind of dissent, the kind that comes with a T-shirt, a hashtag, and a corporate sponsorship. And religion? Oh, it’s free to flourish in the public square—so long as it doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable, except when it’s supposed to make them uncomfortable, in which case it’s labeled “prophetic” and given a prime-time interview slot.
Stephen L. Carter has spent much of his career pointing out that both dissent and religion are more complicated than our bumper stickers suggest. His books—The Culture of Disbelief (1993), The Dissent of the Governed (1998), and God’s Name in Vain (2000)—offer something rare in modern America: the suggestion that maybe our civic rituals aren’t quite the perfection of democratic glory we pretend they are. Naturally, we’ve responded to this with the appropriate seriousness: by nodding solemnly and going back to scrolling Instagram.
Let’s be clear: dissent is America’s favorite seasonal sport. It’s also the lifeblood of democracy, as Carter points out in The Dissent of the Governed. Without it, we risk authoritarianism. With too much of it, we risk… having to listen to people we disagree with. That’s why Americans have perfected the art of managed dissent—think of it as political karaoke. You can sing anything you like, but the song list is pre-approved, and you’d better not improvise.
Take our national “free speech zones.” These magical fenced-in rectangles, usually located three zip codes away from wherever power is actually exercised, exist so citizens can shout their grievances into the void without inconveniencing the important people. Want to protest a war? Great! Stand behind the police barricades next to the hot dog cart. Democracy in action.
Carter, being the stubbornly earnest type, suggests that dissent is supposed to challenge power, not accessorize it. But this is America, and we like our dissent artisanal, small-batch, and focus-group tested. Spontaneous, unfiltered protest is as welcome here as a Baptist preacher at a Silicon Valley mindfulness retreat.
And then there’s religion, America’s most polite guest, until it isn’t. In The Culture of Disbelief, Stephen L. Carter is right that American political culture often treats religion like an eccentric uncle—brought out for display when convenient, but otherwise sidelined. Except these days, that uncle is dressed up in Christian nationalism and has moved in, raided the liquor cabinet, and started giving campaign speeches.
Christian nationalism isn’t just a sideshow anymore; it’s becoming the main act, braiding itself into the nation’s political culture and insisting that being “American” means pledging allegiance not just to the flag, but to a very particular brand of faith. So religion is not merely trotted out but harnessed by the ideology of Christian nationalism. Far from being an occasional accessory, Christian nationalism is embedding itself into the very fabric of political culture, reshaping public discourse and policymaking.
So while politicians invoke God on the campaign trail—sometimes in the same breath as promising to “lower taxes and bomb the bad guys”—some of us are left to wonder which God they’re referring to. A generic religion in the public square is supposed to be inspiring but never directive, unifying but never specific, moral but never judgmental. It’s a delicate dance, rather like trying to perform the Lord’s Prayer to a techno beat at a bipartisan fundraiser. And yeah, every politician’s verbal elocutions, ruminations, and fulminations has to solicit the consecration of the national god.
Of course, there’s a flip side. When religion is allowed into politics, it often enters like a conquering army rather than a humble pilgrim. Carter warns in God’s Name in Vain that slapping divine approval on your policy agenda is a dangerous move—yet politicians can’t resist. “God wants you to vote for me” is apparently more compelling than “I have a coherent legislative plan.” And why not? God doesn’t hold press conferences.
So how do you do religion in public without really doing religion? If Carter’s right, we’ve misunderstood the First Amendment. Instead of treating it as a way to protect robust, meaningful religious discourse, we’ve treated it as a polite request: “Please, keep your weird beliefs to yourself unless they can be used to spice up my speech about infrastructure.” Religion is thus domesticated, house-trained, and made safe for polite company—sort of like a golden retriever in a holiday sweater.
Consider the ritualized invocations at government events. They’re harmless enough: a pastor, rabbi, imam, or “spiritual but not religious” influencer delivers a three-minute prayer asking for wisdom, unity, and perhaps divine assistance in securing federal grants. These invocations are designed to offend no one, inspire no one, and change nothing—a perfect distillation of religion’s role in our public life.
Carter’s satire-ready observation is that religion is either neutered into irrelevance or weaponized into a partisan bludgeon (think Christian nationalism here). We’re told that faith should be private… unless, of course, it agrees with the platform of the ruling party, in which case it should be broadcast from every loudspeaker between here and eternity.
