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Introduction: Beyond Bellah

• Published: October 2021
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Robert Bellah’s 1967 essay “Civil Religion in America” launched a scholarly subdiscipline on the topic that spread across American history, American studies, sociology, religious studies, and political science. The concept has been dissected, amended, critiqued, forgotten, and resurrected. The introduction presents Bellah’s concept of civil religion, contrasts it with other versions, such as that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and examines the changes in American society and religion in the half century since Bellah’s publication. It presents an overview of the chapters to follow and the themes that might inform scholarship going forward.

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Civil religion in America

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Robert N. Bellah; Civil religion in America. Daedalus 2005; 134 (4): 40–55. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/001152605774431464

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Can America's 'Civil Religion' Still Unite The Country?

Tom Gjelten

America, unlike some countries, is not defined by a common ancestry, nor is it tied to an official faith tradition. But it does have a distinct identity and a quasi-religious foundation.

Americans are expected to hold their hands over their hearts when they recite the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the national anthem. Young people are taught to regard the country's founders almost as saints. The "self-evident" truths listed in the Declaration of Independence and the key provisions of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights have acquired the status of scripture in the U.S. consciousness.

More than 50 years ago, sociologist Robert Bellah argued that such facts of American life suggest that the country adheres to a nonsectarian "civil religion," which he defined as "a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity."

For these beliefs and principles to give definition to a nation, scholars argue, they may need the power that a religion holds for its believers. Characterizing them as a faith system elevates them beyond mere personal philosophy.

"I think the phrase 'civil religion' points to the way in which our political values have a dimension that goes beyond ourselves," says Philip Gorski, a professor of sociology and religious studies at Yale University and author of American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present .

Religious Freedom Arguments Give Rise To Executive Order Battle

Acceptance of this uniquely American creed is seen as the key to one's identity as an American and distinguishes the United States from other countries.

"It is difficult to become German. It is difficult to become Swedish, because those identities are not ideas," says Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who writes often on religion and politics . "Becoming American means you believe in the American idea, and at least in theory, that's open to any immigrant who's able to come here."

In practice, some Americans have not been allowed full participation in society and political life.

"Because of the xenophobia Asian Americans are facing, because of the backlash against African American civil rights, we're seeing that this kind of citizenship, this intrinsic right to be in the U.S., to enjoy its freedoms, is not really for everyone," says Lynn Itagaki, a professor of women's and gender studies at the University of Missouri.

The strength and binding power of America's civil religion is clearly being put to a test.

Forming belief in the American idea

Just as young people are usually raised in the faith tradition of their parents, young Americans are schooled in the basics of the country's civil religion.

Boys who aspire to become Eagle Scouts, for example, must first earn the "Citizenship in the Nation" merit badge. As part of the requirements , they must familiarize themselves with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and they discuss the documents with a counselor.

Among other requirements, they must choose a speech of "national historical importance" and explain "how it applies to American citizens today." Discussion of the issue of America's unique identity is a key part of the merit badge course.

"Are we a country that's united by a nationality?" asks Cheryl Repetti, leading a recent merit badge class for Scouts at an outdoor classroom in Alexandria, Va. "Do we have hundreds of years of living together as a people, as a shared culture?"

Joe, a young man in the second row, raises his hand.

"I would say that the thing that really holds America together, it's our values," he says. "Kinda like freedom and, like, respect to everybody."

Now Is A Good Time To Talk To Kids About Civics

This is part of the civic education almost all young people in America learn, whether through a Scouting program or in their schools. Students from across the country visit Washington, D.C., in a typical year, as if on a pilgrimage, to see such hallowed buildings as the U.S. Capitol and get a firsthand look at the actual founding documents on display at the National Archives.

"I always tell my students that we started schools because we wanted children to understand our government," says Nicole Sarty, a fifth-grade teacher in Eagle, Idaho. "What was important about our government, and why America is an awesome country and why people want to come here."

Because of the pandemic, Sarty's students this year settled for a virtual visit to the nation's capital, including a guided online tour of the National Archives.

Among the topics Sarty has discussed with her students, she says, are the opening words in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more Perfect Union...."

This year, she tied the discussion to current events.

"That goes back to everything that's happened with the pandemic and the riots," Sarty says. "We see things that aren't working right, but we're always striving to be a 'more perfect union.' We have great discussions, and it's exciting to hear 10- and 11- year-olds struggling with some of the same ideas that we've struggled with as a nation since the beginning."

Updating the scripture

Among the issues that teachers like Sarty have to confront is the flawed character of America's origin, when white Europeans violently displaced the native population.

"The U.S. is a white settler colonialist state," notes Itagaki. "It was founded that way."

Many of the founders were themselves slaveholders, including some who signed the Declaration of Independence, with its lofty language of all men being created equal. The original version of the U.S. Constitution stipulated that enslaved individuals should be counted in the census as only three-fifths of a free person.

Shadi Hamid, who is the son of immigrants from Egypt, nonetheless argues that the darker aspects of America's founding should not discredit the American idea.

"If we completely do away with key founding figures, and we start problematizing the founding documents, which are part of the American civic faith, then the American idea doesn't have a lot to go on," he says. "Foundations matter."

Militant Christian Nationalists Remain A Potent Force, Even After The Capitol Riot

For Lynn Itagaki, who writes about what she calls " civil racism ," the problem is less with the text of the founding documents than with their application. "The United States is sufficiently inclusive as a philosophy," she says. "In practice, it's obviously been exclusive and has pushed people out as not being deserving — or, in religious terms, not being faithful enough."

