The Godless Constitution and the Providential Nation by Steven D. Smith is timely reading for America’s 250th birthday, especially amid increasing debates over Christian Nationalism.
Even as American religious practice has declined over several decades, more religious voices are paradoxically clamoring to legally establish their preferred form of religion. Integralists want a Catholic confessional state. Some Calvinists who self-identify as Christian Nationalists believe civil magistrates should repress blasphemy and apostasy, among other spiritual duties.
Smith rightly sees this clamoring for more religion in governance as a reaction against the decline of providentialism and civil religion.
Smith, who teaches law at the University of San Diego, readily admits that the US Constitution, omitting any reference to deity, is at the very least semantically godless. But it and the American story are animated by a profound sense of providentialism, the spirit of which has receded. He…