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American Civil Religion

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American civil religion—the religion of the republic—is a secular American nationalism or national political ideology that uses the forms and structures of traditional religions and often coexists with them. As expressed in its motto, the newly independent United States of America understood itself as a novus ordo seclorum (new [world] order of the ages). Beginning with the Massachusetts Bay Puritans, English settlers claimed a mission and covenant for themselves. Paraphrasing Matthew 5:14, they declared: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” This was a conscious contrast to and rejection of Old World precedents and models, and the Puritans embraced a quasi-religious self-image that gradually became an ideological agenda for the growing nation.

From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, Europe was torn between models of absolute and constitutional monarchy. One extreme example, Louis XIV (r.1643–1715), was understood as himself being France. The words ascribed to him, “L'état c'est moi” (I am the state), captured the peripheral status of even the estates of the nobles, the ecclesiastics, and the bourgeoisie, let alone the peasantry and serfs whose primary identities and allegiances were bound to a particular village, landlord, saint, and faith, not to any concept of a political nation or even a king. Even in the British Isles, with Parliament as a countervailing power, George III (r.1760–1820) ruled as a king “by the grace of God” and the Church of England.

In radical contrast to these, America emerged from its independence struggle as an inherently secular state, comprising former colonies with histories of distinct established colonial churches—hence the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibiting a divisive national establishment of any one of the new states' faiths over the others. Moreover, the country was not to be based on a ruling dynasty or nobility, but on the purely symbolic rhetorical name of “We, the people” and through a decidedly secular reading of natural law.

From this starting point, lacking any explicit and specific divine origin or direction for the country or its leaders, American civil religion grew up, filling the vacuum with a new ideology of nationalism, a new conceptualization and modeling of the state in the form of a religion. American secular nationalism or civil religion has its origins, then, in a mimetic borrowing of the trappings of religions, without any supernatural substance.

This pseudo-divinization of the state has been a continuing process of co-opting and adapting of religious forms, models, and structures into the political realm to create a “nation with the soul of a church,” as the British author G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) put it. Chesterton also asserted that “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the declaration of independence.” That creed, however, despite its dogmatic and theological appearances and pretensions, is not theistic or divine: it is a political cult.

Centuries prior to American independence, the states of western Europe had no role in marriage, divorce, inheritance, and other historically religious concerns, except in maintaining the appearance of their own legitimacy through coronations and other rituals and in arranging politically or territorially advantageous marriages among royalty. But kings did not normally perform such ceremonies; this was left to priests. The later gradual takeover or cloning of previously religious functions by states embracing nationalism was a means toward the end of greater political control of peoples' identities and loyalties to the state. The United States moved into controlling marriage and other areas as it generally centralized power and bureaucratized. As it co-opted or usurped these and other religious functions and forms, “civil religion” became the norm. That is, the nation increasingly took over the functional roles and symbolic features of religions in society to such a degree that the public accepts these appearances and controls as normal.

As this process of creating the civil religion of Americanism progressed, it was not accidental that the secular state transformed itself in almost every dimension into a surrogate religion through the parallel creation of nationalism and patriotism to supersede or subordinate creed and faith. From the realm of religion, for example, holy days have been mimicked by secular holidays such as Independence Day. Divine creation stories were imitated by myths of national origin. The cultic status of saints has been copied by glorifying the military, political, and social heroes of the state—the precisely hagiographic and mythologized George Washington of Parson Weems (1756–1825) is typical. Sacred ground such as churchyards and vaults for burials, and sacred buildings sacralized by saints' remains, were replaced by national cemeteries, where those who served their country might be buried and honored.

