my marginalium on this topic is that religiosity also goes with Empire, like... baked beans with toast?  the British Empah in its heyday was a hotbed of sanctimonious religiosity, and -- this is very much worth noting and mulling over -- a peculiar theological flavour du jour called "Muscular Christianity" which sought to masculinise (and Whiteyfy) the Christ icon into a robust AngloSaxon soldier/sportsman.  very analogous to the Team Jesus football thing, but of course it would have been rugger or cricket in those days.

the New Testament prescriptions of pacifism, altruism, generosity, gentleness and loving-kindness is deeply antithetical to patriarchal values (domination, hierarchy, control and conquest), and a tussle seems to develop between the two value systems in all ostensibly Christianised empires and polities;  the Nazis zBs attempted to Aryanise Christianity, or to render it obsolete and replace it with a kind of State Paganism (sounds like an oxymoron to me, but dialectical contradictions didn't bother them much, like most authoritarians...).

hmmm recommended reading, iirc, "The Games Ethic and Imperialism" by Mangan... "Fallen Soldiers" by Mosse?  I think there's a much better text but can't remember it off top of head.

anyway, it doesn't surprise me that as Imperial America gels or hardens into its role, it suffers from the same  genus (though the specifics vary) of overbearing, zealous, self-righteous, underinformed, intolerant and warrior-cultic religiosity as Imperial Britain.  I suspect that we can cross correlate seasons of 'religious revival' in the US with periods of territorial expansion and resource grabs.  we may have cart and horse backward here, and the religiosity may be a necessary moral justification for the empire, rather than the empire an outgrowth of the religiosity;  more likely they are synergistic...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...