Today on home for the weekend. We present the first in a series of five programs on civil religion in America. The broadcasts are drawn from a series of presentations made a Dakota State College in Madison South Dakota last fall that for him was conceived and sponsored by the Newman Center and Lutheran Student Center of Madison South Dakota the United Ministries in higher education in South Dakota and Dakota State College was made possible by a grant from the South Dakota committee on the humanities.Today's program features Robert Vela professor of sociology and comparative studies at the University of california-berkeley and author of several articles and two books on the Civil religion. Beyond belief published in 1970 and the broken Covenant American Civil religion in time of trial published in 1975 profesor. Bella sets the stage for the series on civil religion. He says many people have recognized the Civil religion phenomenon, including de tocqueville and Lincoln and that he speaks not as the inventor of the concept but as discover and interpreter we here now Professor Robert bellah give his perspectives on the Civil religion in America. In order to discover the primary location of the American Civil religion. I think we have to turn to those fundamental texts those normative text which Define the very nature of our common existence as the people. And familiar though. They are I want to read briefly from the Declaration of Independence, which is I think the basic text. As someone has said the Declaration of Independence has the soul of the American polity. The Constitution is the body of the Declaration of Independence States those ideals in terms of which America was founded the Constitution spells out the forms, which will embody those ideals. And I'd also like to read a couple of sentences from the Gettysburg Address, which I think represents. The major rededication to that primary Faith about Midway through our history. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another. And to assume among the powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. And from the Gettysburg Address the opening and closing remarks. Four score and seven years ago. I may remind you that Lincoln was pointing to the Declaration of Independence. That was the date not the date of the Constitution. Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in Liberty. And dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal and he concluded. Not a dress with the words. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that this nation under God. Shall have a new birth of freedom and the government of the People by the people for the people shall not perish. from the Earth it is that faith. Those propositions to which we are dedicated. That is the heart and soul of the Civil Division. I think those words are enough to define the core of which I am speaking we can of course never forget the historical circumstances in which those words originated a revolutionary war of independence and a war to decide whether this nation would be slave or free. While there are many other and embellishments symbols traditions and interpretations that have become more or less securely part of the American Civil religion. I think we already have before us the fundamental form of its fate. The words are so familiar. That they have for many of us almost lost their meaning. But I think their meaning has never been more critical for testing the very condition the very existence of the political society in which we live. If I am right about where the objective existence of the Civil religion lies. Fat is in the matter of public opinion questionnaires. to prove its existence surveys might if they are well and carefully worded give some indication of how many and which groups share this fundamental faith. But we would not be surprised if this Faith were not shared by all Americans indeed. It has never been shared by all Americans at the very beginning. It is estimated that about a third of the colonists subscribe to its tenants another third were loyal to Britain and the rest remained in different. in the late 1850s It is clear that the articulate spokesman of the South. Had quite explicitly abandoned the faith rejected the Declaration of Independence because they could not accept. The phrase all men are created equal and even in the North. the northern Democratic party led by Douglas was utterly indifferent. Go to that tradition. Lincoln's effort began with his coming out of his temporary political retirement in 1850 for his unrelenting effort for many years. To recall the nation to what he called its ancient Faith was a long uphill battle. He could not assume that Americans were committed. to those principles We cannot therefore see the American Civil religion as some kind of harmonizing. Socially integrating cohesive Doctrine innocuous and its content which simply pulls people together. regardless of other considerations the tenants of this teaching have been hard to accept. It has led to a revolutionary war of independence. It has led to a civil war over the question of slavery. I hope above all that you will see from what I've said, even so far that the American Civil religion is not what some people have called it. What one man called it a societal religion in which the larger society is actually defined as an object of alternate concerned by the individual. Clearly the ancient faith of American Civil religion is not in the larger society and certainly not as an object of ultimate concern. It is Faith in certain fundamental propositions about