My 4th of July post is an excerpt from God and War, my book that came out last July and (as many of you have read here) tackles the ironies of American civil religion born from war. (From the beginning of chapter 4). America is a country made by war. The American War for Independence was the first war for the nation, the first war to create national martyrs, and the first war that revealed the contours of an American civil religion. In 1976, the United States prepared to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the American Revolution—a struggle that Read more