American Presidential Rhetoric from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush: Another Look at Civil Religion
The period since 1980 in the United States offers an opportunity to reexamine the “American civil religion” hypothesis as put forth by sociologist Robert N. Bellah. In a time of massive changes both domestically and globally, presidential rhetoric on God and country underwent important shifts in substance and style. The author examines several major myths by which Americans have affirmed their identity historically, and how these have informed the rhetoric of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush. It is argued that popular and highly contested “public faiths” in the United States blending religious and political ideals take diverse forms of expression and vary in the degree to which they approach a civil religion of the sort Bellah imagined. In this recent period, a shift toward religious nationalism is clearly evident.