American Civil Religion in the Era of Trump

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I am grateful to the author(s) of "American Civil Religion in the Era of Trump". This is an intelligent and engaging paper that revisits the perennial debate about a putative American civil religion by examining the discourse of Trump and Biden compared with previous presidents credited with shaping the civil religion tradition.  The method is textual analysis of content and semantic networks.

I think the motivation of the paper is clearly stated and the review of the literature excellent and insightful, although a few important studies are neglected.

In relation to American nationalism, one could argue (as does Sutton) that the great success of the civil religion tradition dates from the FDR era when the president and his advisors sought to forge a Judeo-Christian civil religion that would overcome confessional and ethnic divisions among Americans and reinforce a notion of shared morality underlying citizenship.  It was a powerful vision that helped to forge pan-ethnic whiteness and later was used by ML King and other SCLC leaders used its language and morals to help defang conservative Protestant opposition to the civic rights movement (Chappell, A Stone of Hope). 

In terms of civil religion under Trump, perhaps what stands out is that despite Trump's very strong electoral support from self-identified Evangelicals, Trump actually offered a vision of _secular_ nationalism in the 2016 campaign and in his early presidency.  This reinforces work by Bonakowksi and DiMaggio that suggests that "ardent nationalists" and "white evangelicals" are practically indistinguishable in terms of political and social values.  Perhaps Trump realized that the way to win was to appeal to nationalists beyond the ranks of the religious right - the fact that so many first time voters mobilized for Trump supports this interpretation.  If so, then Trump's inaugural address is indeed un-beholden to the civil religion and, perhaps, a repudiation of it if its original political purpose was to advance pluralism and cross-cutting political identifications among disparate ethnic groups.

If that is right, then Figure 2 is misleading.  The opposite side of the political spectrum from radical secularism might not be religious nationalism but secular nationalism (or neo-nationalism).  Your textual analysis seems to back this. Why not make this argument the payoff of the paper - the possibility that religion is less important in American politics, not only on the far left but on the far right!  That would be a counter intuitive argument that would make the paper more distinctive.  This interpretation is supported by Table 2.  Trump's discourse appears like secular nationalism would.

By contrast, Biden's winning coalition in 2020 was more culturally and racially heterogeneous than Trump's, suggesting that he leaned on the civil religion tradition in an effort to shore up a broad but shaky coalition that still relies on suburban voters. Table 5 backs this interpretation.   Religious references aren't absent from Trump, but just far less important rhetorical devices.

So maybe civil religion discourse is in trouble moving forward because American cultural consensus is so battered.  Ideological and cultural heterogeneity and partisan polarization (although the voting public is not as polarized as among those strongly identified with parties) make civil religion less attractive and instrumentally less valuable.  Biden is a throwback in that sense, evoking an older and fading political tradition and style.  If so, then there is no "American civil religion canon" in a practical sense. That may be both cause and consequence of Trump's success.

some work you might consult and cite

Mark Noll, especially America's God

Domke and Coe's The God Strategy

Bonakowski and DiMaggio's paper on varieties of nationalism and cultural identities in the USA

Sutton, American Apocalpyse

Wellman et al on American evangelicals, megachurches and Trump

Hartmann, Douglas, Xuefeng Zhang, and William Wischstadt. 2005. “One (multicultural) nation under God? Uses and meanings of the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ in the American media.” Journal of Media and Religion 4 (4): 207–234. 28

Hartmann, Douglas, Daniel Winchester, Penny Edgell, and Joseph Gerteis. 2011. “How Americans understand racial and religious differences: A test of parallel items from a national survey.” Sociological Quarterly 52 (3): 323–345.

Wilcox, Clyde and Caren Robinson. 2011. Onward Christian soldiers? The religious right in American politics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. I found them quite helpful. I believe the manuscript is much better now. Here are my responses:

Comment 1: "In relation to American nationalism, one could argue (as does Sutton) that the great success of the civil religion tradition dates from the FDR era when the president and his advisors sought to forge a Judeo-Christian civil religion that would overcome confessional and ethnic divisions among Americans and reinforce a notion of shared morality underlying citizenship.  It was a powerful vision that helped to forge pan-ethnic whiteness and later was used by ML King and other SCLC leaders used its language and morals to help defang conservative Protestant opposition to the civic rights movement (Chappell, A Stone of Hope)."