Itagaki notes that the American idea would be meaningful to more people if more recognition were given to some of its less familiar sources.

"The Iroquois nation's Great Law of Peace was influential in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence," she notes. "So we've got other thinkers, other texts, and I think we need to consider them in creating this civil religion that we talk about."

Similarly, Yale's Philip Gorski argues that the notion of an American scripture needs periodic updating to incorporate the voices of others alongside the nation's founders, such as Frederick Douglass, the social reformer Jane Addams, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"I think about the American civil religion as an evolving tradition," Gorski says. "I sometimes liken it to a river whose banks grow wider over time and which is changed by the landscape that it flows through, instead of thinking about it as some kind of pristine spring that we have to return to again and again."

Debating religious language

The advocacy of a civil religion took a complicated turn in recent months as the American political idea became linked to Christian nationalism. Among those who invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, claiming it as "our house," were many who said they were led by their Christian beliefs, even as members of the Capitol Police warned they were violating a "sacred" space.

One of the insurrection leaders, standing defiantly on the dais of the Senate chamber, actually called on his fellow protesters to join him in prayer.

"Jesus Christ, we invoke your name!" he shouted, as recorded in a video by a writer for The New Yorker magazine.

Among those upset by that scene was Myles Werntz, a theology professor at Abilene Christian University.

"When you have someone like you saw on Jan. 6 — someone who gets up into the Senate, declaring that the violence that is being done that day is being done in the name of God — that's when I think you find that religious language has gone amok."

Evangelical Leaders Condemn 'Radicalized Christian Nationalism'

The widespread display of Christian symbols on Jan. 6, in fact, has triggered a general backlash against religious nationalism in the country. Werntz fears that the notion of a civil religion for the country may suffer as a result. Some of the most eloquent apostles of the American idea, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke from a Christian tradition, Werntz notes.

"In his speeches, he frequently uses reference to Scripture, and he's not speaking specifically to Christians," Werntz says. "He's using these things as more basic moral instruction. My concern is that in trying to get rid of the Christian nationalist versions, the other things which might have some social benefit might get swept out as well."

At stake in this new consideration of a civil religion for the United States is whether this collection of beliefs and principles can still inspire the nation and hold it together.

The Scouts who gathered at a park in Virginia to work for their "Citizenship in the Nation" merit badge agreed among themselves that the work to put the American idea into practice is an ongoing process.

"We're kind of getting closer to that American dream," said Joe, in the second row. "We will never reach that dream perfectly. But I think it's a history of getting closer and closer, from the American Revolution to the Civil War to the Cold War and then to now where we're having discussions about race, LGBTQ [rights], stuff like that. It's how can we get closer to that American dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

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Do the Culture Wars Really Represent America?

A new book argues that the country needs to reclaim the “vital center” of politics.

Depending on who you’re talking to, the story of America’s founding may be told very differently. Some liberals might describe a nation animated by secular Enlightenment values, where freedom from religion is just as important as freedom of religion. And some conservatives might point to the country’s so-called Judeo-Christian heritage, with the Bible as its foundational text.

Both of these stories are wrong, according to Phil Gorski, a professor of sociology and religious studies at Yale. In his new book, American Covenant , Gorski argues that these opposing stories are the basis of the culture wars: They’ve made it difficult for people to believe they can still share civic values even if they don’t share other beliefs.

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The more accurate story of America is one of “civil religion,” Gorski writes, that cherishes a founding myth and agreed-upon set of civic values and responsibilities. Understanding America’s tradition of civil religion is important for reviving the “vital center,” as he calls it: “believers and nonbelievers, Republicans and Democrats who support a moderate form of secularism and a liberal form of nationalism.” This is “not a mushy middle that splits the difference between left and right,” he says, nor does it “purport to be a ‘third way’ that ‘transcends’ debate.” Rather, the project is about re-learning how to talk to one another and establishing a set of shared principles derived from American history.

The stakes are high. “If we fail to rebuild the vital center, it will mean the end not only of American democracy—what is now left of it, anyway—but of the American creed itself: e pluribus unum, ” Gorski writes. “The eyes of the world are still upon us. And if we should fail, the God of history will not deal kindly with us.”

I spoke with Gorksi about civil religion and the state of the culture wars. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Emma Green: What is civil religion?

Philip Gorski: Civil religion is the way a particular people thinks about the transcendent purposes of a life together. One might understand “transcendent” in a traditional religious sense, or one might just understand it as some kind of ultimate value or higher purpose that a nation or polity is built around.

American civil religion is a specific version of that.

Green: You contrast civil religion with two other narratives of American democracy: radical secularism and religious nationalism. Describe what those are.

Gorski: The radical-secular interpretation of American history is that American democracy is an Enlightenment project based solely on secular values. The religious-nationalist interpretation is that America was founded as a Christian nation, and our laws and Constitution are all grounded in Christian or Judeo-Christian scripture. One of the points of the book is to show that at the many junctures of our history, those two sources have been intertwined with each other.

One of my favorite examples of this is Benjamin Franklin’s draft seal for the United States. The image is of Moses parting the Red Sea and the Israelites crossing over behind him. Franklin can hardly be suspected of being a particularly orthodox Christian, yet he thought this narrative belied something fundamental about the American project.

Another example is Thomas Paine’s famous tract, Common Sense . Radical secularists often point to Paine when they’re arguing for the Enlightenment character of the American founding. Yet if you look at the first eight or 10 pages of Common Sense , Paine frames it entirely around an interpretation of 1 Samuel 8. The text was the basis of his argument about God preferring republican forms of government.

