Civil Religion Today

Robert Bellah’s “Civil Religion in America” (Bellah, Robert N. Daedalus 96, no. 1 (1967): 1–21.  is one of the best known, most influential, and highly contested writings about religion in America produced in the second half of the 20^th century. In the article, Bellah introduced civil religion to a new generation, applied the concept to the United States, and spawned a cottage industry of articles, books, papers, and symposia that continues to the present. Growing out of a 2016 conference organized to assess Bellah’s seminal article a half century after its publication, Civil Religion Today: Religion and the American Nation in the Twenty-First Century presents a set of critical considerations of Bellah’s understanding of civil religion in light of his subsequent adjustments to and refinements of it.

The chapter’s authors call attention to various significant differences between the time of Bellah’s initial foray into civil religion, especially in religion, culture, demographics, and politics, while the book’s editors, Rhys H. Williams, Raymond Haberski Jr., and Philip Goff, note that the “extent to which these social changes have implications for how we think about and research civil religion is one of the central questions of this volume” (13). They see the book as continuing a trajectory of moving “beyond Bellah,” both theoretically and objectively, that characterizes much of the literature devoted to civil religion in recent decades (7).

In large part, Civil Religion Today achieves this by focusing on various time periods, geographic areas, and sets of data, as well as by approaching civil religion through different fields of study and their related methods. The editors maintain that, despite its flaws, “nothing has really replaced Bellah’s civil religion as an analytic, prescriptive, and popular concept” (3). The question, they ask, is “why?” Although not explicitly stated, one of the book’s apparent aims is to address that question. Significantly, in the opening paragraph of the introduction, the editors declare that “in this volume, we are collectively asserting that there is still useful analytic life in the concept” (1) of American civil religion, over fifty years since Bellah introduced it. They return to this point  in the introduction’s closing sentence: “we believe there is still life in the concept of civil religion, and when considered carefully it can continue to offer understandings of the American nation and its history, identify, and public life” (15).

The editors view the book’s chapters, each written by a different author, as comprising three sections of three chapters each. The first section centers on the history of civil religion as a concept and how other scholars built on and developed the structure Bellah provided. The second part concerns "critical challenges" to American civil religion, as Bellah conceived it, and the third examines civil religion as observed in and carried out by diverse persons and groups (13-15). The breadth of this approach yields a judicious and nuanced examination of civil religion; it also provides an overview of representative perspectives on civil religion in America and a refresher course in discussions of civil religion by Bellah and others. The literature devoted to civil religion is vast and, notwithstanding its title, the book does not address civil religion today per se. Instead, the contributors limit their purview to critical assessments of contemporary civil religion in America, from the starting point of Bellah’s understanding of American civil religion.

The chapters’ authors comprehend and discuss American civil religion in a multitude of ways: as a tradition (19), as “an agnostic form of political theology” (20), as marked by civil religious language (35), as a concept that includes various themes, most notably sacrifice and service (51, 53), as an analytical tool that can be useful if reformulated as America’s civil religions (with emphasis on the possessive and plural, 77), as a discourse of power (80), as “another frame deployed to extol the values, ideologies, and virtues of America of and for privileged white men” (101) that is also “a careless, if not frightful” concept (114-115), as something that can be performed (118), as an analytical category with “prescriptive dimensions” (121-122), as a type of discourse in “American political culture and depictions of national identity” (139), as an aspect of American patriotism (187), and as a type of identity (208-209). This wide variety of understandings displays the authors’ range of views about American civil religion.

Although Philip Gorski claims “America’s civil religious tradition has never been more needed than now—nor more threatened” (19), Korie Little Edwards sees Bellah’s American civil religion as a problematic conceptualization, not a useful one, and calls for replacing “American civil religion with a complex, integrated, and diverse view of America and language that signifies our common humanness” (115). Mark Silk focuses on what he sees as “the extent to which the civil religious language of the Founders expresses a utilitarian understanding of that role, as opposed to a distinctly American faith” (35), while Williams (one of the volume’s editors) calls attention to the importance of immigration for civil religion, by analyzing depictions of Uncle Sam and the Statue of Liberty in political cartoons. Arthur Farnsley’s concluding chapter helpfully explores civil religion in Indianapolis by way of a fascinating consideration of monuments, patriotism, and sports. 

As Bellah notes in his original article, rituals are an important aspect of American civil religion. He observes that American civil religion is conveyed not only in convictions, images, and objects as well as written texts and spoken words; it is also enacted and celebrated in rituals. Moreover, Bellah emphasizes different instances and ways in which American civil religion's beliefs, symbols, times, and events gain "ritual expression" (11). Significantly, some of the book’s chapters highlight this ritually commemorated dimension of civil religion in America, which is too often overlooked, thereby providing a valuable contribution. 

Keeping its focus on American civil religion, the book successfully demonstrates the lasting viability and importance of civil religion as an idea and analytical category. Moreover, many readers may conclude that the reality of American civil religion, in one form or another, persists. The book shows that Bellah’s initial conceptualization and description of American civil religion, for all its shortcomings, remains significant, insightful, protean, and flexible. Substantial and resilient enough to sustain numerous critiques, alterations, and improvements for over fifty years—while still furnishing an important, useful, and keen perspective on the United States, religion, and the various intersections of them—it appears that American civil religion endures.

E. Harold Breitenberg, Jr. is an associate professor of religious studies at Randolph-Macon College.

E. Harold Breitenberg Jr.

Date Of Review:

January 3, 2024