American civil religion

American civil religion is a term coined by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967. The article in which the term is coined, "Civil Religion in America", sparked one of the most controversial debates in United States sociology. Soon after the paper was published, the topic 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. 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. This belief system has historically been used to attack nonconformist and liberal ideas and groups.

Three periods of crisis

In the book The Broken Covenant Bellah argued that America has experienced three periods when a large number of Americans were cynical about the American creed:

Once in each of the last three centuries America has faced a time of trial, a time of testing so severe that...the existence of our nation has been called in question...the spiritual glue that had bound the nation together in previous years had simply collapsed.

The founding of the nation is the first period. The Civil War and the 1960s were the other two periods.

Historical background

Bellah's ideas about civil religion 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.

Scholarly progenitors of this idea include John Dewey who spoke of "common faith" (1934); Robin Williams's American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (1951) which stated there was a "common religion" in America; Lloyd Warner's analysis of the Memorial Day celebrations in "Yankee City" (1953 [1974]); Martin Marty's "religion in general" (1959); Will Herberg who spoke of "the American Way of Life" (1960, 1974); Sidney Mead's "religion of the Republic" (1963); and G. K. Chesterton advanced the thesis 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".

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'".

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.

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.

Empirical evidence supporting Bellah

Ronald Wimberley (1976) and other researchers collected large surveys and factor analytic studies which gave empirical 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.

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."

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.

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.

Quotes

While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith...few have realized that there actually exists alongside...the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America

— Robert Bellah,

The greatest part of...America was peopled by men who...brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity...by styling it a democratic and republican religion

— Alexis de Tocqueville,

Civil religion is neither bona fide religion nor ordinary patriotism, but a new alloy formed by blending religion with nationalism. If civil religions were bona fide religions then one would expect to find a soft side to them, teaching love of neighbor and upholding peace and compassion. But this is not the case.

— Stjepan Mestrovic,

Civic religion

The National Archives preserves and displays the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These texts are enshrined in massive, bronze-framed, bulletproof, moisture-controlled glass containers vacuum-sealed in a cathedral-like Rotunda by day, in multi-ton bomb-proof vaults by night. The ‘Charters of Freedom’ are flanked by Barry Faulkner’s two grand murals, one featuring Jefferson amidst the Continental Congress, the other centering on Madison at the Constitutional Convention. Alongside the Charters of Freedom is a dual display of the "Formation of the Union", which is documents related to the evolution of the U.S. government from 1774 to 1791. These include Articles of Association (1774), Articles of Confederation (1778), Treaty of Paris (1783) and Washington’s Inaugural Address (1789). The Constitution has a past, and it is also living in a way.

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". 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.

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.

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 "[s]ome 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".

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".

National Archives Rotunda
virtual tour online

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.

The touchstone of becoming a naturalized citizen in the United States is demonstration of an understanding of the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. One's attachment to the Charters of Freedom is signified by a public 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."

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.

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. 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. 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.

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 ..."

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, 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."

The shrine

At first, whatever the veneration of the Constitution as a set of first principles might have been, little interest was shown in the parchment object itself. Madison had custody of it as Secretary of State (1801-9) but having left Washington DC, he had lost track of it in the years leading to his death. A publisher had access to it in 1846 for a book on the Constitution. Historian J. Franklin Jameson found the parchment in 1883 folded in a small tin box on the floor of a closet at the State, War and Navy Building. In 1894 State sealed the Declaration and Constitution between two glass plates and kept them in a safe.

The two parchment documents were turned over to the Library of Congress by executive order, and in 1924 President Coolidge dedicated the bronze-and-marble shrine for public display of the Constitution at the main building. The parchments were laid over moisture absorbing cellulose paper, vacuum-sealed between double panes of insulated plate glass, and protected from light by a gelatin film. Although building construction of the Archives Building was completed in 1935, in Dec 1941 they were moved from the Library of Congress until September 1944, stored at the U.S. Bullion Depository, Fort Knox, Kentucky. In 1951 following a study by the National Bureau of Standards to protect from atmosphere, insects, mold and light, the parchments were re-encased with special light filters, inert helium gas and proper humidity. They were transferred to the National Archives in 1952.