One can find this argument among arguably the least orthodox Christian figures in the founding generation. How much more influential must it have been among those for whom the Bible was a touchstone?

Green: You describe a tendency among some secular thinkers to cast America’s past leaders as non-religious. What’s up with that?

Gorski: People are trying to cook the books of moral accounting in American history. They want people whom they admire as important civic leaders to have the “right” motivations—which is to say, secular motivations. They want to wave away any inspiration those people might have received from Christianity.

Christopher Hitchens was very dismissive of Barack Obama’s quite public professions of Christian faith, saying this was just a guy with political ambitions putting on a show and telling the audience what it wanted to hear. In God Is Not Great , he says the same thing about Martin Luther King, which to me is even more implausible.

I don’t think he is right, but it doesn’t really matter if he was. The point is that biblical narratives still provide an overarching framework for thinking about who we are, where we came from, and where we want to be going. Many secular people too easily forget that many of their most cherished values are partly our values because they merge with Christianity.

Green: What are the major blind spots of radical secularism—including ones you encounter in the academy?

Gorski: In general, academic analyses of history or contemporary society tend to give very short shrift to religion. I think there is a tendency to think of religion as secondary or epiphenomenal, and not to take it into consideration.

Not that it’s just religion. Another great example of this is sports, which is one of the most important things to many non-academics, yet is one of the least studied subjects in academia.

But I don’t want to paint a picture that’s misleading. There has been increasing recognition over the course of my career of the importance of religion to social and historical development.

Green: You write that radical secularism places unreasonable expectations on people of faith and on democracy because it asks people to translate their beliefs into secular language. Explain what you mean.

Gorksi: The language of secular public discourse appeals passively to values like personal autonomy or maximizing utilities or institutional efficiency. The demand that religious people speak that language, on the grounds that it is a putatively neutral language, is incorrect and unfair. I think it would be just as reasonable to ask that secular people become more religiously literate and engage folks who are coming from a position of faith.

Green: How does this theory translate on issues on which people have radically different views—like religious conservatives opposing the expansion of LGBT rights?

Gorski: This is the much harder question. It’s easier to answer questions in an abstract way.

What I would like to see is more of an effort on both sides of divisive issues like this—for people to engage the other side in their own language. People who are LGBTQ activists could engage these arguments biblically and theologically, and maybe raise questions about the arguments against these rights. And it would be good if people from the religious right took more seriously questions about autonomy, human diversity, and sexual identity than they currently do.

Green: In your book, you point to evangelical Christians as the main purveyors of religious nationalism. Why?

Gorski: If you look at the last 40 or 50 years of American political history, conservative evangelicals have been the most influential voices for a kind of Christian nationalism. I’m not going after them because I think they have been the only spokespeople for Christian nationalism in the United States, but because they’re they ones who have taken up that flag in recent decades.

Green: You’re equally hard on libertarians, and particularly religious people who adopt a libertarian viewpoint. Why?

Gorski: I think the libertarian view of freedom is a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom. A more complex understanding of freedom involves mastering your passions, contributing to the common good, and being an active citizen. That, I think, is the traditional view of freedom, and certainly the view of people from John Winthrop to John Adams and Abraham Lincoln to Reinhold Niebuhr had.

Green: You propose that many Americans are in a middle space of some sort—not necessarily between conservative and liberal thinking, but between these poles of radical secularism and religious nationalism. You seem to be arguing that the culture wars aren’t representative of what most people think, feel, say, and experience.

Who are these “middle voters,” and how do you know they exist?

Gorksi: I don’t know for sure that they exist. But I do think we have cultural resources in our shared history that have unified us, even in times of deep division like this one. The fundamental purpose of my book is to recover these resources, and to point people toward this place that I call the vital center.

It’s not a place of perfect agreement or complete consensus. But it is a place where at least we’re all arguing about the same values and feeling that we’re a part of the same long, hard, intergenerational project in the American experiment in democracy.

Whether we can get back to that place—that’s way beyond my job description. I’m a professor, not a pastor, local civic activist, or neighborhood leader. Those are the people who would have to decide to reoccupy and rejuvenate the vital center. All I’m trying to do is put a map out there and point people how to get there.

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Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and American Civil Religion

Civil religion in America

By Richard A. Rosengarten | January 21, 2019

Bellah unfolds this thesis in the essay’s opening section via reference to the presidency of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s Catholicism, a serious concern for many Americans during the 1960 presidential campaign, was seemingly belied by his Presidency, which articulated classic principles hearkening back to the nation’s founders.

Less often remarked on, however, is the ensuing structural arrangement of Bellah’s essay, which identifies three moments in American history when the nation’s civil religion was tested. First, at its founding (“The Idea of Civil Religion”), where he focuses on how the fledgling nation embraced in its constitution the classic deistic sensibility which abjured privileging any specific religious association while affirming both belief in God and the concomitant conviction that God’s will can and ought to be reflected in the nation’s politics. Second, in the mid-nineteenth century (“Civil War and Civil Religion”), where the legacy and future disposition of the practice of slavery resulted in war, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Third, the moment in which Bellah wrote the essay, the late 1960s (“The Civil Religion Today”), where the question of America’s proper role in international politics—specifically the distribution of wealth and democratic ideals—came to the fore. 

