Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2009, J. Reuben Clark Law Society, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law School

The Clark Memorandum

• Latter-day Saint Lawyers and the Public Square (Elder Quentin L. Cook)
• Originalist Roots of Substantive Due Process (Frederick Mark Gedicks)
• The Triumph of the Atonement (Elder Earl C. Tingey)
• The Heart of Lawyering (Kristin B. Gerdy)

American Civil Religion: An Idea Whose Time Is Past, Frederick Mark Gedicks

Faculty Scholarship

From the founding of the United States, Americans have understood loyalty to their country as a religious and not just a civic commitment. The idea of a 'civil religion' that defines the collective identity of a nation originates with Rousseau, and was adapted to the United States Robert Bellah, who suggested that a peculiarly American civil religion has underwritten government and civil society in the United States.

Leaving aside the question whether civil religion has ever truly unified all or virtually all Americans, I argue that it excludes too many Americans to function as such a unifying force in the …