342 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate
By Robert T. Handy

In 1967 Robert N. Bellah's famous and oft-quoted article "Civil Religion in America" opened with a bold claim:

While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith, and others that church and synagogue celebrate only the generalized religion of "the American Way of Life," few have realized that there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America. This article argues not only that there is such a thing, but also that this religion-or perhaps better, this religious dimension-has its own seriousness and integrity and requires the same care in understanding that any other religion does.¹

The article touched off a curious, many-sided, but often vague debate; a number of symposia were organized around the theme, the results often appearing in a spate of articles and books.

I

The discussion, however, has not been an orderly one that tested and built on a new insight. Instead, basic questions were raised as to whether or not there is a civil religion, and many efforts were made to clarify the concept and to get at the reality behind it. John Murray Cuddihy wryly observed that "defining 'civil religion' has become a large and thriving cottage industry." ² Various attempts have been undertaken to explain the popularity and fascination of the civil religion debate. It erupted soon after the rather swift decline of the neo-orthodox theological movement, just as the "academic study of religion" with its stance of theological neutrality was rapidly spreading on the American scene. In the book American Civil Religion, containing the papers of a symposium at Drew University in 1973, editors Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones explained that by 1967:

Robert T. Handy is Professor of American Church History at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He has been a major interpreter of religion in American history through his many writings, most notably A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities and his History of the Churches in the United States and Canada, a volume in the Oxford History of the Christian Church.
¹ Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," Daedalus, 96 (Winter, 1967), 1. The article has been reprinted in Donald R. Cutler, ed., The Religious Situation: 1968 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 331-56; in Bellah's Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 168-89; and in Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones, eds., American Civil Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), pp. 21-44. The reference in the quotation to "the American Way of Life" is to the work of Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew.: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1955).
² John Murray Cuddihy, No Offense: Civil Religion and Protestant Taste (New York: Seabury Press, 1978), p. 1.

343 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

The study of religion, once the preserve of denominations and seminaries, had solidified its position in universities and independent colleges. To the academic students of religion, civil religion was an "ideal" topic. Even more than secular cities and godless theology, civil religion made plausible the claim that religion ought to be studied by the nonreligious. Here, God be praised, was a religion that was nonreligious, to which the denominations had no claim and which ought properly to belong to departments of religion. Civil religion sent nonprofessing gurus into spasms of ecstasy (i.e., they began to write papers on the topic).³

I would also emphasize that somewhat before the 1960s what I have elsewhere called "the Second Disestablishment" of religion in America had taken place-that of the voluntary establishment of Protestantism that had been so important in the nineteenth century. ⁴ What can be called the Protestant era of American religious history had come to an end, except perhaps in certain regions, and the radical religiously pluralistic nature of the country had been widely recognized by students of religion. One could no longer discuss religion in America in the terms that had long been familiar; even Will Herberg's "Protestant-Catholic-Jew" terminology was seen as oversimple, for it did not mention such major options as the Eastern Orthodox, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalists, or Humanists. The civil religion concept seemed to offer a way of discussing religion in America without getting involved in the complexities of religious pluriformity and the particularities of the denominations, which to some seemed increasingly to be quite privatistic and old-fashioned entities.

As the civil religion debate raged, however, it soon became apparent that what Bellah had labelled a civil religion was also pluralistic-at least, competing definitions about what it is were quickly put forward. As the discussion unfolded, Bellah himself had the courage to change and adjust his thesis. In his address on "The Revolution and Civil Religion" he sought to clear up an ambiguity in his original article by finding two types of civil religion: "special" (which in the United States is defined by the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address) and "general" (a wider concept indentified by Rousseau and expressed in Washington's Farewell Address). This distinction allowed him to modify a claim in the Daedalus article that civil religion was not simply religion in general, for now he could say that "it is the essence of general civil religion that it is religion in general, the lowest common denominator of church religions." ⁵

Others, however, had noted more kinds of civil religion than that. Richey and Jones suggested a five-fold, somewhat overlapping typology of civil religion as folk religion (Will Herberg, Robin Williams, Lloyd Warner), as the transcendental universal religion of the nation (Sidney

³ Richey and Jones, eds., American Civil Religion, pp. 5-6.
⁴ Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 197 1), chap. 7, esp. pp. 213-15.
⁵ Bellah, in Jerald C. Brauer, ed., Religion and the American Revolution (Philadelphia: FortressPress, 1976), p. 57.