Entirely unnoted, so far as I am aware, is the fact that in his conclusion Bellah identifies each of these as  moments of trial . “Trial” can be understood to be a matter of public adjudication or of personal ordeal; often it is both. Bellah’s three trials are at once national dilemmas for adjudication and personified in an individual’s personal ordeal. Thus, in Bellah’s framing of the narrative, national questions of divine authorization independent of specific religious affiliation are reflected in the figure of Benjamin Franklin, the issue of slavery during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, and the matter of responsible action “in a revolutionary world” in the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr.

Bellah’s conception of the trials of civil religion—when fully developed—seems especially apposite to this national holiday on which we recall the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The matter of civil rights was for Dr. King a question of the utmost import both for the life of the nation and for him as a citizen and as a human being. As with Franklin, Lincoln, and Niebuhr, the macro- and micro-levels intersected. King’s great virtue was to marshal dual, indeed simultaneous, address to civil rights as a problem of the nation and a problem for its individual citizens. His words address at once the better angels of the nation’s nature and the ironies of the nation’s decision to spend money on bombs to wreak havoc on Hanoi rather than provide food and shelter to the nation’s needy. If King was resonant in this respect with Lincoln and Niebuhr, he did not neglect Franklin’s capacity for principled compromise, the willingness to take progress where it was to be gotten in the name of moving forward.

It is impossible to listen to recordings of King, whether in 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial or on the eve of his assassination in 1968 in Memphis, without discerning a visceral sense of the personal ordeal of pressing forward with the cause. What was at stake for the nation was manifestly at stake for Dr. King. On Bellah’s terms, to memorialize Dr. King is to memorialize the standard by which we exist, and by which we should be judged. If America does indeed have a civil religion, we should remember Dr. King as its foremost practitioner.

King’s trials, both his personal ordeals and his calls to justice for his nation, may fit well with Bellah’s rubric of civil religion, but they fit less well within the sequence of “moments of trial” that Bellah articulates for America. To quote an earlier  Sightings  columnist,  John Howell , on events in Charlottesville, Virginia: “The war came again.” It is, at minimum, unclear that the nation has overcome the trial of slavery and, at maximum, that the nation faces not so much a series of trials as one constant demand to be, in the fullest sense of that term, “We the people.” Dr. King’s vision of civil rights, which we commemorate on this annual holiday of civil religion in America, asks nothing less than that we strive constantly to consult the will of  all  the people.

Image: Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the "March on Washington," on August 28, 1963. (Photo courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons )​ 

Sightings  is edited by Joel Brown, a PhD student in Religions in America at the Divinity School. Sign up  here  to receive  Sightings  via email. 

Richard A. Rosengarten

Columnist,  Richard A. Rosengarten  (PhD’94), is Associate Professor of Religion, Literature, and Visual Culture at the Divinity School. 

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Bellah, American Civil Religion, and the Dynamics of Public Meanings

• Published: 20 May 2023
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Bellah's 'Civil Religion in America' ( 1967 ) caught a moment in the American academy. It quickly became a much debated concept and although interest in the concept has periodically waxed and waned, the explication and contention continue fifty years later. It was both a great success and an albatross for Bellah himself, as the debates about the concept frustrated him to the point where he stopped using the phrase. In his consideration of Bellah’s work, including civil religion, Bortolini’s book provides a useful case for thinking about the dynamics of authorial intention, scholarly debates, and public interpretations.

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Bellah, R. N. (1967). Civil Religion in America. Daedalus, 96 , 1–21.

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Echoes of American civil religion

It is interesting to revisit civil religion discourse in the context of a new time and its discontents, and the consequent rethinking of the theme.  Three of the four posts in this discussion ( Gorski , Moosa , Morgan ) address the civic-religious complex in terms of Robert Bellah’s well-known concept of civil religion. The fourth ( Kim ) does not, but invokes Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Waldo Emerson in ways that echo some of the dialogue of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Bellah thesis was fresh and new. Given this general ambiance, I would like to situate these rich and evocative posts by reviewing what, in that time, was called the civil religion debate.

Robert Bellah catalyzed that debate in terms of his compelling act of naming—his talk of civil religion . But as the debate over the concept grew between 1967—the date of Bellah’s famous Daedalus essay “ Civil Religion in America ”—and the 1970s, a number of things became clear:

1)  Bellah’s term of choice came trailing an ambiguous past and legacy, dating from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract , with its chapter “Of Civil Religion.” 2)  Other American voices had noticed some things about collective American history and public identity that seemed to bear a family resemblance to what Bellah was talking about.  Of these, the two most salient expressions became those of Sidney Mead, the historian-turned-public-theologian, with his concept of the “Religion of the Republic,” and of Will Herberg, the sociologist-turned-moralist, with his “American Way of Life.”

Given this background, a discourse developed that was clearly moral in nature, but which, as in David Kim’s notion of the exhaustion of a myth, finally exhausted itself—not in poetry and elegy but in the failure, after a time, to produce anything new. The civil religion proposal collapsed into more circumspect observations about a waxing and waning public religion ( cf. John Wilson ). And it collapsed because the moral stances that were part of the discourse, once stated and argued, did not achieve sufficient ballast to catapult the debate into new knowledge and a clear agenda for action.

