Comment: [Twenty Years after Bellah: Whatever Happened to American Civil Religion?

]
Author(s): Robert N. Bellah
Source: Sociological Analysis, Vol. 50, No. 2, Thematic Issue: A Durkheimian Miscellany
(Summer, 1989), p. 147
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3710984
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Analysis1989,50:2 147
Sociological

Comment
Robert N. Bellah
Universityof California,Berkeley

I appreciatethe carefulreviewof the civil religionliteraturethat JamesMathisen

has givenus. I think his generalpictureof "whathappened"is accurate,at leastfrom
my perspective.I do, however,have a few questionsand comments.
It is accurateto say that I wrotethe 1967Daedalusarticleunder some duress.I
had no ideathat it wouldstimulatethe controversyand elaborationthat subsequently
developed.I had to givemyselfa quickcoursein Americanstudiesin orderto respond
to the many requeststhat the articlegenerated.I was particularlydismayedby the
strongnegativereaction.The argumentof the articleseemedobviousto me. It is the
sort of thing any Durkheimianwould have said. I still think that is the case.I have
never recantedmy position on civil religion.
In retrospect,
however,it appearsthatgivingthe phenomenonthe nameI didcaused
an unnecessaryreificationand then stimulateda negativeoverreaction.It is for that
reasonthat I havestoppedusingthe term"civilreligion."
I grewtiredof arguingagainst
those for whom civilreligionmeansthe idolatrousworshipof the state,stillthe commonestmeaningof the term.I also grewwearyof the whole definitionaldebate,since
I was alwaysinterestedin the substantiveissues,not in definitions.
Habitsof the Heartis very much concernedwith the same substantiveissuesas
my writingson civil religion.Mercifully,I havebeen sparedthe irrelevantarguments
about civil religionin commentson Habits,which confirmsto me that I was right
to drop the term.
Mathisenseemsto believethat I startedout thinkingof civilreligionas integrative
and only with TheBrokenCovenantbeganto emphasizeits criticalrole. But the 1967
articlewasdeeplycritical.It wasan effortto arguethat the civilreligionrequiredoppositionto the VietnamWar,not supportfor it. I do not see any changeover time on
the consensus/conflictaxis in my analysisof civil religion.
Finallylet me say that Figure1 is charmingbut bizarre.Mathisen's"Historical
is itselfhis own "SocialConstruction"
of civilreligion.Any claimto a privileged
Reality"
accessto "reality"seemsto me quiteunfounded.In any casethe religio-political
problem, as I referredto it in the introductionto Varieties
Civil
will
not
Religion,
of
go away,
whetherwe use the term "civilreligion"in thinking about it or not.

147