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I think the there is an opening along the culture war’s line of contact in the zone of religious behavior. Specifically, that the non-left has the opportunity to take ground among the growing percentage of persons who do not believe in god.
I assume that there is general agreement on the following points:
religiosity, in general, is on the decline. Pew’s longitudinal religious landscape study tracks associated metrics, as do many others.
many individuals and groups are experiencing negative outcomes due to the overall decline in religiosity. There is the often talked about crisis of meaning, the declining birthrates particularly among the non-religious, etc.
putting aside the question of whether or not the leftism is a religion (a proposition I support), that the general decline in religiosity is broadly favorable to leftists.
Taken the above as weak, but broadly agreed upon, I would also argue that, similar to @erwgv3g34 post on Scott’s Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning, the cat is largely out of the proverbial bag on the question of whether or not any particular diety or similar set of theological claims is true. To be clear, I don’t think that every single person will inevitably believe that god doesn’t exist. I do think, however, that there is sufficient atheism, and scientific thinking and knowledge in our society that significantly many people cannot be convinced to believe or to feign belief.
The avowedly religious probably think that this state of affairs is an unalloyed, net negative, but is it? Returning to the generally agreed upon points at the top, there is a growing number of people who don’t believe in god, but are suffering and seeking out the type of benefits that religion classically provides. From the perspective of these atheists, all religions are obviously false in the sense that god doesn’t exist, but religiosity is still important and desirable.
Accordingly, I think there is a lot of ground to be gained by offering these people a way to participate in religion that doesn’t, in Scott’s words, make them insist that lightning comes after thunder. I think there is an opportunity for something like a Christian Atheism, where people can feel connected to the obviously Christian origins of American culture, can participate in group rituals and be supported by a moral framework that they obviously desire, but without the humiliation of professing that thunder comes first.
Is there a good analogy for something like this? I’m not sure. Secular Judaism is the model that comes to mind but I’m sure there are other examples.
Is this optimal from the perspective of the faithful? No. But so what? The devout are hemorrhaging adherents and the only other game in town is the enemy’s.
If I was the Catholic Church or [insert non-Catholic denominational leadership], I would be funding such groups as hard as possible and conditioning my political donations on candidates plugging the idea in their stump speeches. Obviously, I would prefer them to come to Jesus. But if they aren’t coming to Jesus anyway, surely I would prefer to funnel those people into a group where they can proudly and honestly proclaim that ‘of course Jesus isn’t real, but that’s not the point; the 10 commandments have served our people well for 2 thousand years because they work and you should follow them too.’
I think a well crafted message along these lines could be highly effective in the current environment.
Many philosophers/theologians already self describe as Christian atheists, and they usually have much more complicated theologies than you're suggesting. They're complicated enough that I've spend the last 30 minutes trying to think of a decent summary that responds to your post, and I can't do it. So instead I'll just link to the wikipedia page and let you learn more if you'd like.
Personally, I struggled for a long time with the "humiliation of professing that thunder comes first" part of Christianity. I find the Christian atheist solution to this problem to this problem quite satisfying, and probably closer to what the "original" Christianity of Jesus looked like than what most modern American Christians believe.
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