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The key word in your example is "state-funded". That isn't rival institutional power, that is basic capital command-flow. Very few taxpayers are happy with carte-blanche funding of anything, and few legislators would risk their reputation in such a way. There are some basic parameters of public-interest (I understand that such a term can be twisted, but it remains there in a functional system) that require enforcement (very disrespectful to my imagined Fraud-punk religion where committing fraud is cool).
Much of the contention that morphs the state into a civic church is the morphing of the word "public-interest" to become anything you can imagine, so long as it is dressed in anti-discrimination language (see below for why).
Neoreactionaries have identified the modern civic-religion in the US as having been conceived with the Civil Rights Act which goes far-beyond state-funded entities:
State-sanctioned Racial-districting, private businesses can't freely associate if that includes turning away members of a specific race from their business, neighborhoods cannot limit who purchases homes in an area.
Basically it's the point at which the constitution morphs away from being a limiter on state-power. Now the state can enter and enforce its religion anywhere where a civil-rights grievance can be claimed.
In Europe, the encroachment is a bit more baked-in: For instance, Germany simply outlaws home-schooling outright. This is fairly insane from the perspective of an American: nobody is free to educate their child outside of the state.
Arguably the ability to educate your children away from state-propaganda is a God-given right.
In fact there is the case of a German homeschooling family (The Romeike family) obtaining deferred-status to stay in the US due to state-persecution in Germany. They were initially granted Asylum and then revoked by the Obama administration (An administration emblematic of upholding civic-religion).
The contrast between the traditional limited-government american legal view to grant asylum to such a family vs the civic-religion upholding Obama administration clarifies much: From the traditional american perspective, A victim of state-persecution is offered a lifeline by the US. From the perspective of the Obama administration, offering this family asylum validates apostasy from the German civic-religion which is disrespectful, being a fellow civic-religion.
Thanks, I hadn't seen the mechanics clearly. I think I understand from what you are saying that the State doesn't need to claim moral authority directly. It just attaches moral conditions to money. That's how the State enforces its orthodoxy without ever saying "this is a religion." The anti-discrimination framework is a legal chassis that the ideology rides on.
The Romeike family example may show that Obama's civic religion could not tolerate validating someone who rejected the German civic religion—it would set a precedent that civic religions are optional. This looks more like a totalitarian impulse hiding inside "neutral" secularism.
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