Briefly, Mead’s “Religion of the Republic” argued for an ideal and transcendent form of the nation—incarnated perhaps only once, in Abraham Lincoln. (In this light, it is surely interesting that Kim’s essay turns again to Lincoln—something that Mark Noll, on the evangelical Right, also does.) Meanwhile, Herberg’s “American Way of Life” offered a counterproposal of sorts. The “American Way of Life” was a meta-folk religion encompassing not only government but also, and especially, collective mores that included strong sanitation practices and a fondness for Coca-Cola. It earned from Herberg emphatic condemnation for its idolatry, and it prompted a call for return to the worship of the true Judeo-Christian God. Finally, Bellah’s ringing proclamation of civil religion celebrated a glorious past of Puritan covenant and eighteenth-century Enlightenment, both of which had been critically challenged and stood in danger of being undone in America’s “third time of trial,” the Vietnam War.

So, civil religion was good and to be praised (Mead); evil and to be condemned (Herberg); or once good, now evil, and thus in need of redemption and reform (Bellah). In the background hovered the forefather of the conversation, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with his original formulation that contrasted the religion of the state with the religion of Christianity. It was Rousseau who exposed in the process the twin brutality and necessity of a religious nationalism that demanded the citizen’s sacrifice, even the death of the self, on the altar of a nation’s wars. Rousseau’s civil religion offered such sacrifice by feeding lives to the state.

In this context, what resemblance is there between past and present civil religion discourse? Given this past discourse and its winding down, how do we explain the new interest at present in the civil religion proposal? How does the present discourse avoid the pitfalls of the past and take us to some place genuinely new?

It is clear that the present discourse, as the earlier one, is moral (or ethical) in nature. Moreover, two of the posts (Kim, Morgan) invoke myth in ways that echo Bellah. Two eschew religious nationalism explicitly (Gorski, Morgan), and two others surely imply non-acceptance of it (Kim, Moosa). Two posts turn to a past and, their authors hope, continuing tradition of rational discourse as the way to resolve the dilemmas of the present (Gorski, Moosa, with his South African comparison). Two make a cultural turn to aesthetics, thus seeing the ethical—which is about values and valuing—as an entrée into a register that conflates goodness with, in the broad sense, harmony and beauty (Kim, Morgan).

Significantly, given the Judeo-Christian character of most of the discourse from the past, all four of these posts seek to position civil religion outside an explicitly Jewish-Christian framework. As a historian, I cannot help noting this in light of the changed and still changing social reality of the American populace. Ours is a nation in which strong pluralism is a fact and is also the increasingly fertile ground for a rising new mythos of the American nation.  In the emerging mythos, arguably, the traditional Christianity of the Puritans and the Enlightenment ideology of the American Revolution are being folded into a new and different vision, perhaps signaled (as some of the posts note) by the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency. Here, I believe, lies the beginning of an explanation for the revisitation of the civil religion proposal by these authors in our time.

So what, then, can be said about the emerging renewed civil religion proposal and the clues that these posts give us about it?

1)  The old outlines are still there—good and to be praised, if we distinguish between left and right or reason and unreason (Gorski); bad and to be condemned, if we make the same distinctions (Moosa); once good (well, maybe), but now manifestly in need of redemption through reason, elegiac processes, good Emersonianism, and a better imaginary and consequent practice (Kim, Morgan). 2)  The present discussion is more chastened and circumspect, more complex and nuanced, more tentative than that of the past. Indeed, it is readier to release that past ( pace Kim’s elegiac temperament) than the earlier debate ever was. That debate centered on return; this one turns on finding a way into a new imaginary that recoups some of the past—the most valued parts—in order to advance it to a new place and time. 3)  The introduction of an aesthetic dimension, along with its invocations of an American imaginary, provides a new jumping-off point for discourse. There is a sense, perhaps, of Adamic newness here, even in hard times; of a felt confidence in the human ability to re-create and co-create into a future that we shape to our liking and that might bring us some joy.

Finally, let me close with an anecdote that I hold near and dear.  A long time ago, in my last year in graduate school at the University of Chicago, we students held a conference on American religion, and Jonathan Z. Smith was a featured speaker.  “How do you dream America?” he challenged us.  The posts here presented are important beginning points for answering that question—a question that, at least in my imaginary, has echoed down through all these years.

Catherine L. Albanese

Catherine L. Albanese is Professor of Religious Studies and J.F. Rowny Endowed Chair in Comparative Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her recent publications include A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (Yale University Press, 2007) and Reconsidering Nature Religion (Trinity Press International, 2002).

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Civil Religion in the American Society Critical Essay

Introduction, civil religion, works cited.

Human beings are extremely subject to beliefs and culture in their way of living. Religious beliefs are highly influential and thus people live in accordance with the religious virtues inherent in their religious isms.

In most countries across the world, religious beliefs, historical heroics, and historical events form constitutional backgrounds, which then make the basic blueprint of determining what is right for the citizens.

A nation with majority citizens as Muslims has a constitution whose main foundation is the Islamic religion.

This case is the same for the United States as the majority citizens are Christians and hence the American constitution is based on Christianity virtues. This aspect explains why civil religion has great impact on the American society.

Religious beliefs are very important in defining the character of the citizens of a particular nation.

However, the United States, which has been defined as a land of opportunities by majority historians and economists in the past, is a culturally diverse nation and thus no religion can claim to have founded the religious culture of the nation.

The founders of the nation are believed to have been Christians, as clearly explained by the idea of reciting the Lord’s Prayer every morning by schoolchildren.

However, this tradition was excluded from mandatory principles by Congress to give room for other religious faiths in the mid-twentieth century.

Despite the secular movements that have engulfed the modern world, the traditional beliefs still have great influence in society. Historical events have been the points of reference for the present events beside the modern development.

For instance, Martin Luther King Jr. is a world’s icon because of his Christianity virtues, viz. strong personality and character that enabled him to stand for the rights of all Americans to achieve the American dream (Echols 54).

