II. THE GOSPEL OF AMERICA: CIVIL RELIGION

Americans so completely confuse Christianity and freedom in their minds that it is almost impossible to have them conceive of the one without the other.

This part of the Article employs the concept “civil religion” to outline the intersection of religious ideals and American identity, including the Supreme Court's claim that Americans are a “religious people.” This section supports the civil ritual thesis by situating the Christian-influenced criminal justice system within a broader culture that is deeply entrenched in Christian-influenced civil religion. Although the concept of civil religion is not without its detractors, including those who deem it “idolatry,” presently, there is “consensus among social scientists that there is a component of Americanism .... [that] may be termed civil religion.” In broad strokes, civil religion can be understood as part of a long-term social response to the problems of modernity. By linking political ideas and institutions to a network of hallowed meanings, civil religion attempts to halt the “dissolution of the ... unity, solidarity, and hierarchy, cosmic [and] earthly, [which] characterized pre-modern societies.”

A closer look at civil religion in American society exemplifies how civil ritual manifests in society, including the notion that America is “God's country.” Since the very beginning of the colonial period, Americans have interpreted their history through religion and have seen themselves as being a ““people” in the biblical sense of the term. This self-understanding set a foundation for notions like “Manifest Destiny” and “Providentialism,” which provided a theological basis to justify the expansion of colonial settlements and played a significant role in the development of colonial economics and cultural identity.

Under such ideologies, it might not come as a surprise to learn that many Americans often understood the Revolutionary War in biblical terms, and according to one scholar, in the atmosphere surrounding the birth of the republic it was common to talk about Britain, or Europe more generally, as Babylon, in contrast to America, or New Jerusalem, as it was called. Unlike most historic peoples, America as a nation began on July 4, 1776, ““Independence Day,” a date that “fixed a specific, pivotal moment in the past from which to date a national [identity] , and against which to assess the [country's] progress.” From the beginning, then, as the republic's second president John Adams believed, the occasion deserved sacred status and pompous celebrations:

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations, from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward, forever more.

The Declaration of Independence, which documents the moment, however, declares more than political independence, but also a political theology. For instance, the Declaration makes the core claim “[w] e hold these Truths to be self-evident,” a posture that may rightly be seen as anti-secularist, since notions of secularism often challenge Truth in the absolute sense. Yet the American understanding of truth was long ago affirmed by Jesus in the Gospel of John that “the truth will [set] you free.” “Not only [was] .... Truth [axiomatically] grounded in religion, but its self-evident quality [was] as well.” One scholar has noted, the “‘self-evident’ quality of truth is but a reprise of The Letter of Paul to the Romans, 2:15: “They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts,”' which echoes Jeremiah's prophecy that the new covenant will be “writ[ten] up [on] their hearts.” Thus, self-evident truth may have been a part of American politics from the beginning. The first self-evident truth outlined in the Declaration of Independence is that “all men are created equal.” Even though some argued that this was no truth at all, the equality principle is the foundation for the Fourteenth Amendment, which would formally incorporate this ideal into the Constitution through the Equal Protection clause. But why are men equal? The civil religion perspective suggests the answer is also found in Genesis: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him.” In other words, all men are created equal because they were equally created by God; thus, the principle of equality appears as theological as it is political.

Like the lasting symbolism of the Declaration of Independence, the country's national anthem, the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and other songs are part of civil religious traditions. The Anthem accompanies practically every form of public gathering, from sporting events to official state ceremonies. At most events, however, only the first stanza is sung, to the omission of:

Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto - ‘In God is our trust,’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave

Akin in patriotism to the National Anthem are songs like “America the Beautiful,” which extols “America! America! God shed His grace on thee,” as well as the songs “God Bless America,” and “My Country ‘tis of Thee,” which proclaim God as the original author of liberty and at whom the song is directed:

Our fathers' God! to Thee--

Author of Liberty!

To thee we sing;

Long may our land be bright

With Freedom's holy light

Protect us by thy might,

Great God, our King!

There are a myriad of other civil rites performed in everyday life. One obvious performance is the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge accords the American flag with the sacredness and formality of a religious artifact, and one scholar has described flag salutes as capturing the “ritualiz[ation] of patriotism in America.” The pledge became more sacralized when the term “under God” was added to it in 1954 during the Cold War and in the midst of the communist Red Scare. The addition was a symbolic effort to “distinguish America from its atheistic Cold War rival.”

Government functions also indulge in civil rituals. For example, the government has traditionally observed only Christian and patriotic holidays. Moreover, Masonic “cornerstone” laying ceremonies have been performed at building dedications throughout American history, whose concept and practice likely traces to religious roots. Religious conviction also explains why there is no mail delivered on Sundays, since, as the Christian day of the Sabbath, mail service on Sundays came to be scorned, and was eventually stopped. This might not seem surprising since, as the Court has noted, by 1650 the Plymouth Rock colony had laws that proscribed labor on Sundays and by the time the First Amendment was ratified, each of the original colonies had such laws.

Civil religion evinces through other institutional practices, including adopting the phrase “In God we trust” both on currency and as a national motto. This trademark of all time has its roots in the Coinage Act of 1864, a federal law that authorized the printing of this motto on the 1864 two-cent coin. As this phrase became popular, efforts were made to make “In God we trust” the official motto of the United States, which culminated in Congress passing legislation to realize this goal. Prior to this act, there was no such thing as an official motto, which is noted in the committee report on House Joint Resolution 396. Citing the lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner, the report asserts, “In view of these words in our National Anthem, it is clear that ‘In God we trust’ has a strong claim as our national motto.” Explaining the social good of adopting this phrase in an official capacity, the report continues: “It will be of great spiritual and psychological value to our country to have a clearly designated national motto of inspirational quality.” The legislation made mandatory that all coins and bills thenceforth be marked with the motto.

Accompanying the motto on currency are graphic images of religious influence. One such image is the “All-Seeing Eye,” a symbol common in Christian and Renaissance art. The Eye appears on one side of the “Great Seal of the United States,” which is used to authenticate certain government documents, including United States currency. The Bureau of Public Affairs of the United States Department of State describes the side on which the eye appears as the “spiritual side of the seal” that:

[C] ontains the 13-step pyramid with the year 1776 in Roman numerals on the base. At the summit of the pyramid is the Eye of Providence in a triangle surrounded by a Glory (rays of light) and above it appears the motto Annuit Coeptis. Along the lower circumference of the design appear the words Novus Ordo Seclorum, heralding the beginning of the new American era in 1776.

In the image, the unfinished pyramid represents the original thirteen states, which anticipates the future growth of the nation and further implies that the Eye--or God--favors American prosperity. As this part of the Article shows, these and other artifacts depict the religious side of American polity and the civil rituals they inspire. This cultural backdrop is useful for understanding how a simple function of the state, like the doling of punishment becomes more than merely what happens to convicted offenders, but also, represents the raw exercise of power and social control.