If you count Confucianism as a religion, then perhaps I’ll grant your point. But a structured moral code does not necessarily equal a religion. And, again, as I noted, I wasn’t raised in any religious tradition, and I turned out OK.

So, yes, “strong and deep-seated cultural norms about morality,” OK — religion, not necessarily so.

You’re also painting secularists with a broad brush. I don’t want to eliminate religion, but there are lots of things about it I don’t like. I would also like those without religion to stop being the least-desired type of candidate for high office in the U.S., but that’s another story.

Given the history of the West, I can’t see how we will come to some kind of moral consensus without religion. I realize that’s the desire of secularists, but to be honest that experiment has led us to where we are now: a lot of people spouting off about their personal visions of morality or ethics, but there being no consensus about those matters, which leads to there being no common, shared morality — a situation which undermines the whole idea of morality to begin with (i.e., shared rules rather than personal ones).

However, ECUSA is way, way out there — it’s very hard to call it “church” any longer. It looks like a church, and has a liturgy like a church, but the words have no real meaning. It’s become a social movement in clerical drag, as far as I can tell. And yes it’s somewhat sad, because Anglicanism has had some quite good writers and religious thinkers — C.S. Lewis comes to mind. Hard to believe today that he was an Anglican, really.

As for our society being done with Christianity — I agree with Whiskey. As is the case with the traditional family, no-one has offered anything better in terms of bringing people together in a rough consensus about moral rules. The approach that people are taking today — choose whatever tradition makes sense to you — may serve individual “needs” in terms of the emotional aspects of spirituality, but will never serve the core function that religion plays in any society: the repeated celebration and reinforcement of moral rules that are broadly shared by the society.

The trouble is not that Christianity has outlived its usefulness, but rather that society no longer has a moral consensus, and because of that moral chaos is now reigning. The current climate of moral relativism will never abide by any dominant religious system, because by their nature religious systems are generally not morally relativist. But that lack of moral cohesion that comes from moral relativism will eventually terminally undermine any society’s ability to function.

Currently the US is involved in a huge struggle over this issue. In that sense, the US is different from Europe: Europe is still today much more homogeneous, inside each country, than the US is. There is a common cultural history, and shared values, even if those shared values have moved beyond the ones espoused by organized religion.

In the US, we do not have that. We used to have a broad consensus based roughly on what mainstream protestantism provided. But that has now been trashed as mainstream protestantism has simply embraced the radical left, radical protestantism has taken the baton of the “religious right”, and the educated elites have largely decamped to smug anti-religious enclaves on the coasts. The result is that there is no real consensus right now about moral rules — hence the famed culture wars. And right now the relativists have the upper hand.