Along with these came the creation of other national pilgrimage sites and shrines such as the Lincoln Memorial—architecturally, and not accidentally, an ancient temple—Mount Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty. Sacred texts and holy relics were emulated by founding documents and artifacts such as the Declaration of Independence, the Liberty Bell, and the flag that flew over Fort McHenry; these are preserved at enormous expense in churchlike sanctuaries of hushed silence to emphasize their importance. Apostolic creeds and covenants were simulated with pledges of allegiance. Devotional hymns on public occasions were replaced by national and other patriotic anthems. Presidential inauguration addresses regularly employ the rhetoric and vocabulary of Christian sermons, occasionally invoking God's name in support of the politics. Other types of preaching and catechisms have been reflected in civics classes, citizenship lessons, and tests. Rites of conversion are echoed in oaths of naturalization, administered in the name of God but by a secular judge in a temple of law wearing without embarrassment what once were uniquely priestly robes. It was also no accident that in 1828, as American civil religion progressed, Noah Webster (1758–1843) abandoned his earlier work on the King's English and created a new American Dictionary of the English Language.

Finally, the biblical anticipation of Jesus's death, atonement, and role as messiah—“That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13)—was converted into praise for those who would fight and die for the state and secondarily for their comrades in arms. This is a mimetic transformation: that there is no greater love than to die for one's country.

Beyond ideology, ritual, and crafted history, the state has taken over crucial religious functions, from birth and death registries and control of burials to marriages, laws of inheritance, and other previously ecclesiastical and ritual functions. This list could go on—the point is made, however, that historically these things were not the general business or province of the state in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Into the mid-nineteenth century the United States had no laws whatsoever on its books concerning marriage, either for the several states or its territories. Laws that existed in the 1840s on a state level to restrict marriage had to do with bigamy, but no one pretended that the federal government had any business interfering in such states' rights, as reflected in the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

Perhaps most diagnostic of the pseudo-religious functioning of American civil religion—despite the country's ostensible allegiance to the theological and intellectual freedoms sought by Americans from early migrants and divines such as Roger Williams (1603–1684) to revolutionaries like Thomas Paine (1737–1809)—has been its treatment of those who become the equivalent of religious heretics to what a political majority of the moment considers “Americanness.” The dominant party's ideology is divinized, and dissent is damned. By the mid-nineteenth century dissent from a dominant political group's ideological interpretation of the civil religion had come to parallel heresy against established dogma, just as theological differences from Roman Christianity had come to constitute a crime against the state in Rome after the emperor Constantine I (r.306–337). Dissenters, whether defending a state's constitutional right of succession before the Civil War, opposing the imposition of a military draft in World War I, or arguing the superiority of Communism over free-market capitalism during the Cold War, were treated as heretics, often suffering social and at times physical death.

The McCarthyite years of mid-twentieth century America resemble nothing so much as the Spanish Inquisition or the Salem witch trials. The parallel here is not accidental. Questioning America's civil religion, its godless theology or ideology of the moment, is the ultimate blasphemy and heresy and is treated with a ferocity that belies the entire core of the freedoms to which the civil religion otherwise pays lip service.

The mimetic nature of American civil religion becomes most apparent in its laws and in federal court cases in which it clashes with the often ancient beliefs and practices of traditional religious faiths. Ancient and well-established formal religious beliefs and practices such as the theory of just war and its concomitant allowance of selective conscientious objection to participation in war, sanctuary of the altar for “illegal” immigrant-refugee victims of political persecution, polygynous marriages (allowing more than one wife) authorized by the Qur᾽an, the obligation upon priests and ministers to preserve the secrecy of religious confession, animal sacrifice and ritual slaughter—all these have all been routinely attacked by the state during periods when such beliefs or practices have become unpopular with a crucial segment of voters. American civil religion, like the nationalistic ideologies of other modern secular states, asserts coercive veto and penal power over the truly religious traditions whose forms and practices it has assumed to itself.

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American civil religion

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American civil religion is a sociological theory that there exists a religion of the United States, a nonsectarian faith that has as its sacred symbols those of the polity and national history. Scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common set of values that foster social and cultural integration. The concept goes back to the 19th century but in current form was developed by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 in an article, "Civil Religion in America." The topic soon became the major focus at religious sociology conferences and numerous articles and books were written on the subject. The debate reached its peak with the American Bicentennial celebration in 1976.[1][2][3][4][5] There is a viewpoint that some Americans have come to see the document of the United States Constitution, along with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights as being a cornerstone of a type of civic or civil religion.