That’s the genius of modern American democracy: we’ve turned dissent and religion into lifestyle choices rather than moral imperatives. Here, we have the dissent we like: satirical late-night monologues, well-lit marches in matching T-shirts, and petitions that can be signed without leaving your couch. There, we have the dissent we dislike: anything that might actually disrupt the status quo, question corporate sponsors, or require bipartisan discomfort. There’s also favored/unfavored religion: the favorable one is civil, vaguely uplifting, photo-op-ready, preferably accompanied by soft acoustic guitar, and the unfavorable one issues prophetic calls to justice that challenge entrenched power or force us to re-examine our materialism.
This selective appreciation allows us to claim the moral high ground without the inconvenience of, you know, moral commitment.
In The Culture of Disbelief, Carter worries about a public square where religious conviction is translated into secular language before it’s allowed entry. It’s a little like insisting that Shakespeare be rewritten entirely in corporate PowerPoint slides: technically possible, but why would you? Religious arguments, Carter insists, deserve to be heard in their native tongue—even if we end up disagreeing. But in practice, our politics prefers the gospel according to the focus group. Faith is welcome as long as it can be boiled down to “values” vague enough to make everyone nod in agreement while checking their phone. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is acceptable; “Love your neighbor enough to change unjust laws” is pushing it.
Oh, and don’t forget that we have dissent for sale! By Carter’s reckoning, dissent is essential to democracy’s health. But in our age, dissent has been monetized. We no longer disagree because we believe something is wrong; we disagree because it’s a good way to build a personal brand. Nothing says “speaking truth to power” like a limited-edition merch drop. Want to fight systemic injustice? There’s an app for that—donate $5 and receive a custom protest filter for your profile pic. The Founders would be proud. This commodification of dissent ensures that no matter how loud we yell, the system remains unperturbed. It’s dissent as performance art—Instagrammable, tweetable, and entirely ignorable by the people actually making decisions.
In God’s Name in Vain, Carter skewers the tendency of both left and right to claim God’s endorsement for their pet policies. Our political blather is a blender-full of God, guns, and gluten -free communion. The result is a political theology that is half Sunday sermon, half campaign ad. We don’t have debates anymore; we have revivals. On the right, God apparently supports tax cuts, fossil fuel subsidies, and preemptive military strikes—though mysteriously, the Sermon on the Mount never comes up. On the left, God is invoked for climate legislation, social programs, and sustainable farming practices, as though the Almighty were chiefly concerned about your carbon footprint. Either way, God becomes the ultimate political consultant—omnipotent, omniscient, and suspiciously aligned with your party platform.
Frankly, we could do better—but probably won’t! Carter’s actual message, stripped of my satire, is simple: democracy works when dissent is taken seriously, and public life is richer when religion speaks in its authentic voice. This means tolerating disagreement, resisting the urge to domesticate faith, and recognizing that both dissenters and believers might be motivated by convictions we don’t share. But let’s be honest—that sounds hard. It’s much easier to keep doing what we’re doing: nodding along to safe dissent, applauding religion when it entertains us, and otherwise keeping real conviction at arm’s length.
So here’s a hypothetical future. Picture it: the year is 2040. The “National Mall of Dissent” is a federally designated protest park, complete with concession stands, souvenir shops, and a rotating lineup of corporate sponsors (“Today’s March for Justice, brought to you by Pepsi®”). Entry requires a ticket, and all chants must be pre-approved by the Department of Civil Discourse. At the same time, every legislative session opens with a faith-neutral “Invocation of Universal Goodness,” led alternately by a yoga instructor, a TikTok influencer, and a hologram of Mister Rogers. The prayers are projected on jumbotrons, accompanied by a soft-rock soundtrack, and promptly ignored. This, we will be told, is the pinnacle of democracy: dissent without disruption, religion without conviction.
If Carter is right—and I suspect he is, though my satire may obscure it—then we have a choice to make. We can keep treating dissent as entertainment and religion as political decor, or we can take them both seriously enough to let them unsettle us. But let’s not kid ourselves. The former option is a lot more fun, and it comes with better snacks.
So blessed are the comfortable, for they shall inherit the polling data. Blessed are the vague, for they shall offend no one. And blessed are we, the people, for we have perfected the delicate art of keeping democracy alive—just enough to keep the commercials running.
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