the nature of human beings which are believed to derive ultimately from God. If the larger society does not conform to them so much the worse for it. But surely you will say the American Civil religion depends on how many people believe it supposed surveys show that fewer. None of the American people any longer share this faith. This of course is perfectly possible. It would not prove that the American Civil religion never existed. But only that it has become what we call a dead religion. Existing in certain texts, but without living adherence. This is certainly a historical possibility. But it would not merely mean. That certain quaint beliefs no longer find that he rents it would mean that the American Nation as Washington Jefferson and Lincoln understood it. no longer exists I suspect that such a nation to would have a civil religion. But it would be a different civil religion because it would be a different Nation. in defining the American Civil religion There was a certain ambiguity in my original article that I would like to try here to clear up. In that article I pointed to those classic documents that unmistakably Define the special character of the American Faith the documents from which I have just quoted. But in taking the term civil religion from Rousseau's social contract. I was also bringing in a much more General concept common in America in the 18th century, but common in the entire Western World in that. Therefore I think it might be useful to distinguish between two different types of civil religion both operative in America distinguishable, perhaps for analytic purposes, but not consciously distinguished by most Americans these two types. I would like to call special civil religion that which I have just defined. And general civil religion, which I would like now to describe. It is the essence of General civil religion that it is religion in general. What was called pejoratively by some in the 1950s the lowest common denominator of church religions? The religion in general and lowest common denominator religion were attacked. Particularly in the new Orthodox mood of the 1950s as a perversion of any kind of traditional religion. Attacked by someone like will herberg who wrote a very influential book on the American religious situation actually. Set religion in general far from being a 20th century development of America has a long and honorable history in Christendom. It is what was called natural religion. A natural religion was generally agreed for many centuries to be an indispensable prerequisite for government. Natural religion was an important conception in the Catholic tradition, but it was also held by many in the Protestant tradition. Rodger Williams the Baptist actually he was such a descender. He couldn't finally live with any church, but he was a Baptist for a while. One of the earliest people to insist on the separation of church and state in America. Nonetheless believed and wrote in the 17th century. That's some such General natural religion is essential for government and order in towns and families as he said. Such General religion. Is he believed written in the hearts of all mankind? Ye even in pagans. And he went on to spell out the nature of this general or natural religion. And in terms that would be widely echoed in the 18th century. consisted in a few simple beliefs which the tradition believed were available to all human beings even without Revelation namely belief in God. in the afterlife and in Divine punishments Benjamin Franklin was a firm believer in this kind of religion and then it's essential contribution to public order in a republic. Indeed Franklin was so convinced in spite of his own attraction to a certain kind of deism. Of the importance of General religion that at one point. He said if men are so wicked as we now see them with religion, what would they be without it? But the classic expression of General civil religion is surely to be found in George, Washington's farewell address. Where he said? Of all the soccer positions and habits which lead to political Prosperity religion and morality are indispensable supports in vain with that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens that it's simply be asked where is the security for property for a reputation for life? If the sense of religious obligation desert the Oaths which all the instruments of Investigation in courts of Justice. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. I think he was talking to some of his rationalistic and skeptical friends. Whatever may be conceited to the influence of refined education's on minds of peculiar structure Washington said Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can Prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is these statements. I believe that foreshadow the famous and much-criticized remark of Dwight David Eisenhower. Our government makes no sense unless it is found it in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is. Being charitable to Eisenhower. I think that we made out that he didn't care at all. but that he didn't care which of the conventional American religious denominations it was because all of them have the requisite minimal features of General civil religion Supreme Court William O Douglas a man on the opposite side of the political fence from Eisenhower said much the same thing in a 1952 Supreme Court decision when he wrote We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. Has the Supreme Court? Decision, so it must be true. We should not assume. However that all Americans from the 17th century on