• This is an excellent suggestion. I've expanded the first paragraph in the second section ("Civil Religion and Its Discontents") as follows (I also added a reference to Chappell where I introduce MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech):

Jean-Jacque Rousseau first coined the term “civil religion” when he proposed its establishment to further his idea of a ‘social contract’ (Rousseau 1997). “He intended it to denote a constructed religion, a form of deism that would instill in citizens a love of country and a motivation to civic duty” (Demerath and Williams 1985, p. 155). Bellah understands American civil religion differently. Influenced by Durkheim ([1912] 1995), he sees it as more bottom-up than top-down, as “voluntary rather than compulsory” (Gorski 2017a, p. 16). He argues that it was born in the settling of the new world, forged in the American Revolution, and refined during the war between the states (Bellah 1975). Philip Gorski (2017) expands Bellah’s argument considerably, examining the development of the civil religious tradition from the perspective of a diverse set of individuals, such as Hannah Arendt, John Calhoun, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, H.L. Mencken, and Reinhold Niebuhr. Interestingly, Matthew Sutton (2014) believes the success of the civil religion tradition can be traced back to when President Roosevelt and his advisors consciously sought to craft a Judeo-Christian civil religion that transcended confessional and ethnic divisions and reinforced the idea of a shared morality that underlies American citizenship.  President-elect Dwight Eisenhower consciously or unconsciously reflected this vision when he famously quipped, “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is” (quoted in Weiss 2016, p. 146).

In his original essay, Bellah viewed it as a potentially unifying factor and source for democratic renewal. A few years later, he was less optimistic. The heady days of the Civil Rights movement and the optimism of the Kennedy Administration (“the best and the brightest”) had given way to the bane of the Vietnam War and the embarrassment of Watergate, leading him to conclude that American civil religion had become “an empty and broken shell” (Bellah 1975, p. 142). It had lost its “power to motivate support for shared national goals” (Compton 2019, p. 2).  Bellah eventually dropped using the term altogether (Bortolini 2012).

Comment 2: "In terms of civil religion under Trump, perhaps what stands out is that despite Trump's very strong electoral support from self-identified Evangelicals, Trump actually offered a vision of _secular_ nationalism in the 2016 campaign and in his early presidency.  This reinforces work by Bonakowksi and DiMaggio that suggests that "ardent nationalists" and "white evangelicals" are practically indistinguishable in terms of political and social values.  Perhaps Trump realized that the way to win was to appeal to nationalists beyond the ranks of the religious right - the fact that so many first time voters mobilized for Trump supports this interpretation.  If so, then Trump's inaugural address is indeed un-beholden to the civil religion and, perhaps, a repudiation of it if its original political purpose was to advance pluralism and cross-cutting political identifications among disparate ethnic groups."

• I remembered Bonikowksi and DiMaggio's article after I submitted this paper, but I had forgotten that they had found similarities between ardent nationalists and white evangelicals. Interestingly, Gorski makes a similar argument in an article that he wrote after Trump's election/inauguration (his book was written and published before), as well as in his preface to the paperback version of his book. As such, I've included this discussion in the manuscript:

Gorski penned his original analysis of American civil religion before Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. However, it is notable that in his preface to the paperback edition of the book (2019) and in an earlier article (2017b), both of which Gorski wrote after Trump’s inauguration, he argues that Trump "preaches" more of a secular nationalism than a religious one:

It is shorn of the Scriptural citations and allusions that still adorned the rhetoric of recent Presidents, Republicans, and Democrats alike, from Reagan to Obama. All it retains from Christianity are faint echoes of a deep story: tropes of pollution and purification, invasion and resistance, apocalypse and salvation, corruption and re-newal. These tropes have long since become stock elements of our popular culture. So much so, in fact, that one could probably internalize them without any formal ex-posure to Christian teachings. (Gorski 2017b, p. 348)

Here, Gorski echoes some of Bonakowksi and DiMaggio’s (2016) findings regarding American “nationalisms.” Bonakowksi and DiMaggio identify four types of nationalism (creedal, disengaged, restrictive, and ardent), and they find that "ardent nationalists" and "white evangelicals" are practically indistinguishable from one another in terms of their political and social values.

