Measuring and Manipulating Constitutional Evaluations in the States: Legitimacy Versus Veneration

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1135-1161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam R. Brown ◽  
Jeremy C. Pope
Keyword(s):  
Civil Religion ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
James Madison ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
New Information ◽  
The U.S

American civil religion places the U.S. Constitution on a pedestal. Although this veneration is well-documented, it is unclear where it originates and why other constitutions do not attract the same reverence. We develop a measure of constitutional respect and conduct a randomized survey experiment testing whether new information can change respondents’ evaluations of their state or national constitutions. We find that people do respond to new information about state constitutions, but not to information about the national document, suggesting that Americans view the U.S. Constitution with the sort of veneration and reverence James Madison advocated, while viewing their state constitutions through a more Jeffersonian lens of legitimacy, one that favors continually revising these constitutions to meet the living generation’s needs.

The American Founding, Civic Virtue and Religion

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-124
Author(s):  
Gerald De Maio ◽  
Douglas Muzzio ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Religion ◽  
Civic Virtue ◽  
American Founding ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Early State ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
Primary Focus

This essay focuses on the attempts to give institutional expression to religion. It surveys various solutions articulated by theorists, ancient and modem, to address the sometimes uneasy relationship between religion and the polity. The emphasis then shifts to the statesmen-theoreticians who gave constitutional form to the American regime. The experiments contained in the early state constitutions are the primary focus. Contemporary expositions of American civil religion are viewed in light of the founding experience.

The “Constitution” in American Civil Religion

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanford Levinson
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
Sacred Text ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Political Unity ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The One ◽  
The U.S

This chapter elaborates on the variety of “constitutional faiths.” It discusses the parallels between Protestant and Catholic approaches to Christian doctrine and “protestant” and “catholic” modes of approaching the U.S. Constitution. It argues that there is double message contained within the analogy of the Constitution to a sacred text or the Supreme Court to a holy institution. The first, emphasizing unity and integration, is the one we most tend to be familiar. The chapter proposes to examine the alternative message, which is the potential of a written constitution to serve as the source of fragmentation and disintegration. The analysis aims not only to present a somewhat different perspective from which to look at the Constitution, but also to attack by implication any confidence of having “the Constitution” as a common symbol guarantees meaningful national political unity.

Was James Madison Wrong? Rethinking the American Preference for Short, Framework-Oriented Constitutions

1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 837-849 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Hammons
Keyword(s):  
James Madison ◽  
Detailed Design ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
American States ◽  
Constitutional Thought ◽  
National Constitution ◽  
The U.S

American constitutional thought has long held that short, framework-oriented constitutions last longer than lengthy, statute-oriented constitutions. The longevity of the U.S. Constitution contributes heavily to this assumption. Not surprisingly, political scientists criticize state constitutions for their greater length and tendency to address issues better dealt with through ordinary statute law. These “defects” are frequently cited as responsible for the shorter lifespan of state constitutions. An examination of the 145 constitutions used by the American states since 1776, however, reveals a relationship among content, length, and durability that refutes the assumption that the design of the national constitution is necessarily superior. To the contrary, the analysis here reveals that longer and more detailed design of state constitutions actually enhances rather than reduces their longevity.

scholarly journals “In God We Trust:” The U.S. National Motto and the Contested Concept of Civil Religion

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 340
Author(s):  
Michael Lienesch
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Religious Symbolism ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

In this essay, “In God We Trust”, the official motto of the United States, is discussed as an illustration of the contested character of American civil religion. Applying and evaluating assumptions from Robert N. Bellah and his critics, a conceptual history of the motto is presented, showing how from its first appearance to today it has inspired debates about the place of civil religion in American culture, law, and politics. Examining these debates, the changing character of the motto is explored: its creation as a religious response to the Civil War; its secularization as a symbol on the nation’s currency at the turn of the twentieth century; its state-sponsored institutionalization during the Cold War; its part in the litigation that challenged the constitutionality of civil religious symbolism in the era of the culture wars; and its continuing role in the increasingly partisan political battles of our own time. In this essay, I make the case that, while seemingly timeless, the meaning of the motto has been repeatedly reinterpreted, with culture, law, and politics interacting in sometimes surprising ways to form one of the nation’s most commonly accepted and frequently challenged symbols. In concluding, I speculate on the future of the motto, as well as on the changing place of civil religion in a nation that is increasingly pluralistic in its religion and polarized in its politics.

Refusal to Mourn

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Runions
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
Judith Butler ◽  
American People ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Public ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
The Us ◽  
Robert Bellah

In her recent book Precarious Life, Judith Butler points out that not more than ten days after 9/11, on 20 September 2001, George W. Bush urged the American people to put aside their grief; she suggests that such a refusal to mourn leads to a kind of national melancholia. Using psychoanalytic theory on melancholia, this article diagnoses causes and effects of such national melancholia. Further, it considers how a refusal to mourn in prophetic and apocalyptic texts and their interpretations operates within mainstream US American politics like the encrypted loss of the melancholic, thus creating the narcissism, guilt, and aggression that sustain the pervasive disavowal of loss in the contemporary moment. This article explore the ways in which the texts of Ezekiel, Micah, Revelation, and their interpreters exhibit the guilt and aggression of melancholia, in describing Israel as an unfaithful and wicked woman whose pain should not be mourned. These melancholic patterns are inherited by both by contemporary apocalyptic discourses and by the discourse of what Robert Bellah calls ‘American civil religion’, in which the US is the new Christian Israel; thus they help to position the public to accept and perpetuate the violence of war, and not to mourn it.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document