344 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

Mead, Robert Bellah), as religious nationalism (John Ireland, Richard Nixon), as democratic faith (Leo Marx, Gunnar Myrdal, John Dewey, J. Paul Williams), and as Protestant civic piety (Yehoshua Arieli, James Smylie, James Maclear, Winthrop Hudson, Robert Michaelsen, Will Herberg).⁶ At the Drew symposium, Martin E. Marty spoke of "Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Civil Religion." One kind affirms that the nation is under God, but is divided into priestly (Eisenhower) and prophetic (Lincoln) styles. The other kind sees the nation as transcendent; it also is dividend into priestly (Nixon) and prophetic (Mead) types. ⁷

II

At the same symposium, John F. Wilson also expressed doubts about a major claim of the Bellah thesis. He declared that:

In a historical perspective I think it is difficult to arrive at the judgment that there is in American society an institutionalized, well-developed, and differentiated civil religion, a tradition parallel to and interrelated with other religious traditions in our culture. The proposal that there is such, however, has proved to be enormously stimulating and provocative in the best sense. No doubt discussion engendered by it will be carried on for some time. ⁸

Discussion has indeed been carried on for some time, but now Wilson has developed his reservation into an important monograph, Public Religion in American Culture. As the academic and religious communities involved in the hitherto complex and confusing debates about civil religion take this contribution seriously, then the avenues of investigation and fruitful discussion about a topic of high importance will be significantly redirected. Indeed, a decisive turn in the wide-ranging debate has been taken by this methodological volume. Wilson begins by tracing his own difficulties in attempting to understand the nature of civil religion:

The topic proved to be at once highly suggestive and exasperatingly elusive. When, on the one hand, I attempted to use to advantage the range and power of civil religion as a construction to organize historical materials, it either dissolved or appeared to be wholly artificial. When, on the other hand, the concept was refined, resolved, or was reduced to essentials, it seemed to verge on the trivial. ⁹

In some respects Wilson's decisive book widens the debate, for the author deliberately chooses the concept "public religion" over civil religion because it is broader, and it includes not only what has usually been covered by civil religion but also the public aspects of denomination, churchly, or "private" religion.

⁶ Richey and Jones, ed., American Civil Religion, pp. 15-17.
⁷ Martin E. Marty, "Two Kinds of Two Kinds of Civil Religion," in Richey and Jones, eds., American Civil Religion, pp. 139-57. See also his chapter on civil religion in his A Nation of Behavers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 180-203.
⁸ John F. Wilson, "A Historian's Approach to Civil Religion," in Richey and Jones, eds., American Civil Religion, p. 137.
⁹ John F. Wilson, Public Religion in American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), p. vii.

345 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

In other respects, however, Public Religion in American Culture sharpens and focuses the discussion, for Wilson rigorously rejects one of Bellah's original claims, "that there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America." With scholarly tenacity and careful attention to method, Wilson pursues in successive chapters four aspects of American culture in which evidence for an institutional civil religion has been alleged: (1) strictly linguistic formulations of American religious identity delivered by our presidents; (2) ritual or stylized behavior in the collective life which points toward the social reality of this democratic republic; (3) the array of "meanings" commonly attributed to the American nation; and (4) the institutions which might be viewed as supporting a positive public religion or civil cult.

He concludes that in each case the claim that there is a wellinstitutionalized public religion is not justified. Neither presidential addresses nor Thanksgiving Day proclamations provide evidence that a highly structured religion centers in the public realm. The symbolic life of American communities seems to be less manifestly differentiated into a class of religious rituals than is required by the hypothesis that a well-institutionalized civil religion actually exists. American culture experienced in its religious aspects from within the society is pluriform and hence public religion seems not to be narrowly focused or sharply restricted. Neither the legal system, nor the public schools, nor even the channels of popular culture provide evidence that there is an institutionalized civil cult. In short, the book provides a definitive rebuttal to the idea that there is a well-institutionalized civil religion.

III

A major contribution of Wilson's book is the clarifying emphasis throughout on method, brought to a climax in the last chapter, "The Interpretation of Public Religion in America," where it is demonstrated that a major reason for the ambiguities of the civil religion debate has been "the uncritically mixed modes of analysis and the confusion of models by different interpreters." The author discerns four major separate constructions of public religion in America, each resting "upon a distinctive set of premises, even rooting in separate intellectual traditions." Each operational concept of public religion "roots in a specific philosophical and theoretical tradition, emphasizes a particular construction of relevant evidence, and is distinctive in terms of range, inclusiveness, and analytical penetration." ¹⁰ Ordering these four concepts along a continuum of religious representations, Wilson identifies and briefly describes them as follows:

(1) A social model of public religion which emphasizes that every collectivity or social entity is represented to itself as sacred. This position has been classically developed by Emile Durkhein and has been decisively influential in Bellah's essay.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 148-49.

