“The president’s State of the Union Address ends where his Second Inaugural Address began: the question of American civic identity” and, for religious citizens, “a view of democracy as an ongoing contest over sacred values.”

The president’s second inaugural address embraced American exceptionalism and invoked the "founding creed" of the Declaration of Independence.

“We saw the president as the one who would bring us together as a country, and what we learned in the first administration is that we were not yet ready to be that country,” says Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

Three religious leaders continue their conversation about the mood of the country as President Obama’s second inaugural approaches and consider the crisis of conflict and gun violence. Violence, says theology professor Harold Dean Trulear, is “who we are as Americans.”

We ask religion leaders what they hope for during President Barack Obama's next term, including former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who says, "If we can make sure that Israel has a proper nation with safe borders and at the same time allow the Palestinians to have their own state...then many of the world's problems in terms of interfaith dialogue will be resolved."

“We have a gigantic rift running through our culture, and it’s a rift that doesn’t run between denominations and institutions," says this prominent Southern Baptist leader of the evangelical Christian right. "It runs through them.”

“True dialogue is being confident in your own faith, but with a willingness to open it up so other people can test it, so we understand one another.”

There was more than one message on Election Day when it came to the role of evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons in politics and the place of economic, social, and cultural issues as the fiscal cliff approaches.

Stephen Schneck, co-chair of Catholics for Obama, reviews the role of Catholics, evangelicals, and millennials in re-electing Barack Obama and anticipates how the Catholic bishops might interact with the second Obama administration.

After the election, Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, criticized the Romney campaign and the Republican Party for “underperforming.” "We did our job," said Reed. "But we can't do the Republican Party's job for them, and we can't do the candidate’s job for him or her."