According to Bellah, Americans embrace a common "civil religion" with certain fundamental beliefs, values, holidays, and rituals, parallel to, or independent of, their chosen religion.[2] Presidents have often served in central roles in civil religion, and the nation provides semi-religious honors to its martyrs—such as Lincoln and the soldiers killed in the Civil War[6]. Historians have noted presidential level use of civil religion rhetoric in profoundly moving episodes such as the world wars[7], the civil rights movement[8], and 9-11[9].

This belief system has historically been used to reject nonconformist ideas and groups.[1] Gehrig points out that some theorists, such as Bellah, hold that American civil religion can perform the religious functions of integration, legitimation, and prophecy, while others theorists, such as Richard Fenn, disagree.[10]

Contents

Development of concept

Alexis de Tocqueville believed that Christianity was the source of the basic principles of liberal democracy, and the only religion capable of maintaining liberty in a democratic era. His was keenly aware of the mutual hatred between Christians and liberals in 19th-century France, rooted in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In France Christianity was allied with the Old Regime before 1789 and the reactionary Bourbon Restoration of 1815-30. However he said Christianity was not antagonistic to democracy in the United States, where it was a bulwark against dangerous tendencies toward individualism and materialism, which would lead to atheism and tyranny.[11]

Bellah's ideas about civil religion thus were not novel. Before Bellah wrote his paper in 1967 coining the term "American civil religion" several prominent scholars had alluded to the concept. But there was no common conceptual term to describe, interpret or analyze civic religious faith in America. Although Bellah claimed that most people in the United States share common religious characteristics expressed through beliefs, symbols, and rituals that provide a religious dimension to the entirety of American life.

The concept now in use comes from the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858-1917. In Durkheim's interpretation, civil religion acts upon the individual. Although Bellah also mentions French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), Rousseau had little influence on American thought. Most students of civil religion follow the basic Bellah/Durkhemian interpretation.[12] Other sources of this idea include philosopher John Dewey who spoke of "common faith" (1934); sociologist Robin Murphy Williams' American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (1951) which stated there was a "common religion" in America; sociologist Lloyd Warner's analysis of the Memorial Day celebrations in "Yankee City" (1953 [1974]); historian Martin Marty's "religion in general" (1959); theologian Will Herberg who spoke of "the American Way of Life" (1960, 1974); historian Sidney Mead's "religion of the Republic" (1963); and British writer G. K. Chesterton, who said that the United States was "the only nation...founded on a creed" and also coined the phrase "a nation with a soul of a church".[4][5]

In the same period, several distinguished historians such as Yehoshua Arieli, Daniel Boorstin, and Ralph Gabriel "assessed the religious dimension of 'nationalism', the 'American creed', 'cultural religion' and the 'democratic faith'".[4]

Premier sociologist Seymour Lipset (1963) referred to "Americanism" and the "American Creed" to characterize a distinct set of values that Americans hold with a quasi-religious fervor.[4]

Today, according to social scientist Rondald Wimberley and William Swatos, there seems to be a firm consensus among social scientists that there is a part of Americanism that is especially religious in nature, which may be termed civil religion. But this religious nature is less significant than the "transcendent universal religion of the nation" which late eighteenth century French intellectuals such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about.[5]

Evidence supporting Bellah

Ronald Wimberley (1976) and other researchers collected large surveys and factor analytic studies which gave support to Bellah's argument that civil religion is a distinct cultural phenomenon within American society which is not embodied in American politics or denominational religion.[5]

Examples of civil religious beliefs are reflected in statements used in the research such as the following:

  • "America is God's chosen nation today."
  • "A president's authority...is from God."
  • "Social justice cannot only be based on laws; it must also come from religion."
  • "God can be known through the experiences of the American people."
  • "Holidays like the Fourth of July are religious as well as patriotic."[5]
  • "God Bless America"

Later research sought to determine who is civil religious. In a 1978 study by James Christenson and Ronald Wimberley, the researchers found that a wide cross section of American citizens have civil religious beliefs. In general though, college graduates and political or religious liberals appear to be somewhat less civil religious. Protestants and Catholics have the same level of civil religiosity. Religions that were created in the United States, the Mormons, Adventists, and Pentecostals, have the highest civil religiosity. Jews, Unitarians and those with no religious preference have the lowest civil religion. Even though there is variation in the scores, the "great majority" of Americans are found to share the types of civil religious beliefs which Bellah wrote about.[5]