have been quite so inclusive with respect to General civil religion. Williams Franklin and Washington were willing to accept Catholics and Jews along with Protestants and Williams was ready to include Muslims 17th century. but in principle assuming that all men have the natural religion written on their hearts. He was ready to make political fellowship with them. But many Americans especially early in our history. We're not as magnanimous as Broad in their vision Has Washington and most of the founding fathers? And felt that only a general civil religion that had some residents or harmony with our special civil religion as I've outlined it would be acceptable that is a society that held all men are created equal and the government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed requires churches organized on the same principle. Therefore Presbyterian congregational Baptist and Methodist churches were often taken as quintessentially American. Particularly hierarchical churches were viewed by many with suspicion Bishop's represented the Monarca co-principal in the church, which was considered just as dangerous dangerous as the monarchy co-principal in this state. The long resistance to an American Episcopal in the colonial. Because Bishops in the Anglican Church would have been appointed by the throne in London was an expression of this deep suspicion. Non-catholics above all others have suffered from the suspicion of having what was called and anti-republican religion, even though it is a notable fact of our history that American Catholics accepted the new revolutionary American government without Reserve from the earliest. in contrast for example to the behavior of the Catholic church in Revolutionary, France such distinguished Scholars is marked a wolf howl and William McLaughlin have argued that there was a de facto Protestant establishment in the early years of the Republic at this establishment was broadened to include Catholics Lake in the 19th century. And then only in the 20th has America transcended the notion that it is very specifically a Christian Nation. In any case the idea that religion is the basis of public morality and so the indispensable underpinning of a republican political order. Is it constant theme from Washington's farewell address? Almost to the present. Is fundamental function of General civil religion could be carried out by churches that remained indifferent to the special civil religion embodied in such doc documents of the Declaration of Independence and bound up with the history of The American Nation, but most American religious groups have been able to affirm both General and specific social civil religion as well as their own doctrinal peculiarities Indus Fusion Protestant denominations have been joined by Catholics and Jews more or less up to the present. Kunjip when we look at the situation of America today. We may well ask. Where are we? The founding fathers believed that religion and morality where the essential basis for that virtue. Which Washington said Providence always connects with the Felicity of a Nation? But how hopeful were they? That that virtue the very principle of a republic. A despotism is based on the principle of fear. a republic requires virtue because a republic requires people who can accept responsibility for full participation in the society rather than simply respond to the Lash our founding fathers, even though they were children of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment were not Calo optimists Washington in his farewell address wrote that he dared not hope that his counsels could quote prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of Nations. What that course was Franklin made clear in his speech on the very last day of the Constitutional Convention 17 September 1787. Feeble old Anil while he was calling upon the delegates to make a unanimous vote in favor of the new document. And Franklin said on that occasion in these sentiments sir. I agree to this constitution with all its faults if they are such because I think a general government necessary for us. And there is no form of government. But what may be a blessing to the people if well administered and believe further that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years. And can only end in despotism as other forms have before it when the people shall have become so corrupted as to need despotic government being incapable of any other if we asked what virtue and Corruption meant to the founding fathers Franklin described it as Zeal for the public good. Jefferson put it a little differently when he described virtue as a love of others a sense of Duty to them a moral Instinct in short which prompt says irresistibly to feel and to sucker their distresses. Corruption is the opposite. I'm such a zero for the public good and concern for others corruption is exclusive concern for one's own good. four in Franklin's words thousands per annum for Jefferson corruption consists in forgetting oneself in the soul faculty of making money. I wonder what the founding fathers would think of us now, how virtuous how corrupt? I suspect that they would think we had run quite far along. Course, which is headed to marked the destiny of Nations. If we can see the connection between General civil religion and virtue defined as concern for the public good we can begin to see the connections between General civil religion and special civil religion for special civil religion defines the Norms in terms of which the common good is conceived perhaps the central Normandy American Civil