The design of the National Archives Building was authorized by Congress as a part of a massive New Deal public building program in the center of Washington DC to beautify the central market area immediately west of the Capitol. (Eastern Market east of the Capitol is still extant.) When John Russell Pope was added to the Board of Architectural Consultants, his vision brought its location to the foot of Capitol Hill and transformed it into a monumental building.

Since 1952, the "Charters of Freedom" have been displayed in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building. Visual inspections have been enhanced by electronic imaging. Changes in the cases led to removal from their cases July 2001, preservation treatment by conservators, and installment in new encasements for public display September, 2003.

The Archives were set up by Franklin Roosevelt in 1934. It keeps 1-3% of government documents to be kept forever. These are over 9 billion text records, 20 million photographs, 7 million maps, charts, and architectural drawings and over 365,000 reels of film. The monumental Archives Building was inadequate by the 1960s, so new facilities were built in College Park, MD. Work on electronic archives progresses.

Original Errata. During its first century, the parchment "Copy of the Constitution" was not directly viewed for public purposes, and most of the penned copies sent to the states are lost.

But on inspection of one of the remaining copies held at the National Archives, there is an apparent spelling error in the original parchment Constitution, in the so-called Export Clause of Article 1, Section 10 on page 2, where the possessive pronoun its appears to be spelled with an apostrophe, turning it into it's. However, the letters t and s are connected, and the mark interpreted as an apostrophe is somewhat inconspicuous; different U.S. government sources have transcribed this phrase with and without the apostrophe.

The spelling Pensylvania is used in the list of signatories at the bottom of page 4 of the original document. Elsewhere, in Article 1, Section 2, the spelling that is usual today, Pennsylvania, is used. However, in the late 18th century, the use of a single n to spell "Pennsylvania" was common usage — the Liberty Bell's inscription, for example, uses a single n.

See also

• American exceptionalism
• Civil religion
• Ceremonial deism
• United States Constitution

Further reading

American civil religion

• Bellah, Robert Neelly (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. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) From the issue entitled Religion in America.
• Bellah, Robert Neelly (August 15, 1992). The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-04199-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Canipe, Lee (2003). "Under God and anti-communist: how the Pledge of Allegiance got religion in Cold-War America". Journal of Church and State. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Cloud, Matthew W (2004). ""One nation, under God": tolerable acknowledgement of religion or unconstitutional cold war propaganda cloaked in American civil religion?". Journal of Church and State. 46 (2): 311. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Gehrig, Gail (1981). American Civil Religion: An Assessment. Society for Scientific Study. ISBN 0-932566-02-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Hughes, Richard T. (July 6, 2004). Myths America Lives By. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-07220-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Jewett, Robert (2004). Captain America And The Crusade Against Evil: The Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 0-8028-2859-0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) Page 328 specifically talks about American civil religion, referencing Jones's book, American Civil Religion.
• Jones, Donald G. (November 1990 (Original published in 1974 by Harper)). American Civil Religion. Mellen University Press. ISBN 0-7734-9997-0. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Mathisen, James A. (1989). "Twenty Years After Bellah: Whatever Happened to American Civil Religion?". Sociological Analysis. 50 (2): 29–46. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)
• Levinson, Sanford (1979). ""The Constitution" in American Civil Religion". The Supreme Court Review. 1979: 123–151. JSTOR 3109568. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |month= and |coauthors= (help)
• Civil Religion entry, Swatos, William H. (1998). Encyclopedia of Religion and Society. AltaMira Press. ISBN 0-7619-8956-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Luckmann, Thomas (1967). The Invisible Religion. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Published the same year as Bellah's article.

American exceptionalism

Further information: [[:American exceptionalism]]

• Churchill, Ward (2005). "The Ghosts of 9-1-1: Reflections on History, Justice and Roosting Chickens" (). {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Lipset, Seymour Martin (1997). American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31614-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  • "Book reviews of: Seymour Martin Lipset's American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword Part 1". The Washington Post, The Weekly Standard, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, New Statesman and Society, etc. Retrieved 2006-07-16.
• Zinn, Howard "The Power and the Glory Myths of American exceptionalism". bostonreview.net. Retrieved 2006-07-16.