Living in the US, we found some things difficult. Difficult perhaps only because they were different. American kids took us aback by asking us "What?" instead of “I beg your pardon”, but then our kids often called American adults by their Christian names, which Americans felt as disrespect.  Just as people thought our kids polite because they said "please" and "thank you", we found American kids very polite because they consistently called us " Sir" and "Ma'am".

Some issues, however, offended us because they were not just different, but morally deficient.  In a recent speech, Barack Obama quotes the truism that the most segregated hour in the US is on a Sunday morning.  That matches my experience.

I remember being surprised, for example, when asked to take services in the Episcopal churches in the North Carolina town of Oxford.  St Stephen’s Oxford, was the "white" church.  Carpeted and air-conditioned, white painted throughout, the church building reflected the wealth of the town.  The American flag decorated the sanctuary.  As the service began, the congregation sang “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, and saluted the flag.  (During this ritual, I faced the altar in silence and acknowledged my God!)

St Stephen’s was full of white folks; not a black face, nor a brown face, nor a yellow face to be seen.  I knew the power of this.  It was not simply coincidence.  An elegant, well-spoken, black-skinned lady arrived one Sunday in our home church in Durham, NC.  We greeted her, other foreign students greeted her, local academics greeted her, but long-time locals ignored her.  We believed she came from an island off the American east coast but we never got to find out.  The lady tolerated her “welcome” for only a few weeks.  So we were not surprised by St Stephen’s in Oxford.

After my first service at St Stephen's, I crossed town to Saint Cyprian's Church, the so-called "black" church.  Saint Cyprian's had no carpet or air-conditioning, but in each pew, there were Martin Luther King Jr. fans for the ladies to wave to create a breeze.  There were black folks at St Stephen's.  But there were folks of almost every imaginable ethnic background, even some white folks who like their fellow congregants felt uncomfortable at St Stephen's.  Martin Luther King's fans were alive and well, but it was 20 years since Dr King had been martyred.  We asked ourselves, where were the results of the Civil Rights Movement?

Another 20 years on, and Barack Obama is still talking about the church's segregated hour.

But now there may be a difference.  Obama's speech delivered March 18, and usually reported as a speech on race, moved me deeply.  In the midst of a vigorous competition for power, the speech called for healing, reconciliation, and moving on to “a more perfect union".

Even if Mr Obama fails to win this year's race to the White House, this speech should go down in history for the power of its analysis, for its courage in facing an issue for America, and for the sincerity of its solutions.  Maybe Obama is the man for the moment.

As Professor Philip Gorski from Yale University points out, the speech was about more than race.  The speech pointed out America's "original sin” of slavery, but it moved beyond simply black men's rage.  Obama was not captive to the anger of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. He reached out also to white poor and all decent Americans fearful of the oppressors in the current political and economic scene.  He spoke of reconciliation.  He spoke of a new coalition between the élite and the poor, a new covenant between leaders and the led.

Philip Gorski shows that this picture was not only about race and class, but also an appeal to civil religion.  Unlike in other democracies, the language of religion has always played a part in America’s public square.  The Religious Right use the language of religion to promote their view of redemptive violence.  Obama rightly rejects this.  The secular left has tried to empty the public square of religious language.  This, Obama knows, won't wash with the American public.

Decent America has been built in the overlap between belief and unbelief.  Civil religion has powerfully used the rhetoric of Christianity to build the common good.  Even so, care is taken in the language not to exclude non-believers.  This overlap, this civil religion resonates with the American people.

Barack Obama inspires partly because he knows how to appeal to the best instincts of his fellow citizens. In this Obama is not simply parroting the language of the civil religion, he is re-minting it.  This phrase "perfecting the Union" recalls both sacralised ways in which many Americans use the word Union (e.g. “these United States”) and also the language of the sacrament of marriage.  He is making something new of the sacred bond between Americans.

I would even take his language a step further; "union" is the language of mysticism.  Mr Obama is hinting that the experience of national unity parallels the journey into closeness with God: perfecting the union.