religion is expressed in that great phrase of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence all men are created equal. But it is widely asserted that the founding fathers were Hypocrites, but Jefferson didn't really mean it. I heard it said on a television discussion of the bicentennial only a few days ago. That since Jefferson believed in slavery. He meant all men are created equal to apply only to flights. Nor was that view contradicted by any member of the distinguished television panel? silly adulation of the founding fathers of the George Washington and the cherry tree variety is certainly to be abhorred. But silly debunking is no improvement. As a matter of fact, there is not a sentence in the entire Corpus of Jefferson's writings, which makes any argument in favor of slavery Throughout his life. He argued in many times passionately and in moments of great political decision that slavery is utterly wrong and must be abolished. He tried to limit the importation of slaves as the first step. In connection with the Declaration of Independence before anyone claims that Jefferson meant only whites in it. They should look at the draft which Jefferson wrote. The draft which unfortunately In this passage was not accepted by the Congress. but in the list of charges against the king of England Jefferson Road He has waged cruel war against human nature itself violating its most sacred rights of life and Liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him captivating and carrying them into slavery in another Hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation. in his summary view of the rights of British America of 1774, which was the document which sketched out the ideology of the movement for Independence, very influential document Jefferson called for quote the abolition of domestic slavery and the eventual and Friday franchisement of the slaves. We now have in his notes on Virginia 1781 Jefferson for saw total emancipation. But he was not insensitive to the irony of a people fighting for its own Freedom keeping another in subjection. He placed the issue of slavery in the light that Abraham Lincoln would always see it. when he wrote and can the Liberties of a Nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis a conviction in the minds of the people that their Liberties are a gift of God that they are not to be violated. But with his Wrath Jefferson felt as Lincolnwood later that anyone who could believe slavery is Right could never defend Liberty for white people either the principle of freedom is indivisible. Indeed Jefferson goes on to say I tremble for my country. when I reflect that God is just that his Justice cannot sleep forever. Considering numbers nature and natural means only a revolution of The Wheel of Fortune and exchange of situation between Masters and slaves is among the possible events that it may become probable by Supernatural interference. The almighty has no attribute, which can take side with us in such a contest. Jefferson unlike Lincoln did not often resort to biblical language, but the Injustice of slavery called it forth in him. When can I put see those words of Jefferson foreshadowing Lincoln's great second inaugural address when he said yet if God Wills that this war continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and every drop of blood drawn with the last shall be paid for by another drawn by the sword. As was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Returning again to Jefferson. He wrote in a letter just four years after that passage from the notes of Virginia that I read. What a stupendous Warren in comprehensible machine is man who can endure toil famine Stripes imprisonment and death itself in Vindication of his own liberty and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his dryel and inflict on his fellow man, a bondage 1 hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in Rebellion to oppose. And so I would ask you the next time anyone says that Thomas Jefferson believed in slavery. Set them straight. Or the next time that someone tells you that the American Civil religion knows nothing of a God of Justice. Please cite Jefferson and Lincoln. Perhaps the central spokesman for the American Civil religion who called on a god of judgment as fervently and his pointedly has any Old Testament prophet? There is done. A biting Edge to the Civil religion not just general civil religion, but virtue not just virtue but concern for the common good not just the common good defined in any self-serving way, but the common good under great objective norms. equality life liberty and the pursuit of happiness The American Civil religion could not guarantee. The instant fulfillment of its precepts no religion has ever been able to guarantee that I would not deny that the Civil religion has been used to condone evil any more than I would deny that Christians in America have used their religion to did to condone evil. And yet the fundamental tenets of the Civil religion have continued to work Among Us. How different our history would have been if the Declaration of Independence had red? All white people are created equal and all black people are created Slaves by Nature. How fortunate for us that Jefferson was not a mere pragmatic politician. But a Visionary Prophet capable of expressing a universal truth in the midst of a very particular conflict. No one has made that point more clearly than Lincoln when he wrote. All honor to Jefferson to the man who in the concrete pressure of a struggle for National independence by a single peep. Have the