Further research found that civil religion plays a role in people's preferences for political candidates and policy positions. In 1980 Ronald Wimberley found that civil religious beliefs were more important than loyalties to a political party in predicting support for Nixon over McGovern with a sample of Sunday morning church goers who were surveyed near the election date and a general group of residents in the same community. In 1982 James Christenson and Ronald Wimberley found that civil religion was second only to occupation in predicting a person's political policy views.[5]

Coleman has argued that civil religion is a widespread theme in history. He says it typically evolves in three phases: undifferentiation, state sponsorship in the period of modernization, differentiation. He supports his argument with comparative historical data from Japan, Imperial Rome, the Soviet Union, Turkey, France and The United States.[13]

Civil religion in practice

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the main source of civil religion. It produced a Moses-like leader (George Washington), prophets (Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine), apostles (John Adams, Benjamin Franklin) and martyrs (Boston Massacre, Nathan Hale), as well as devils (Benedict Arnold), sacred places (Valley Forge), rituals (raising the Liberty Tree), flags (the Betsy Ross flag), sacred holidays (July 4) and a holy scripture (The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution).[14]

President as leader of civil religion

Since the days of George Washington presidents have assumed one of several roles in American civil religion, and that role has helped shape the presidency.[15][16] Linder argues that:

Throughout American history, the president has provided the leadership in the public faith. Sometimes he has functioned primarily as a national prophet, as did Abraham Lincoln. Occasionally he has served primarily as the nation's pastor, as did Dwight Eisenhower. At other times he has performed primarily as the high priest of the civil religion, as did Ronald Reagan. In prophetic civil religion, the president assesses the nation's actions in relation to transcendent values and calls upon the people to make sacrifices in times of crisis and to repent of their corporate sins when their behavior falls short of the national ideals. As the national pastor, he provides spiritual inspiration to the people by affirming American core values and urging them to appropriate those values, and by comforting them in their afflictions. In the priestly role, the president makes America itself the ultimate reference point. He leads the citizenry in affirming and celebrating the nation, and reminds them of the national mission, while at the same time glorifying and praising his political flock."[17]

Calhoun argues that in the 1880s the speeches of Benjamin Harrison display a rhetorical style that embraced American civic religion; indeed, Harrison was one of the credo's most adept presidential practitioners. Harrison was a leader whose application of Christian ethics to social and economic matters paved the way for the Social Gospel, the Progressive Movement and a national climate of acceptance regarding government action to resolve social problems.[18]

Linder argues that President Bill Clinton's sense of civil religion was based on his Baptist background in Arkansas. Commentator William Safire noted of the 1992 presidential campaign that, "Never has the name of God been so frequently invoked, and never has this or any nation been so thoroughly and systematically blessed."[19] Clinton speeches incorporated religious terminology that suggests the role of pastor rather than prophet or priest. With a universalistic outlook, he made no sharp distinction between the domestic and the foreign in presenting his vision of a world community of civil faith.[17]

Brocker argues that Europeans have often mischaracterized the politics of President George W. Bush (2001–2009) as directly inspired by Protestant fundamentalism. However in his speeches Bush mostly actually used civil religious metaphors and images and rarely used language specific to any Christian denomination. His foreign policy, says Bocker, was based on American security interests and not on any fundamentalist teachings.[20]

Hammer says that in his 2008 campaign speeches candidate Barack Obama portrays the America nation as a people unified by a shared belief in the American Creed and sanctified by the symbolism of an American civil religion.[21]

Would-be presidents likewise contributed to the rhetorical history of civil religion. The speeches of Daniel Webster were often memorized by student debaters, and his 1830 endorsement of "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable' was iconic.[22]

Pledge of Allegiance

Kao and Copulsky argue the concept of civil religion illuminates the popular constitutional debate over the Pledge of Allegiance. The function of the pledge has aspects: preservationist, pluralist, priestly, and prophetic. The debate is not between those who believe in God and those who do not, but it is a dispute on the meaning and place of civil religion in America.[23]

