ABSTRACT
Political candidates for the highest offices in America must, it seems, loudly announce their belief in God along with their devotion to mom, the American flag, and apple pie. Certain religious believers not merely share their faith, however, or limit themselves to performing charitable works, but attempt to coerce compliance to religious norms by means of political power. Religious ethics recognizes that human beings are not only biologically more complex than animals but have moral responsibilities that surpass the animal struggle for existence. The Soviet ideology was explicitly atheistic so that the displacement of the human need for wholeness from God as its proper object to the political regime was indirect. In the American cultural context, the removal of the worship of the One God from public affairs may not result in a more perfect secular union, but contrarily may cause the formation of a new religion in America, namely worship of America itself.