coolness forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document and Abstract truth applicable to all men and all times. I've concentrated on the question of slavery because it has been the deepest moral and political trauma in our history. It required a tragic Civil War or only civil war to abolish it and its effects are still far from eliminated from our society. But slavery is only an image a symbol an example of the more General problem. how to actualize on this Earth The great religious and moral insights which have been given to us. We know the right but we do not do the right. I have spoken so far as though the tenets of the Civil religion were self-evident. As though they needed no interpretation. As though the only problem is their implementation. Actually, that is far from the case. Conflict explicit or implicit over the deeper. Meaning of the Civil religion has been endemic from the beginning. I cannot do more than Broach this issue here. No, I feel it is too important to leave it out entirely. The conflict over the meaning of the Civil religion over the very meaning of America has never been more severe than it is today. How we as a people make the great decisions that must be made in the dark years of the late 20th century. will determine not only our own faith, but that of much of the world. To put it for the sake of argument a bit to Simply. There have been behind the Civil religion to Great structures of interpretation from the beginning the one I shall call biblical. the other utilitarian the biblical interpretation stands above all under the archetype of the Covenant. But it is also consonant with the classic theory of natural law is derived from ancient philosophy and then taken up into Christian thought in the fathers of the church. The utilitarian interpretation stands above all under the archetype of the social contract and is consonant with the modern theory of natural rights as derived from modern philosophy above all particularly for America the philosophy of John Locke. The meaning of every key term in the Civil religion certainly liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but also equality and even life difference. in these two perspectives as an expression of the biblical interpretation of the Civil religion. Let me turn to that great an initial sermon. Have John Winthrop on board ship just before the landing in Boston Bay in 1630? What you called a model of Christian charity. Winthrop said summing up The picture he was drawing to those colonists about the nature of the society. They were about to establish remember that I'm even gotten off the boat. He said first of all true Christians are one body in Christ. 1 Corinthians 12 V are the body of Christ and members of your part II leave the ligaments of this body which knit together. our love Thirdly, nobody can be perfect which wants its proper ligaments. Fourthly all the parts of this body being thus United are made. So contiguous in a special relation as they must needs partake of each other's strengths and infirmity joy and sorrow weal and woe. 1 Corinthians, 12:26 if one member suffers All suffer with it if one being honor all Rejoice with it. Fifthly this sensibleness and sympathy of each other's conditions will necessarily Infuse into each part a native desire and Endeavor to strengthen defend preserve and comfort the other. To insist a little on this conclusion being the product of all the former the truth hear of will appear both by precepting pattern quotes from 1 John. Do you ought to lay down your lives for the Brethren and from Galatians? Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ when trips view was an expression of that very high Puritan demand to actualize the biblical Commandments to create a holy Commonwealth in England or in America. For all its moral fervor at the root on so much that is good in America. We should not forget its dark side. the moral Crusade The Holy War Even so Humane and generous a man is John Winthrop on occasion was too ready to believe that his own will was the real of God. Partly in reaction against the Puritans the great founders of modern philosophy and England Hobbes and Locke created a position that was in a sense the dialectical opposite of that of the Puritans. Disturbed by sectarian fanaticism finding the Puritan goal utopian and finally destructive because they thought unrealistic about human nature. They drastically lowered the moral demand. Abandoned the principles of Puritan politics and built their political philosophy on what they called the natural man. Which John Winthrop would have called Falling man man in the state of sin. And so we find in John Locke. the Second Treatise the statement the great and chief end therefore of men's uniting into common wealth and putting themselves under government is ilok doesn't say love as Winthrop would have said he doesn't say justice. He doesn't even say happiness. The great and chief end of men's putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. And then the letter on Toleration Locke says the Commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring preserving and advancing their own civil civil interest cycle life liberty health and the possession of outward things such as money lands houses furniture and the like Now you can read the great tenets of the Civil religion in either perspective as Winthrop would have read them or as luck would have read them is equality of condition for the Fulfillment of our Humanity in Covenant with God. Where is equality of condition for the competitive struggle? to