354 N. J. Demerath III
no society that does not experience the need at regular intervals to maintain and
strengthen the collective feelings and ideas that provide its coherence and its distinct
individuality. This moral remaking can be achieved only by meetings, assemblies,
and congregations in which the individuals, pressing close to one another, reaffirm
in common their common sentiments. Such is the origin of ceremonies that...are
not different in kind from ceremonies that are specifically religious....If today we
have some difficulty imagining what the feasts and ceremonies of the future will
be, it is because we are going through a phase of moral mediocrity....In short, the
former gods are growing old or dying, and others have not been born. It is life itself,
and not a dead past, that can produce a living cult. But that state of uncertainty and
confused anxiety cannot last forever. A day will come when our society once again
will know hours of creative effervescence during which new ideas will again spring
forth and new formulas emerge to guide humanity for a time.Durkheim’s concluding prophecy was correct, but chillingly so. World War I was just
around the corner – the war to end all wars and the war that took his only son.
Despite the eloquence of both Rousseau and Durkheim, they left us with more of
an idea than a concept. The latter finally crystallized in Robert Bellah’s classic article
(1967). Insofar as there was a basic difference between Rousseau and Durkheim, Bellah
sided with the latter. For Bellah, civil religion – at least in the United States – is essentially
a bottom-up, emergent phenomenon in the Durkheimian tradition rather than the top-
down, imposed doctrine commended earlier by Rousseau (cf. Demerath and Williams
1987). Thus, our civil religion is a kind of religious common denominator that bubbles
forth from our long-standing “Judeo-Christian tradition” and underscores the religious
significance of the nation as a whole and its government. It is more of a passive cultural
legacy than the result of an activist political decision.
But there is another sense in which Bellah departed frombothRousseau and
Durkheim. Perhaps reflecting his own churchgoing heritage, Bellah focused on church-
going religion as the core of America’s “civil religion.” Both Rousseau and Durkheim
had been at pains to introduce a broader concept of the sacred and to note that con-
ventional religionper seneed not constitute the soul of a nation. But Bellah’s version
was more literal, perhaps even more fundamentalist. And not without reason, given
America’s strong Judeo-Christian sensibilities – “Judeo” not so much because of the
role of the tiny minority of Jews in American life itself but, rather, because Christianity
emerged out of Judaism historically, theologically, and ethically.
One of the clearest identifiers of America as a religious society is the way its Chris-
tianity is publicly invoked and symbolically brandished. Our most important national
holidays such as July 4th and Memorial Day are religiously sanctified. Virtually ev-
ery session of the nation’s daily legislative business is prefaced by prayer. Both our
coins and our politicians proclaim religious mottos. Our national rites of passage –
whether weddings, funerals, or presidential inaugurations – are marked with religious
observance. And religious solace and supplication accompany every national crisis. In
Bellah’s (1967) view, all of this forms a rich residue of historical experience that has be-
come a binding cultural force. The country is irretrievably religious, both at its roots and
in its most luxuriant foliage. Indeed, this is another part of American exceptionalism,
since few other societies can boast such a natural melding of religion and nationhood.
But again there are reasons to pause before swallowing an analysis whole hog. It
is not clear whether this is an analysis of America’s mythology or a contribution to it.