Comment 3: "If that is right, then Figure 2 is misleading.  The opposite side of the political spectrum from radical secularism might not be religious nationalism but secular nationalism (or neo-nationalism).  Your textual analysis seems to back this. Why not make this argument the payoff of the paper - the possibility that religion is less important in American politics, not only on the far left but on the far right!  That would be a counter intuitive argument that would make the paper more distinctive.  This interpretation is supported by Table 2.  Trump's discourse appears like secular nationalism would...

By contrast, Biden's winning coalition in 2020 was more culturally and racially heterogeneous than Trump's, suggesting that he leaned on the civil religion tradition in an effort to shore up a broad but shaky coalition that still relies on suburban voters. Table 5 backs this interpretation.   Religious references aren't absent from Trump, but just far less important rhetorical devices."

• I've redone Figure 2 and included this description of it in the paper:

This suggests that, at least currently, rather than lying between radical secularism and religious nationalism, American civil religion lies between radical secularism and a “Trumpian” secular nationalism. Figure 2 combines Wuthnow’s and Gorski’s under-standing of American civil religion, lying between radical secularism and secular na-tionalism, with civil religion’s liberal version closer to radical secularism and its con-servative version closer to secular nationalism.

• I've also updated my discussions of Tables 2 and 5, and rearranged and updated the conclusion so that the "payoff" is now the final paragraph:

Does the above analysis “prove” Bellah’s thesis? Of course not. No amount of em-pirical data can do that. Some will interpret the prevalence of certain beliefs, practices, and discourse as supporting Bellah’s thesis (Gorski 2017a); others will see them as merely confirming the pervasiveness of religious nationalism in the United States (Danielson 2019). However, the analysis does show that language that some would consider consistent with American civil religion can be found in the inaugural addresses of both Biden and Trump. However, the level at which Biden and Trump employ American civil religious language differs. Biden not only used far more terms associated with American civil religion, but they played a much more central role. If Gorski (2017a) is correct that American civil religion can help rebuild “the vital center” and recover what was once a vibrant civil society, then the central role that American civil religion played in Biden’s inaugural address can be seen as a positive. However, one cannot help but wonder whether Bellah and others are right that American civil religion has lost its power to bring together disparate aspects of American society. American civil religion may be a throwback to an earlier time in American history, a set of beliefs, symbols, and practices that hold little or no sway in our current era, neither on the secular left nor the secular right (see Figure 2). The results presented here are certainly consistent with such a conclusion.

Comment 4: "So maybe civil religion discourse is in trouble moving forward because American cultural consensus is so battered.  Ideological and cultural heterogeneity and partisan polarization (although the voting public is not as polarized as among those strongly identified with parties) make civil religion less attractive and instrumentally less valuable.  Biden is a throwback in that sense, evoking an older and fading political tradition and style.  If so, then there is no "American civil religion canon" in a practical sense. That may be both cause and consequence of Trump's success."

• I've included some of these thoughts/sentiments in the conclusion as well (see above).

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper poses some interesting and important questions about the role of “civil religion” in American presidential rhetoric. Specifically, the author uses semantic network analysis to test whether (1) civil religion, as defined by Robert Bellah (and further developed by other scholars) is, in fact, central to the rhetorical structure of American presidents’ inaugural addresses; (2) whether rhetoric in the civil religion tradition can be meaningfully distinguished from purely nationalistic rhetoric; and (3) whether there are meaningful differences in the rhetorical structures of the two most recent inaugural addresses (from Presidents Trump and Biden, respectively). The author concludes that the civil religion tradition plays an important role in American presidential rhetoric; that this tradition is not simply a sacralized form of nationalism; and that the inaugural addresses of Biden and Trump differ markedly in their use of civil religious and nationalist terms. 

I find the paper to be clearly written and persuasively argued. The author does a nice job of explaining the background of the civil religion debate (though I think this section could be fleshed out a bit, as described below.) The statistical sections, while somewhat technical, are relatively easy to follow and (more importantly) provide strong support for the author’s thesis. The paper also makes an important contribution, not only to the civil religion debate, but arguably also to the larger debate about the ideological evolution of American political parties. I therefore strongly recommend publication. (I should note that I am not an expert in semantic network analysis. However, I found it easy to follow the author’s explanations of the statistical techniques employed in the paper, and I found the analysis of the results fully persuasive.)