On the same note Cohen and Numbers (89) argue that Martin Luther’s religious virtues played a major role in shaping the cultural beliefs in the United States and his actions are a renowned example of civil religion put in practice to beat the odds of political movements in the world.

According to Prothero, in his book, American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, Jesus, who is a religious icon, has played a major role in the development of the American society.

Prothero (13) argues that many hymns that praised Jesus were published immediately after the Great Awakening in 1800s and are a clear evidence of the American society appreciating Jesus’ contribution in the making of the American nation through the founding fathers.

Since then, the American society, which Prothero (58) argues is a spiritual marketplace, has recognized Jesus far beyond the Christian faith. Hence, Jesus is an American icon rather than just being a son of God (Prothero 67).

In a bid to support his argument, Prothero defines his argument that the United States is a spiritual marketplace because there are numerous religious faiths and everybody is at liberty to choose the most suitable.

However, Jesus, despite his strong influence in the Christian faith, seems to have universal acceptance across all the religious boundaries in the American culture, a trend that Prothero (164) defines as the reincarnation of Christ by the Americans.

Jesus has truly become an American icon since the Great Awakening and he has been used as an advocate for the rights of many group segments in the American society as evidenced by various forms of his images used by those groups.

Historically, civil rights movements have used the image of Jesus in various forms in the American society. For instance, feminists used the image of Jesus in which he appeared as a black woman.

African-Americans often had images of Jesus in which he appeared as a black man and this image is believed to have been accepted by the Islam.

Jews used the image of Jesus in which he appeared as a Rabbi across the United States and Hindus too had the image of Jesus sitting on a cross-legged seat and surrounded by many wild animals in the woods. This image is still present in many Hindus’ homes across the US.

The above arguments by Prothero serve as a good illustration of the effect of civil religion in the American society. Religious faith is a very strong factor of determining the growth, development, and behaviors of a cultural society.

The basis of the constitution determines the form of leadership that is best suited for a society.

Hence, the American society has developed to where it is today due to the acknowledgement of faith, especially the Christian faith, right from the making of the constitution by the founding fathers.

Through Christianity, the founding fathers developed the American dream of achieving equality for all humanity irrespective of gender, race, or geographical origin.

Hence, Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. was in a position to rise beyond the political and race divisions to advocate for the equal rights of humans coupled with advising Americans on how they ought to behave in order to achieve the dreams of the founding fathers.

Hughes, in his book, Myths America Lives By , defines five crucial myths that have defined the American society.

In addition, he bases his myths in the renowned assertion of the declaration of the American independence, which states, “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (Hughes 34).

These myths used the imagery of African-Americans to present the marginalized groups, but all aim at bringing forth equality to all humanity in the US.

However, the myth of a Christian Nation stands out as the foundation of the other four myths as it emphasizes on the civic religious virtues as the principles, which can enable Americans achieve the American dream.

Hughes (149) argues that the world’s societal behaviors are results of civic religious virtues and he supports his argument by recalling the events of 9/11 as results of crises in civil religion.

In addition, he argues that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could not have influenced the American cultural society without the influence of religious virtues that he used to remind the society about the American dream coupled with advising Americans on how to relate with each other in order to achieve that dream.

Though Hughes wrote his book in the era of great secularism, he argues that the Myth of Christianity Nation will not be invalidated by the dynamism of secularity, as it has held the US together according to historians (Hughes 87).

Civil religion is good for the American society as history has enough evidences of events where religious principles were used to define the current developments of the US. Civil religion brought about equality in the US through struggles of heroic icons like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as was the dream of the founding fathers.

In addition, civil religion has enabled civil rights movements to voice their concerns in the past and consequently the majority of the rights enjoyed by the Americans in the contemporary secularized world are a result of the bold acts of civil religion in the past.

Cohen, Charles, and Ronald Numbers. Gods in America: Religious Pluralism in the United States, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.

Echols, James. I Have a Dream: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Future of Multicultural America, Los Angeles: Fortress Press, 2004. Print.

Hughes, Richard. Myths America Lives By, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Print.

Prothero, Stephen. American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Print.

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Introduction: A Religious, Yet Religiously Incoherent Event

Uncivil Religion curates pieces of digital media – tweets, videos, photos, FBI files – that represent the various and complex religious dimensions of the “Stop the Steal” protest in Washington, D.C. and riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  The project also presents accompanying analysis of these digital media from experts in the study of religion and politics. It is a resource for anyone, from the general public to other scholars, interested in tracing the variety of ways religious identities, ideas, symbols, and rituals intersected with the events of January 6.

This project has been almost a year in the making. On January 10, 2021, Peter Manseau, Lilly Endowment Curator of Religion at the National Museum of American History, began to point out the religious imagery on display under the Twitter hashtag #CapitolSiegeReligion. “I’m convinced it is *the* story of what happened," he tweeted a few days later. “Not everyone wore a Guns & God hoodie or carried a Jesus flag but they all shared the psychological safety net such symbols provided.” It was immediately clear that there was a lot of religion on display that day.

 #CapitolSiegeReligion quickly became a tool for Twitter users to post and comment upon materials they found in news coverage and social media. With dozens of journalists and scholars contributing, the hashtag fueled further reporting, provided fodder for podcasts and classroom instruction, and informed a virtual event hosted by the American Academy of Religion. This project builds on those early efforts, and has made use of a range of sources that have come to light in the year since the event.

