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Article: Law, morals, and civil religion in America.(Editorial)
- Article from:
- Journal of Church and State
- Article date:
- June 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The existence of a civil religion in America is now widely accepted. While its specific content is still debated, most agree that civil religion is essentially about those public rituals and myths that express for most Americans the nexus of the political order to the divine reality. According to Robert Bellah, who stimulated much of the discussion about civil religion with his seminal essay in 1967, civil religion in America is "an understanding of the American experience in the light of ultimate and universal reality."
Much of the literature of recent decades that has explored civil religion has centered on the definitional problem. By 1974, there were so ...