Civil Religion / Democratic Faith

Robert N. Bellah’s work centered on the role of religion in sustaining society, with a keen analytic eye on both the ways religion and parallel phenomena hold society together and the ways religion offers resources for radical critique of society’s failings, and thus for social reform. One strand of that work used the term ‘civil religion’ to mark the role of religion – today what is sometimes termed ‘democratic faith’. “Civil Religion in America” (Daedalus 1967) laid out his original argument and gained widespread attention. Bellah followed that with The Broken Covenant, in which he analyzed the ways the United States has failed to live up to American civil religion’s promises to its Black citizens. A vast literature has built on, extended, and critiqued those works.