We contend that religion was not just one aspect of the attack on the Capitol, but, rather, it was a thread that weaves through the entirety of the events of January 6. Our researchers sorted through thousands of items, many posted on social media platforms on January 6, 2021 or soon thereafter, to gather, identify, and catalog media. Our effort to locate items relating to religion and January 6 is ongoing. We  tried to be inclusive and representative, if not exhaustive. The media we have identified not only illustrate that religion was central to the January 6 events but also indicate the diversity (and perplexities) of American religion and its relations with American political activity and history.

To supplement the digital media presented in this website, we have invited a number of established and emerging scholars of religion to contribute short interpretive essays to contextualize and interpret a selection of images and videos. Our goal was to bring together a variety of voices to help us understand the ways that religion appeared and the roles religion played on that afternoon.

As we sorted through the various pieces of media that make up this project, we found that they could be put into three major categories. These categories structure the way the essays are presented . First, a number of the media reflect the overwhelming presence of certain forms of American Christianity throughout the rally and attack. A number of journalists and commentators have observed the central role that “Christian Nationalism” (or “Christian Trumpism”) had played in the run up to the event (the Jericho March rallies) and on January 6 itself. It is clear that a fair number of participants were publicly displaying the connection between their Christian identities, their American national identities, and their political beliefs. Many believed that their political actions that day were fundamentally Christian in nature. By disrupting Congress’ legally mandated ritual of counting electoral college votes, they were doing not only Trump’s, but God’s work.

Second, many of the media we found signaled a religious presence broader than the forms of Protestantism most often associated Christian nationalism and recently with President Trump and his administration. While the majority of religious symbols came from the evangelical right, other participants appeared to identify with Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, as well as expressions of “New Age” and neo-pagan spiritualities, even the new “QAnon” conspiracy movement, among others. While most of the participants were supporters of President Trump, they were not unified in their expressions of religion. The symbols, rituals, ideas, and identities on display during the rally and attack were as religiously plural as the United States itself.

Finally, many of the pieces of media we found are not obviously “religious” at first glance, yet they are ripe for analysis through the various conceptual and analytical lenses deployed by scholars of religion. These media provided an opportunity for our contributors to explore the role religious identities, rituals, and claims played in the attack on the Capitol that might not be apparent on the surface.  

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Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signs controversial "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" into law

I owa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the controversial "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" into law at a private event hosted on Tuesday.

When House Republicans passed the bill in February, they said  SF2095  would strengthen protections for religious expression, and allows people sue for damages if they feel their religious freedom has been violated.

Gov. Reynolds signed the bill at a “Family Champion Dinner" hosted by the Family Leader, a faith-based conservative social group

“Thirty years ago, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed almost unanimously at the federal level," Governor Reynolds said in a statement Tuesday. "Since then, religious rights have increasingly come under attack. Today, Iowa enacts a law to protect these unalienable rights—just as twenty-six other states have done—upholding the ideals that are the very foundation of our country."

Critics worry the bill is too broad and could open the door for discrimination and refusal of services to members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Iowa House Minority Whip Rep. Lindsay James said in a statement Tuesday night the new law weaponizes religion to justify discrimination.

“This bill is not about religious liberty— it’s about weaponizing religion to justify discrimination. It’s wrong. This bill opens the door for a business to deny services to an LGBTQ+ patron, a landlord to evict a single mom from because she’s not married, for a pharmacist to deny a birth control prescription on religious grounds. It’s no surprise the Governor signed the bill behind closed doors with the biggest special interest group in Iowa, an organization that wants to ban all abortions, ban gay marriage, and ban books. This has never been about people, it’s all politics.”

One Iowa Action condemned the bill in a press release Tuesday evening, saying broad religious exemptions will allow people to pick and choose which laws to obey.

"While we recognize religious freedom as a core liberty in the United States, we also recognize that it must never be weaponized as a tool to discriminate against others."

One Iowa Action Executive Director Courtney Reyes also added the following statement to the group's response to the new law:

“There’s no denying it: this bill is aimed at discriminating against LGBTQ+ Iowans, single parents, people needing reproductive healthcare services, and many more. Supporters of the legislation knew this when they voted down the amendment to prevent discrimination, and the Governor knew this when she selected the location of the signing over a month after its passage. We will work tirelessly to amend this law and restore the original intent of the federal RFRA when it was passed: to protect, not to discriminate. That’s what the Do No Harm Act does at a federal level, and that is exactly what we intend to do at the state level. Religion should never be weaponized to discriminate against others. Unfortunately, in its current form, that’s exactly what both the state and federal RFRAs allow.”

Executive Director of the Interfaith Alliance of Iowa Connie Ryan also released a statement in response to "Governor Kim Reynolds signing of the discriminatory religious exemptions legislation."

“Governor Kim Reynolds made it legal today for one Iowan to discriminate against another using religious freedom as justification. The religious exemptions legislation passed by Republicans in the Iowa Legislature and signed by Governor Reynolds will harm the LGBTQ and many other marginalized communities in our state.

“The new law provides the opportunity for those who choose to discriminate based on their religious beliefs to seek refuge and protection from the courts, skirting any law that they do not want to follow. Religious exemptions tip the balance heavily in favor of someone's personal religious beliefs allowing them to discriminate against another person. The religious exemptions law weaponizes religious freedom, misusing it to take away the civil rights of another person.

“Religious freedom is one of our country’s most fundamental rights. Religious freedom is already protected. There is no rationale for a law that misuses religious freedom as a means to justify discrimination against others.