Cloud explores political oaths since 1787 and traces the tension between a need for national unity and a desire to affirm religious faith. He reviews major Supreme Court decisions involving the Pledge of Allegiance, including the contradictory Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) and West Virginia v. Barnette (1943) decisions. He argues that the Pledge was changed in 1954 during the Cold War to encourage school children to reject communism's atheistic philosophy by affirming belief in God.[24]

School rituals

Gamoran argues that civil religion in public schools can be seen in such daily rituals as the pledge of allegiance; in holiday observances, with activities such as music and art; and in the social studies, history and English curricula. Civil religion in schools plays a dual role: it socializes youth to a common set of understandings, but it also sets off subgroups of Americans whose backgrounds or beliefs prevent them from participating fully in civil religious ceremonies.[25]

Minorities

The Bellah argument deals with mainstream beliefs, but other scholars have looked at minorities outside the mainstream, and typically distrusted or disparaged by the mainstream, which have developed their own version of civil religion.

White South

Wilson, noting the historic centrality of religion in Southern identity, argues that when the White South was outside the national mainstream in the late 19th century, it created its own pervasive common civil religion heavy with mythology, ritual, and organization. Wilson says the Lost Cause--that is, defeat in a holy war - has left southerners to face guilt, doubt, and the triumph of evil: in other words, to form a tragic sense of life.[26][27]

Blacks

Woodrum and Bell argue that blacks demonstrate less civil religious than whites and that different predictors of civil religion operate among blacks and whites. For example, conventional religion positively influences whites' civil religion but negatively influences blacks' civil religion. Woodrum and Bell interpret these results as a product of black American religious ethnogenesis and separatism.[28]

Japanese Americans

Iwamura argues that the pilgrimages made by Japanese Americans to the sites of World War II-era internment camps have formed a Japanese American version of civil religion. Starting in 1969 the Reverend Sentoku Maeda and Reverend Soichi Wakahiro began pilgrimages to Manzanar National Historic Site in California. These pilgrimages included poetry readings, music, cultural events, a roll call of former internees, and a nondenominational ceremony with Protestant and Buddhist ministers and Catholic and Shinto priests. The event is designed to reinforce Japanese American cultural ties and to ensure that such injustices will never occur again.[29]

Hispanics

Mexican-American labor leader César Chávez, by virtue of having holidays, stamps, and other commemorizations of his actions, has practically become a "saint" in American civil religion, according to León. He was raised in the Catholic tradition and using Catholic rhetoric. His "sacred acts," his political practices couched in Christian teachings, became influential to the burgeoning Chicano movement and strengthened his appeal. By acting on his moral convictions through nonviolent means, Chávez became sanctified in the national consciousness, says León.[30]

Enshrined

National Archives Rotunda
virtual tour online[31]

Christian language, rhetoric, and values helped colonists to perceive their political system as superior to the corrupt British monarchy. Ministers' sermons were instrumental in promoting patriotism and in motivating the colonists to take action against the evils and corruption of the British government. Together with the semi-religious tone sometimes adopted by preachers and such leaders as George Washington,[32] and the notion that God favored the patriot cause, this made the documents of the Founding Fathers suitable as almost-sacred texts.[33]

The National Archives Building in Washington preserves and displays the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Pauline Maier describes these texts as enshrined in massive, bronze-framed display cases.[34] While political scientists, sociologists, and legal scholars study the Constitution and how it is used in American society, on the other hand, historians are concerned with putting themselves back into a time and place, in context. It would be anachronistic for them to look at the documents of the "Charters of Freedom" and see America’s modern "civic religion" because of "how much Americans have transformed very secular and temporal documents into sacred scriptures".[34] The whole business of erecting a shrine for the worship of the Declaration of Independence strikes some academic critics looking from point of view of the 1776 or 1789 America as "idolatrous, and also curiously at odds with the values of the Revolution." It was suspicious of religious iconographic practices. At the beginning, in 1776, it was not meant to be that at all.[35]