346 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

(2) A cultural model which is oriented toward analysis of the way in which a particular set of values functions in terms of interaction among the members of a given social order. It is concerned with the symbolic unity and coherence of a society; this perspective informed Will Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew.

(3) A political model which shifts the emphasis to the role of religious behavior and beliefs within a differentiated political society and often focuses on the civil ordering of society. A classic modern figure in this construct is the inventor of the term civil religion, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was especially concerned with rights, duties, and obligations, and whose work discloses the tradition of deistic thought. This position can be discerned in the settlement of certain major church-state cases that have come before the Supreme Court.

(4) A theological model which identifies the content of public religion with a separate realm, for an overarching framework of meaning is projected into the sphere of the transcendent which framework nevertheless provides a norm which acts upon the political order, the general culture, and even the society. The emphasis falls on beliefs and meanings which are thought to have existence independent of the society, its culture, and its politics. This concept has informed Sidney E. Mead's discussion of the religion of the Republic"¹¹ (though more recently he has preferred to speak of the theology of the Republic); the construct has also been operative in a rather different way among those who relativize all forms of religion by reference to a biblical God.

With characteristic caution and openness, Wilson disclaims that this analysis is exhaustive, but it immediately explains why so much of the civil religion debate has been so confusing, for participants with varying degrees of self-consciousness have mixed these various patterns of perception and reflection in their attempts to deal with the subject. Wilson drives his readers to see that his continuum is a logical construct which he hopes will establish "the interdependence of evidence and interpretation in the analysis of piety in the public realm." ¹² His sophisticated, learned, at times somewhat abstract analysis brilliantly succeeds in illuminating with precision the dialectic of data and premise, of evidence and interpretation.

IV

It is important to observe, however, that Wilson has rebutted only one part of the Bellah proposal-the rest remains. That there is a "religious dimension" in American public life that has its own seriousness and integrity and that "requires the same care in understanding that any

¹¹ Sidney E. Mead, The Nation with the Soul of a Church (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).
¹² Wilson, Public Religion, p. 165.

347 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

other religion does" is sustained both in theory and practice in the Wilson monograph. His chapters are not, and are not intended to be, a chronicle of public religion in American history and culture, but from his pages and from reflections on the long debate, he has helped decisively to clarify emerging rich suggestions about relevant lines of further inquiry concerning public religion.

That various currents of religious thought and feeling which focus on the American nation and its destiny have been flowing for several centuries is at no point in question. The meaning, direction, and variety of these streams of religious life continue to be of major interest to students of American religion and society. But admittedly many, indeed probably the great majority of these streams have flowed out of the many diverse channels provided by the churches and the synagogues. Most if not all of the various religious traditions of America have as part of their own sense of identity and mission a concern for the public order. Hence much of the continuing research into and discussion of public religion must go into the denominations and be investigated there by students of American religion and culture, by historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and others who approach the subject from an academic frame of reference. Again in reading Wilson and other authors one sees that public religion lives in considerable measure in symbiotic relationship with denominational religion; the latter often provides the larger wells out of which public religion is nourished, especially in times of national crisis.

There are many examples. The complex of mythic materials so important to understanding public religion arises in large part from the "revealed" religions. When on October 5, 1869, President Grant launched the modern Thanksgiving Day observance, he urged the people to assemble "in accustomed places of public worship," and such practices, often now with ecumenical and interfaith cooperation, still continue. Any analysis of American social life in terms of a symbol system, Wilson argues, must survey "materials well beyond the political or even public range of ritual behavior conventionally associated with patriotism to the national community" -many of these materials lie in denominational orbits." ¹³

Wilson also picks up a suggestion made early in the civil religion debate by Phillip E. Hammond that the social structures germane to an analysis of America's civil religion would obviously include (among other things) explicit religious institutions-churches and comparable organizations." ¹⁴ Certainly the research should not stop there, for public education, popular culture, the legal system, and many slices of the vast network of American voluntary associations need attention in connection with this inquiry.

¹³ Ibid., p. 92; cf. pp. 32, 57.
¹⁴ Ibid., p. 120; the Hammond commentary, appended with other commentaries to a reprinting of Bellah's Daedalus article, can be found in Cutler, ed., The Religious Situation: 1968, pp. 381-88.

348 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

Indeed, Wilson highlights the importance of this last matter in explaining briefly his generalization that "the American civic piety is given its most direct institutional and organizational expression through both more and less explicitly patriotic voluntary societies and lodges." ¹⁵ But the denominations of Christianity and Judaism remain by all odds the largest religious communities in America and need further investigation from inside and out with reference to public religion. The sophistry of trying to deal with religion in America in too general terms without careful attention to the specifics of religious communities will helpfully be diminished by taking Wilson's strictures on method seriously.

