Civil Religion

America as Religion

Focusing on speeches delivered by U.S. presidents from Washington to Johnson, Robert Bellah examined the “religious dimension” of public life in the United States, which coexists with (and often reinforces) tradition-based institutional religion (primarily but not exclusively Protestantism) but often serves to legitimate the authority of the state. This dimension—evident in the beliefs, symbols, and rituals surrounding the presidential speeches (and other civic acts)—Bellah called the American civil religion, in deference to, but not to be confused with, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's use of the term 2 centuries earlier.

In The Social Contract, Rousseau grappled with the nature of a state's authority, asking, for example, how a democracy could justify as fair the abrogation of the rights of the minority just because they were outnumbered. Rousseau argued that a democracy must retain at its core a belief in the myth that at some foundational moment, there was universal agreement that the majority would rule and that the minority would abide by a temporary loss of privilege to accommodate this agreement. This myth justifies the possibility of being in the minority and having to sacrifice to the will of the majority. It also creates a covenanted relationship not just among all possible parties in the polity but also between the people and a higher, transcendent authority that serves as the focus of the entire political enterprise and the final arbiter of rights.

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