Because of this many Americans believe they have met in Obama a politician who is not cynical and self-serving.

Are there lessons in this for Australia?  The intensity of responses to the intervention in aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory suggests that race is important for Australia.  We do need to recognize our "original sin" of dispossession.  Until now, each succeeding generation of immigrants has simply added to the effects of aboriginal dispossession.  The formal Apology in Parliament last month gives me hope that we may now begin to heal the wounds at the heart of our national life.

But can we, like Barak Obama’s constituency, be inspired by the language of civil religion?  Unlike the United States, ours is a genuine secular democracy.  The Australian public square is blind to the religion, the beliefs, the philosophy of individuals.  The only identity we have in the public square is that of citizen.  Turkey was founded at about the same time as Australia, and like Turkey, we learned from the mistakes of the new nations of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Nations like the United States, Philip Gorski argues, use the rhetoric of civil religion, a discourse which doesn’t play in liberal democracies. He writes:

By civil religion, I mean a sacralization of the democratic polity and celebration of the sovereign people, that borrows heavily from theistic language and ritual. By religious nationalism, finally, I mean a sacralization of the national state and the election of the common people that glorifies blood sacrifice and rejects the restraints of the covenant.

When Kemal Ataturk founded Turkey the great mass of its citizens were Muslims.  The Australian States that entered federation were composed mainly of Christians.   But Turks and Australians both live in democracies and enjoy a paradox: their religion though respected is irrelevant to the political argument.  Political discourse is not sacralised.  An immediate benefit is that the language of redemptive violence can be decoupled from the rest of public discourse. 

When America is attacked, its public language makes its hard to express anything other than revenge.  In contrast, winning through force is a value only on the fringes of Australian rhetoric, even on ANZAC Day.

Australians Christians have a wide choice in how they participate in politics. Some Christians come into politics as Christians.  They make plain their values and how they derive those values from their faith.  The only "rule" their fellow citizens insist on is to recognise that others have beliefs that differ from theirs.

Other Christians, on the contrary, believe that when they enter the political arena, they leave behind their Christian language.  For them it is inappropriate to mix the language of worship with that of government.  They too must recognise that other participants in political debate may be atheists, Jews or Muslims.

Brian Hill and Tom Wallace in their work on curriculum have shown that Australians do share values and that these values derive ultimately from religion. However, when they are used in public discourse, they inspire only if they are stripped of their religious connotations. 

The idea of a “fair go” resonates more than the concept of justice.  The notion of “mateship” appeals more than the language of love.  Only sometimes, as in the example of reconciliation, does public language overlap with religious language.  Secular Australians apply the word “reconciliation” to the coming together of different groups. Christians may hear the word in this way and also in the context of forgiveness and absolution.

The problem is; the phrases "fair go" and "mateship" are shop-soiled. They have been debased by politicians using them with a self-serving political agenda. In addition, we Australians often use these words with complex layers of irony.

What inspires Americans, then, does not necessarily inspire Australians. Barak Obama moves me partly because I have lived in America, but there is no reason why Mr Obama will move other Australians.

But neither are Australians inspired by clichéd language. Mr Rudd was right to use the language of "Apology" in Parliament. It has few religious connotations, and the constant demand on former Prime Minister Howard to "say sorry" and his refusal to do so debased the phrase.

In the Apology, Rudd’s made an open declaration of the principles that should undergird relations between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The Prime Minister wants to:

“plac[e] an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap.”

Respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility are powerful words. I find much of the Prime Minister’s language boring and managerial, as words “real measures” and “targets” fail to excite me. But respect (for all God’s children), cooperation (partnership in righteousness) and mutual responsibility (loving one another), even stripped of their Gospel connotations can still call us to action.

 Australia will be best served by nonreligious political language for two main reasons.

·        . Nonreligious language keeps us away from the mythology of winning through force, and

·        . it has a chance of resonating with all of us. 

But we need speech-makers like Mr Rudd at his best who can re-mint the language of our shared values, and through them call us as citizens into ethical and visionary action.