This line of thought suggests that a feature of Bellah's original proposal on which Wilson has not touched in his social and cultural analysis now does need much further attention, and with the institutionalization question settled, we are freer to turn to such matters. Bellah declared that " 'God' has clearly been a central symbol in the civil religion from the beginning and remains so today. This symbol is just as central to the civil religion as it is to Judaism or Christianity.^{" 16} Clearly a thorough treatment of this central symbol of public religion should now be high on scholarly agendas.

V

This last item suggests that the methodological clarification which Wilson has given to the whole debate about civil religion opens the way for fresh contributions by those scholars of religion who operate not only with commitment to high academic standards but also out of professed positions of religious faith-such as biblical scholars, church historians, and systematic theologians. As participants in church and synagogue life, they can bring insights and perceptions to the understandings of religious groupings in our culture that can come from no other source, and they can contribute certain distinctive critical judgments to the discussion of public religion.

Throughout the long debate over civil religion, the theologicallyminded have often been resistant to it. An early contributor to the discussion, before Bellah brought it to boil, was Will Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew; in the last chapter, "Religion and America in the Perspective of Faith," Herberg criticized what he chose to call "civic religion" sharply. "In its crudest form," he wrote in 1955, "this identification of religion with national purpose generates a kind of national messianism which sees it as the vocation of America to bring the American Way of Life, compounded almost equally of democracy and free enterprise, to every corner of the globe; ... in more mitigated versions, it sees God as the champion of America, endorsing American purposes, and sustaining American might." ¹⁷

¹⁵ Wilson, Public Religion, p. 136.
¹⁶ Bellah, Daedalus, 96 (Winter, 1967), 15.
¹⁷ Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew; p. 280.

349 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

More recently, exponents of the resurgent conservative evangelical movement have been very critical of civil religion. Defining it as "the use of consensus religious sentiments, concepts and symbols by the state either directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously-for its own political purposes," and examining with considerable care its role in American life, Robert D. Linder and Richard V. Pierard conclude:

We reject evangelical Christian participation in civil religion, no matter how innocent such an activity appears to be on the surface and regardless of how many distinguished and well-meaning Christians advocate doing so.... However, genuine Christianity cannot be compromised or twisted to fit the demands of a pluralistic society and secular government and still remain true to Jesus Christ, no matter how well-meaning the intentions or how desirable the end. ¹⁸

And from the vitalities of the Afro-American churches have emerged some distinctive critiques, as suggested by Vincent Harding's remark that "out of Black theology came new questions about America's public religion and whom it includes." ¹⁹

VI

Theological scholars who participate in the ongoing debate need to keep in mind Wilson's methodological strictures, remembering that "reflective analysis about constructs is prerequisite to development of the study of American religious history." ²⁰ They should also always keep in mind that individuals and groups who hold religious and theological positions of which they may be very critical are nevertheless fully protected by the American commitment to religious freedom; people have a right to hold and to exercise a civil as well as a denominational or an ecumenical faith. Thoughtful critiques of various positions, including one's own, however, remain crucial to the work of theological and historical scholarship.

Theological scholars who participate in this continuing discussion need to be aware of another pitfall. Troubled over what they may discern as idolatrous overtones in public religion, they may too readily slap a negative label on individuals and groups within church and synagogue life who are legitimately, in terms of their own religious principles, expressing and acting out concerns for the nation and its people. That is, to put it sharply, religion based primarily on revelational claims which in a pluralistic land seem quite "private" nevertheless have proper public interests. Many if not most of America's religious bodies feel some sense of responsibility over the quality and coherence of national life. Such concerns often run parallel to those of

¹⁸ Robert D. Lindner and Richard V. Pierard, Twilight of the Saints: Biblical Christianity and Civil Religion in America (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1978), pp. 21,168.
¹⁹ Vincent Harding, "Out of the Cauldron of Struggle: Black Religion and the Search for a New America," Soundings, LXI (1978), 349.
²⁰ Wilson, Public Religion, p. ix.

350 - A Decisive Turn in the Civil Religion Debate

other religious groups, and provide shared resources for national political and moral life. Of course, such stances will often be partial and controversial; they need to be spelled out as clearly as possible and subjected to the critical review of those both inside and outside the households of faith. The debate over public religion is important to the American future and invites the participation of scholars of many disciplines and viewpoints, all of whom will be helped by the rigorous and clarifying analysis of Public Religion in American Culture.