Rousseau, Baseball, and Apple Pie

In book four of the Social Contract, Rousseau caps his entire discussion on government with a necessary chapter on religion. Aside from some serious theological errors (Christ did not institute a merely spiritual kingdom), Rousseau posits a distinction between personal religion and civil religion. Personal religion is the religion that each individual has between their own two ears. It is the religion of the mind, of the individual. So long as it stays in between your ears, it is not going to bother anybody, least of all Rousseau.
But the state needs a religion that will enforce the kind of devotion and ritual necessary for the promulgation of the state. Here Rousseau mentions the civil religion. Civil religion "joins divine worship to a love of the law" (Social Contract, 4.8). The law it creates a love for must be the civil law, not a theological law (assuming the two are distinct, which Rousseau would insist upon). Civil religion creates its own "dogmas, its rituals, its external forms of worship" (ibid.). Civil religion is what separates a citizen of one nation from another nation. It works well with modern thinking about nationalism. This can lead to some problems, especially if one nation gets a superiority complex and has delusions of exclusivity. This can lead to some crusade-like activity.
The idea of a civil religion like Rousseau explains isn't so far fetched as it may sound. After all, modern Americans have rituals that define us as a nation. We have apple pie, right (as American as apple pie)? We have the national pass time (don't dare go and not order up a hot dog or roasted peanuts). We even have less pronounced forms of this. We have little colored ribbons that declare how much we support our troops. We have flags flying from houses, windows, and other places. We have patriotism! In our postmodern, post-nationalism world, patriotism has replaced Rousseau's civil religion. If you choose not to engage in any of the practices listed above (and a whole host of others) you run a very significant risk of being labeled un-American. In our civil religion, to not practice the rituals, to not engage in the modern forms of worship, is heretical at best.
The saddest part of this is that many of the people that have fallen for this civil religion are evangelical Christians.