On the 1782 Great Seal of the United States, the date of the Declaration of Independence and the words under it signify the beginning of the "new American Era" on earth. Though the inscription, Novus ordo seclorum, does not translate from the Latin as "secular", it also does not refer to a new order of heaven. It is a reference to generations of society in the western hemisphere, the millions of generations to come.[36]

Even from the vantage point of a new nation only ten to twenty years after the drafting of the Constitution, the Framers themselves differed in their assessments of its significance. Washington in his Farewell Address pled that "the Constitution be sacredly maintained."' He echoed Madison in "The Federalist No. 49", that citizen "veneration" of the Constitution might generate the intellectual stability needed to maintain even the "wisest and freest governments" amidst conflicting loyalties. But there is also a rich tradition of dissent from "Constitution worship". By 1816 Jefferson could write that "some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched." But he saw imperfections and imagined that potentially, there could be others, believing as he did that "institutions must advance also".[37]

Heretics

While the civil religion has been widely accepted by practically all denominations, one group has always stood against it. Seventh-day Adventism deliberately pose as "heretics", so to speak, and refuse to perform in the sacred ceremonies like the Pledge of Allegiance or saluting the flag or treating Sundays as special. Indeed, says Bull, the denomination has defined its identity in contradistinction to precisely those elements of the host culture that have constituted civil religion.[38]

Making a nation

American identity has an ideological connection to these "Charters of Freedom". Samuel P. Huntington discusses common connections for most peoples in nation-states, a national identity as product of common ethnicity, ancestors and experience, common language, culture and religion. The United States has a fate different from "most peoples". American identity is "willed affirmation" of what Huntington refers to as the 'American creed.' The creed is made up of (a) individual rights, (b) majority rule, and (c) a constitutional order of limited government power. American independence from Britain was not based on cultural difference, but on the adoption of principles found in the Declaration. Whittle Johnson in The Yale Review sees a sort of "covenanting community" of freedom under law, which, "transcending the 'natural' bonds of race, religion and class, itself takes on transcendent importance".[39]

These political ideals, which emphasize political orthodoxy, make it possible for an ethnic diversity unequaled in Britain, France, Germany or Japan. And, lacking the ancestor who may have landed on Plymouth Rock or a distant cousin "purportedly" related to those of 1776, Anne Norton has explained that it is the only way immigrants can establish a commonality with those who had an ethnic history like those Founding Fathers. That singular commonality has become the criterion for belonging which is almost unique in its openness to strangers.[40]

Becoming a naturalized citizen in the United States requires a basic understanding of the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and an oath supporting the Constitution. Hans Kohn described the United States Constitution as "unlike any other: it represents the lifeblood of the American nation, its supreme symbol and manifestation. It is so intimately welded with the national existence itself that the two have become inseparable." Indeed, abolishing the Constitution in Huntington’s view would abolish the United States, it would "destroy the basis of community, eliminating the nation, [effecting] ... a return to nature."[40]

As if to emphasize the lack of any alternative "faith" to the American nation, Thomas Grey in his article "The Constitution as scripture", contrasted those traditional societies with divinely appointed rulers enjoying heavenly mandates for social cohesion with that of the United States. He pointed out that Article VI, third clause, requires all political figures, both federal and state, "be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution, but no religious test shall ever be required..." This was a major break not only with past British practice commingling authority of state and religion, but also with that of most American states when the Constitution was written,[41]

Escape clause. Whatever the oversights and evils the modern reader may see in the original Constitution, the Declaration that "all men are created equal"—in their rights—informed the Constitution in such a way that Frederick Douglass in 1860 could label the Constitution, if properly understood, as an antislavery document.[42] He held that "the constitutionality of slavery can be made out only by disregarding the plain and common-sense reading to the Constitution itself. [T]he Constitution will afford slavery no protection when it shall cease to be administered by slaveholders," a reference to the Supreme Court majority at the time.[43] With a change of that majority, there was American precedent for judicial activism in Constitutional interpretation, including the Massachusetts Supreme Court, which had ended slavery there in 1783.[42]

