"...and places for the worship of God, abound with that frequency which characterises a moral and reflecting people, and with that variety of exterior and canonical government which flows from unfettered liberty of conscience." The Pioneers, James Fennimore Cooper
This quote about "upstate" New York holds similarities and contrasts with today. America has always had a great variety of congregations and confessions, with each citizen free to chose the confession that fits conscience and faith. Madison and the founders envisioned a land where freedom of religion would promote a general moral climate, with good citizens who learn metaphysical ethics from the church, with the common denominator of freedom.
As Tom Wolfe has noted, America has moved from a period of freedom of religion (Cooper's time) to freedom from religion (now). The churches no longer teach a particular morality. The state cannot even listen to the opinions of disestablished religions on questions of science and morality. In fact, churches generally avoid discussions of ethics (the poor, immigration, abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, etc.) in favor of a religion that sweetens the heart, reaches the affect and makes adherents not moral agents, but nice people, who do not have a language or context for genuine moral engagement with people who differ from them, or the tools and skill to come to their own conclusion or convince another. When the church does engage in ethical talk and persuasion, it begins to look like an arm of political ideology, and not genuinely interested in moral and ethical peresuasion.
Which leads back to the lordship of Christ. Christ is Lord of conscience and heaven and earth. In order for a conscience to be truly free, it must submit to Christ. All other consciences are bound, and unfree.
Before that, we remember that Cooper's wilderness is wild, but tamed by religion. Our dogma becomes more serious, as our ethics become more societal. Maybe churches can become wild places again.