Well said. I’m often tempted to believe that untangling the rootball of civil religion from spiritual religion is necessary for church reform but I don’t think it’s possible. The older I get, the more I believe these things to live and breathe as an organic whole.
Maybe the fix to the intellectual rot in our churches may not come from a reform minded ministerial cadre but from outside established institutions by younger men whose sense of identity, understanding of politics, and grasp of the past, present, and future aren’t irreconcilably tainted.
Perhaps a new tradition for a new age built with old stones.