attain our own interests is freedom Virtually the same thing as virtue the freedom to fulfill lovingly Our obligation to God and to our fellow men. Or is freedom the right to do whatever we please so long as we do not harm to flagrantly our fellow men. Is the pursuit of happiness the pursuit of true happiness as the great prophets and philosophers have conceived it or is it the pursuit merely of whatever impulse we think might lead to immediate gratification? does life mean biological survival in our animal functions or does it mean the fulfilled life in which our spiritual nature as well as our animal nature receives its do The American Civil religion has always ranged between those Heights in those depths. I would not deny it. Generations of believing Christians have seen it in its highest light though often on Monday morning in the counting-house. They have seen it at its lowest. Some of our greatest leaders Jefferson and Lincoln included are profoundly influenced by modern philosophy have risen to a Biblical level of insight in our hours of need. There have been however extraordinary statements of what I am calling the low version of the Civil religion. And I would like to read from the man whom I presume your town is named after. Did not always talk as in the passage. I will read but none the less that's here the 51st federalist. This is the effort to create a government out of man's wickedness. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature. That such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself? But the greatest of all Reflections on human nature if men were Angels no government would be necessary if engines were to govern men neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. This policy of supplying by opposite and rival interests. This is the famous checking balance. I'm supplying by opposite and rival interests. The defect of better motives might be traced through the whole system of human Affairs private as well as public. Receipt particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power for the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each maybe a check on the other that the private interest that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. Now most of the founding fathers and I think at other moments Madison himself did not really believe that any stable Society could rest on interest alone. They all insisted as I read in the passage from Washington and Jefferson that public virtue was a necessity. They didn't expect too much from public virtue. So they threw in this darker side too, but they never abandoned the notion of virtue and conscience and certainly the mass of the people in early. Who supported the new nation coming out of their firm Christian faith felt that Society had to be based on charity and love and not uninterested alarm. Otherwise, I think if that madisonian interpretation that I've just read where the only story hours would not be considered a noble experiment but only on mechanical run. Yep, that sense of biblical expectancy of millennial Hope was powerful in the founding generation even in so secular figure as Franklin. Franklin said in conclusion of the one pamphlet that he was able to write in defense of the Constitution to conclude I beg to conclude I beg I may not be understood to infer that our general convention at the Constitutional Convention was divinely inspired when it formed the new Federal Constitution yet. I must own I have so much faith in the general government of the World by Providence that I can hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance to the welfare of millions. Now existing Millions to exist in the future would be suffered to pass without being in some degree influenced guided and governed by that omnipotent omnipresent and beneficent ruler in whom all are inferior all interior Spirits live and move and have their B. stop chasing millennialism that sense that America was to be a new kind of society with a higher level of public virtue of Fuller degree of human Freedom been any society before is what led Lincoln to call us and almost chosen people let him even to other those words which may be very hard for us to understand at this moment in our history when he said that we are the last best. Hope of Earth. Even in these dark days. I think it remains true. At what America does how America solves its deep internal problems and its problems in relation to the rest of the world will have an enormous consequence not only for ourselves. but if for no other reason because of our immense power it will have consequences for all the world. Which could be enormously positive or profoundly destructive. Thank you. You heard Professor Robert Vela the University of california-berkeley give some of his views on the Civil religion in America. Bella's remarks are the first of five broadcast on civil religion in America drawn from a series presented at Dakota State College in Madison South Dakota last fall that series was planned and sponsored by the Newman Center the Lutheran Student Center and Dakota State College all of Madison South Dakota and buy the South Dakota United Ministries in higher education. It was made possible by a grant from the South Dakota committee on the humanities. Next week at this time will broadcast reactions to Professor Bellows remarks by South Dakota humanists David fee of South Dakota State University in Brookings and Dan Rice Dakota Wesleyan University in Mitchell as well as Professor Bellows responses to questions about the Civil religion posed by the audience at that forum.