“Today, the U.S. faces both a rise in Christian nationalism and a crisis in civil religion. The two phenomena are related.”
In the 1960s a sociologist, Robert Bellah, coined the term “American civil religion” for a set of beliefs that could be ascribed to almost all Americans and is not limited to the United States. This national religion has no defined legal status, but these beliefs are consistently affirmed and followed in public discourse.
The American civil religion was, and still is, invoked when witnesses take the stand in court and officials are conferred their office. It is not specifically Judeo-Christian but it is consistent with Judeo-Christian beliefs. The core Christian precepts of loving ones neighbor, salvation, and resurrection are not directly present.
In an article published in 1967, Bellah said
“The whole address [the Kennedy inauguration] can be understood as only the most recent statement of a theme that lies very deep in the American tradition, namely the obligation, both collective and individual, to carry out God’s will on earth.”
Don’t confuse civil religion with Christian nationalism. Civil religion, as observed by Bellah, maintains strict separation of church and state. In America individuals and their churches are obliged to accept the civil religion, but civil religion does not endorse the idiosyncrasies of individuals or the denominational churches they have formed. Christian nationalists want to go beyond civil religion and oblige the state to publicly sanction specific religious symbols and practices. Nationalists are less concerned with common faith than the civil religion.
Pew Research Center studies have revealed that Americans who identify as Christian and attend religious ceremonies has declined from about 90% when Bellah first wrote about civil religion to less than 70% in 2020.
How has the decline in Christian affiliation affected civil religion?
In 2011, reviewing a book by religious and political philosopher Charles Taylor, Bellah wrote
“The deeper question that I, a Durkheimian[1] sociologist, would ask Taylor is whether a post-Durkheimian society is ultimately viable. Without some degree of consensus, without something like a ‘common faith’ … is a coherent society possible? … We have become … a nation whose citizens feel no lasting solidarity beyond themselves and their families. Is that a situation too incoherent to last?”
Bellah raised a serious question. In the intervening decade, divisions have gotten wider and more intense. Today, even families are often harshly divided over politics.
The U.S. faces both a rise in Christian nationalism and a crisis in civil religion. The two phenomena are related. The current president appears to have jettisoned the sanctity of his oath of office in a profound rejection of the civil religion, a set of beliefs that have prevailed from the origins of the country in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
The current president’s election was endorsed by the proponents of Christian nationalism and their attitudes have buoyed up the rejection of our civil religion. The Christian nationalists, many of whom seldom attend church services and frequently are not church members, think that public government endorsement of Christianity will restore greatness to America, but don’t mind a president who publicly despises the American civil religion, which many thinkers and historians assert is the motivation behind the two century success story of the United States.
It is easy to confuse causation and correlation, especially when the ground is shifting under our feet. Has decreased participation in church services caused a decline in civil religion? Or the other way around? Or does declining civil religion cause empty pews?
Or is an enormous paradigm shift changing us it ways we don’t understand?
[1] Emile Durkheim was a founder of modern sociology in the early 20th century who argued that governments were essentially religious in origin and justification.