For over two hundred years, the United States has lived in the tension between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The Declaration is an idealistic document that lifts up the rights and responsibilities of humanity. The Constitution is a pragmatic document born out of the failures of the Articles of Confederation. Inevitably, tension has emerged between the idealistic treatise on humanity that centers the Declaration and the need to set up powerful governance that necessitated the Constitution. One of the places that this tension is most evident is on the matter of civil religion. The Declaration of Independence does not shy away from speaking of a "Creator" and "Supreme Judge of the World."[1] The Constitution, on the other hand, only references God in stating the date of the document before the signatures.[2] And the Bill of Rights expressly forbids "establishment of religion."[3] The questions about civil religion emerge from this tension. How are these foundational documents of our country and the beliefs of the men who wrote them to be reconciled with each other and with our pluralistic present? As Lutherans and as Christians, what ought our reaction be to the invocation of "God" or "Creator" without any shared understanding of who or what "God" is? What is the purpose of this concept of "God"? In April of 2005, JLE featured a series of articles on American civil religion. The starting point was Robert Benne's "The American Civil Religion - Destructive, Useless, or Beneficial?" In this article, Benne reminds readers of the positive aspects of civil religion and calls for its defense from the judiciary. Responses to Benne's article from four other ethicists offered other perspectives on civil religion, sometimes reaching conclusions similar to Benne's, sometimes far different. The May 2005 issue included one more response, as well as Benne's final word on the topic, addressing the arguments of his five respondents. The result is a series of articles that deal with American civil religion with integrity and from a Lutheran perspective, reaching interesting, yet varied, conclusions.