Accumulations of Amendments under Article V of the Constitution and judicial review of Congressional and state law have fundamentally altered the relationship between U.S. citizens and their governments. Some scholars refer to the coming of a "second Constitution" with the Thirteenth Amendment, we are all free, the Fourteenth, we are all citizens, the Fifteenth, men vote, and the Nineteenth, women vote. The Fourteenth Amendment has been interpreted so as to require States to respect citizen rights in the same way that the Constitution has required the Federal government to respect them. So much so, that in 1972, the U.S. Representative from Texas, Barbara Jordan, could affirm, "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total ..."[43]

After discussion of the Article V provision for change in the Constitution as a political stimulus to serious national consensus building, Sanford Levinson performed a thought experiment which was suggested at the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution in Philadelphia. If one were to sign the Constitution today,[44] whatever our reservations might be, knowing what we do now, and transported back in time to its original shortcomings, great and small, "signing the Constitution commits one not to closure but only to a process of becoming, and to taking responsibility for the political vision toward which I, joined I hope, with others, strive."[45]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Bellah, Robert Neelly (Winter 1967). "Civil Religion in America". Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 96 (1): 1–21. Archived from the original on 2005-03-06. http://web.archive.org/web/20050306124338/http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm.  From the issue entitled "Religion in America".
  2. ^ a b Kaplan, Dana Evan (Aug 15, 2005). The Cambridge Companion to American Judaism. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82204-1.  p. 118.
  3. ^ Meštrović, Stjepan G (1993). The Road from Paradise. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-1827-1.  p. 129
  4. ^ a b c d Cristi, Marcela (2001). From Civil to Political Religion: The Intersection of Culture, Religion and Politics. University Press. ISBN 0-88920-368-7. 
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Swatos, William H. (1998). Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 0-7619-8956-0.  p. 94. "The article caused an almost unprecedented burst of excitement among sociologists and other scholars of religion."
  6. ^ Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (2006)
  7. ^ Michael A. Genovese (2010). Encyclopedia of the American Presidency. Infobase Publishing. p. 89. http://books.google.com/books?id=BaVozO5RyNwC&pg=PA89. 
  8. ^ Andrew Michael Manis (2002). Southern Civil Religions in Conflict: Civil Rights and the Culture Wars. Mercer University Press. p. 184. http://books.google.com/books?id=oq2d_TFALAEC&pg=PA184. 
  9. ^ George C. Edwards; Desmond S. King (2007). The Polarized Presidency of George W. Bush. Oxford University Press. p. 152. http://books.google.com/books?id=3ahH0DRaFw0C&pg=PA152. 
  10. ^ Gail Gehrig, "The American Civil Religion Debate: A Source for Theory Construction," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, (March 1981) 20#1 pp 51-63 in JSTOR
  11. ^ Sanford Kessler, "Tocqueville on Civil Religion and Liberal Democracy," Journal of Politics, 39#1 (1977), pp. 119-146 in JSTOR
  12. ^ Marcela Cristi, From civil to political religion: the intersection of culture, religion and politics (2001) p 7
  13. ^ John A. Coleman, "Civil Religion," Sociological Analysis, Summer 1970, 31#2 pp 67-77 doi: 10.2307/3710057
  14. ^ Catherine L. Albanese, Sons of the Fathers: The Civil Religion of the American Revolution (1977)
  15. ^ Richard G., Hutcheson, Jr., God in the White House: How Religion Has Changed the Modern Presidency (1988)
  16. ^ James David Fairbanks, "The Priestly Functions of the Presidency: A Discussion of the Literature on Civil Religion and Its Implications for the Study of Presidential Leadership," Presidential Studies Quarterly (1981) 11:214–32.
  17. ^ a b Robert D. Linder, "Universal pastor: President Bill Clinton's civil religion," Journal of Church and State, Autumn 1996, 38#4 pp 733-49
