Piety - an intriguing notion. It was precisely for lack of piety - meaning that mix of civil and religious duty - that the early martyrs were killed.
I think the accusation is still very much in play: Christians, if/when they are faithful witnesses, stand accused of impiety against the liberal secular order.
Stout describes modern piety thus:
Piety ... is not to be understood primarily as a felling, expressed in acts of devotion, but rather as a virtue, a morally excellent aspect of character. It consists in just or appropriate response to the sources of one's existence and progress through life. Family, political community, the natural wolrd, and God are all said to be sources on which we depend, sources to be acknowledged appropriately. Emersonians and Augustinians agree that piety, in this sense, is a crucial virtue, and they share an interest in clarifying the proper relationship between civic and religious piety. But they disagree over how the sourecs should be conceived and what constitutes appropriate acknowledgment of our dependence on them. ( Democracy and Tradition, p. 20)
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