Iowa state Sen. Janice Weiner also released a statement in response to the new law on Tuesday evening:

“Tonight, Gov. Kim Reynolds went behind closed doors to sign into law an unjust, discriminatory bill,” Iowa state Sen. Janice Weiner said. “It may help her politically, but it will hurt Iowans and undermine economic opportunity in our state.”

“Iowans don’t want legalized discrimination,” Weiner said. “They don’t want someone to be able to refuse to rent to someone or serve someone based on religious or moral beliefs. What they want is justice and fairness and economic opportunity and personal freedom. The so-called RFRA law is an attack on all of those Iowa values – and we’ll be paying the price for a long time to come.”

The new law takes effect immediately, according to Tuesday night's statement from Governor Reynolds' office.

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Don’t Overlook the Power of the Civil Cases Against Donald Trump

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By David Lat and Zachary B. Shemtob

Mr. Lat writes about the legal profession. Mr. Shemtob is a lawyer.

For months now, the country has been riveted by the four criminal cases against Donald Trump: the New York state case involving hush-money payments to an adult film star, the federal case involving classified documents, the Georgia election-interference case and the federal election-interference case. But some have been postponed or had important deadlines delayed. The only case with a realistic shot of producing a verdict before the election, the New York case, involves relatively minor charges of falsifying business records that are unlikely to result in any significant prison time . None of the other three are likely to be resolved before November.

It’s only the civil courts that have rendered judgments on Mr. Trump. In the first two months of 2024, Mr. Trump was hit with more than half a billion dollars in judgments in civil cases — around $450 million in the civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, and $83.3 million in the defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll.

For Trump opponents who want to see him behind bars, even a half-billion-dollar hit to his wallet might not carry the same satisfaction. But if, as Jonathan Mahler suggested in 2020, “visions of Donald Trump in an orange jumpsuit” turn out to be “more fantasy than reality,” civil justice has already shown itself to be a valuable tool for keeping him in check — and it may ultimately prove more successful in the long run at reining him in.

The legal system is not a monolith but a collection of different, interrelated systems. Although not as heralded as the criminal cases against Mr. Trump, civil suits have proved effective in imposing some measure of accountability on him, in situations where criminal prosecution might be too delayed, divisive or damaging to the law.

To understand why the civil system has been so successful against Mr. Trump, it’s important to understand some differences between civil and criminal justice. Civil actions have a lower standard of proof than criminal ones. In the civil fraud case, Justice Arthur Engoron applied a “ preponderance of the evidence ” standard, which required the attorney general to prove that it was more likely than not that Mr. Trump committed fraud. (Criminal cases require a jury or judge to decide beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed a crime, a far higher standard.) As a result, it is much easier for those suing Mr. Trump in civil court to obtain favorable judgments.

These judgments can help — and already are helping — curb Mr. Trump’s behavior. Since Justice Engoron’s judgment in the civil fraud case, the monitor assigned to watch over the Trump Organization, the former federal judge Barbara Jones, has already identified deficiencies in the company’s financial reporting. After the second jury verdict in Ms. Carroll’s favor, Mr. Trump did not immediately return to attacking her, as he did in the past. (He remained relatively silent about her for several weeks before lashing out again in March.)

Returning to the White House will not insulate Mr. Trump from the consequences of civil litigation. As president, he could direct his attorney general to dismiss federal criminal charges against him or even attempt to pardon himself if convicted. He cannot do either with civil cases, which can proceed even against presidents. (In Clinton v. Jones , the Supreme Court held that a sitting president has no immunity from civil litigation for acts done before taking office and unrelated to the office. And as recently as December, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit made clear that even if the challenged acts took place during his presidency, when the president “acts in an unofficial, private capacity, he is subject to civil suits like any private citizen.”)

It may also be difficult for Mr. Trump to avoid the most serious penalties in a civil case. To appeal both recent civil judgments, Mr. Trump must come up with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash or secure a bond from an outside company. Although he managed to post a $91.6 million bond in the Carroll case, he initially encountered what his lawyers described as “ insurmountable difficulties ” in securing the half-billion-dollar bond he was originally ordered to post in the civil fraud case. An appeals court order last week cut that bond to $175 million — but if Mr. Trump cannot post this bond, Ms. James can start enforcing her judgment by seizing his beloved real estate or freezing his bank accounts. And even though it appears that he will be able to post the reduced bond, the damage done to his cash position and liquidity poses a significant threat to and limitation on his business operations.

Furthermore, through civil litigation, we could one day learn more about the inner workings of the Trump empire. Civil cases allow for broader discovery than criminal cases do. Ms. James, for instance, was able to investigate Mr. Trump’s businesses for almost three years before filing suit. And in the Carroll cases, Mr. Trump had to sit for depositions — an experience he seemed not to enjoy, according to Ms. Carroll’s attorney. There is no equivalent pretrial process in the criminal context, where defendants enjoy greater protections — most notably, the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

Finally, civil cases generally have fewer externalities or unintended consequences. There are typically not as many constitutional issues to navigate and less risk of the prosecution appearing political. As a result, civil cases may be less divisive for the nation. Considering the extreme political polarization in the United States right now, which the presidential election will probably only exacerbate, this advantage should not be underestimated.

David Lat ( @DavidLat ), a former federal law clerk and prosecutor, writes Original Jurisdiction , a newsletter about law and the legal profession. Zachary B. Shemtob is a former federal law clerk and practicing lawyer.

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An earlier version of this article misstated Arthur Engoron’s title. He is a justice on the New York State Supreme Court, not a judge.

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