  18. ^ Charles W. Calhoun, "Civil religion and the gilded age presidency: The case of Benjamin Harrison," Presidential Studies Quarterly, Fall 1993, 23#4 pp 651-67
  19. ^ Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour Lachman, One Nation Under God: Religion in Contemporary American Society (1994) p 158
  20. ^ Manfred Brocker, "Civil Religion, Fundamentalism, and the Politics and Policies of George W. Bush," Journal of Political Science, Jan 2004, Vol. 32, pp 95-124
  21. ^ Stefanie. Hammer, "The role of narrative in political campaigning: An analysis of speeches by Barack Obama," National Identities, Sept 2010, 12#3, pp 269-290
  22. ^ Craig R. Smith, Daniel Webster and the Oratory of Civil Religion (2005) p. 117
  23. ^ Grace Y. Kao and Jerome E. Copulsky, "The Pledge of Allegiance and the Meanings and Limits of Civil Religion," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2007, 75#1, pp 121-149 doi: 10.1093/jaarel/lfl065
  24. ^ Matthew W. Cloud, "'One Nation, Under God': Tolerable Acknowledgement of Religion or Unconstitutional Cold War Propaganda Cloaked in American Civil Religion?" Journal of Church & State, Spring 2004, 46#2 pp 311-340, online
  25. ^ Adam Gamoran, "Civil Religion in American Schools," SA: Sociological Analysis, Fall 1990, 51#3 pp 235-256
  26. ^ Charles Reagan Wilson, "The Religion of the Lost Cause: Ritual and the Organization of the Southern Civil Religion, 1865-1920," Journal of Southern History, May 1980, 46#2 pp 219-238
  27. ^ Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920 (1980)
  28. ^ Eric Woodrum, and Arnold Bell, "Race, Politics, and Religion in Civil Religion Among Blacks," SA: Sociological Analysis, Winter 1989, 49#4 pp 353-367
  29. ^ Jane Naomi Iwamura, "Critical Faith: Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion," American Quarterly, Sept 2007, 59#3 , pp 937-968, in Project MUSE
  30. ^ Luis D. León, "Cesar Chavez in American Religious Politics: Mapping the New Global Spiritual Line." American Quarterly, Sep 2007, 59#3 pp 857-881, DOI:10.1353/aq.2007.0060
  31. ^ The United States National Archives Rotunda |The 360 NARA Rotunda Tour stands the visitor in the center, allows zoom in, click and drag to look at the inlaid marble floor and ornate ceiling.
  32. ^ Gary Scott Smith, "The American Moses," Christian History and Biography, Summer 2008, Issue 99, pp 8-13
  33. ^ Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (2010) pp 4, 37. 59, 112, 115,
  34. ^ a b Gordon S. Wood, "Dusting off the Declaration," The New York Review of Books, Aug 14, 1997
  35. ^ Wood, Gordon S., op.cit., Aug 14, 1997
  36. ^ Great Seal webpage. Viewed August 19, 2011.
  37. ^ Levinson 1987, p. 115.
  38. ^ Malcolm Bull, "The Seventh-Day Adventists: Heretics of American Civil Religion Sociological Analysis, April 1989, 50#2, pp 177-187
  39. ^ Levinson 1987, p. 118.
  40. ^ a b Levinson 1987, p. 119.
  41. ^ Levinson 1987, p. 120.
  42. ^ a b Harper, Douglas., Slavery in the North: Massachusetts. Viewed September 15, 2011.
  43. ^ a b Levinson 1987, pp. 129-130, 133.
  44. ^ The visitor to the National Archives website today is invited to sign the Constitution online. Viewed September 11, 2011.
  45. ^ Levinson 1987, p. 144.

Further reading

Historiography

  • Fenn, Richard K. "The Relevance of Bellah's 'Civil Religion' Thesis to a Theory of Secularization," Social Science History, Fall 1977, 1#4 pp 502–517
  • Gedicks, Frederick. "American Civil Religion: an Idea Whose Time Is Past," The George Washington International Law Review Volume: 41. Issue: 4. 2010. pp 891+. online
  • Lindner, Robert D. "Civil Religion in Historical Perspective: The Reality that Underlies the Concept," Journal of Church & State, Summer 1975, 17#3 pp 399–421, focus on European theorists
  • McDermott, Gerald Robert. "Civil Religion in the American Revolutionary Period: An Historiographic Analysis," Christian Scholar's Review, April 1989, 18#4 pp 346–362
  • Mathisen, James A.; Bellah, Robert N. "Twenty Years after Bellah: Whatever Happened to American Civil Religion?," Sociological Analysis, April 1989, 50#2, pp 129–146 online

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