I do have a couple of suggestions for improving the paper (which the author should feel free to ignore if he/she disagrees). First, with respect to the literature review, I think this section would benefit from more engagement with the recent literature on American civil religion. In places, the framing seems a bit too stuck in the debates of the 1970s and 1980s. A good place to start, if the author wants to beef up the literature review, would be with the special issue on “Civil Religion in America” that this journal (Religions) published in 2019. Although none of the pieces in that issue include semantic analysis of presidential speeches, several of them offer fresh takes on the Bellah-inspired debates of the 1970s and 1980s, and all offer many citations to more recent literature in this area. Engaging with some of these pieces might allow the author to expand the current paper’s appeal beyond the audience of scholars who study presidential rhetoric and its relationship to (civil) religion.

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/civilreligion

Second, I am not entirely clear on how the list of “nationalist” and “civil religious” terms used in Tables 3 and 4 was compiled. On the one hand, both lists seem logical. On the other hand, I am curious to know whether the existing literature provides any guidance on the question of which terms belong to which rhetorical tradition. Note 18 addresses this question in a somewhat defensive manner, asserting that the author’s list of terms is “no less arbitrary” [should this be “no more arbitrary”?] than the lists compiled by other scholars. Perhaps the answer is that there simply is no agreed-upon framework for divvying up keywords between rhetorical traditions. But if that is the case, it would be nice to see a more thorough explanation of the problem (probably in a footnote).

Third, although this may be beyond the scope of the paper, I would be interested in how the presidential tradition of employing civil religious rhetoric intersects with, or is shaped by, the respective ideological commitments of the two parties. Bellah’s original conception of civil religion was clearly left-leaning, in the sense that he viewed civil religious appeals as a spur to egalitarian political reforms (anti-slavery, civil rights, etc.). Moreover, his shift to a more pessimistic outlook in his later years coincided with the rise of a powerful conservative movement that used (somewhat different) religious appeals for very different purposes. For a conservative movement that was strongly anti-government, anti-federal action on civil rights, etc., the kind of “common good” rhetorical appeals that comprise the heart of the civil religious tradition were not very useful.

From this perspective, it is perhaps not surprising that the author finds interesting differences in the rhetoric employed by our two most recent presidents, with Biden relying more on civil religious appeals and Trump more on nationalistic appeals. Clearly, the author lacks the space to fully flesh out the relationship between partisan ideology and civil religion. But I wonder whether more could be said about the (arguably) declining usefulness of civil religious rhetoric for Republican presidents vis-à-vis Democratic ones. For example, does Trump’s rhetoric differ noticeably from than that of his most recent Republican predecessors? For that matter, does civil religion retain the same importance for Democratic presidents now as compared to the 1960s? (If so, this would be an interesting finding, given the long-term secular drift of the Democratic party.)

Finally, I caught one minor typo: In line 160 (p. 4), “for instance” is repeated.

Author Response

Thank you so much for the helpful comments. These, along with those of the other reviewer, have improved the quality of the manuscript. Here are my responses:

Comment 1: "I do have a couple of suggestions for improving the paper (which the author should feel free to ignore if he/she disagrees). First, with respect to the literature review, I think this section would benefit from more engagement with the recent literature on American civil religion. In places, the framing seems a bit too stuck in the debates of the 1970s and 1980s. A good place to start, if the author wants to beef up the literature review, would be with the special issue on “Civil Religion in America” that this journal (Religions) published in 2019. Although none of the pieces in that issue include semantic analysis of presidential speeches, several of them offer fresh takes on the Bellah-inspired debates of the 1970s and 1980s, and all offer many citations to more recent literature in this area. Engaging with some of these pieces might allow the author to expand the current paper’s appeal beyond the audience of scholars who study presidential rhetoric and its relationship to (civil) religion."

• The original submission already cited one of the paper's in this series (Danielson 2019), although I had no idea that it was part of a special issue. As a result, I first expanded my discussion of Danielson's paper:

Not all who write about civil religion are fans. Some dismiss it as simply a thinly-veiled version of (or excuse for) religious nationalism (Danielson 2019; Long 1974; Marvin and Ingle 1996).  Danielson (2019), for instance, believes that Bellah’s contention that American civil religion facilitated the “reform and renewal” of the American ex-periment  is “historically inaccurate.” She contends that although “there is indeed a dominant language of American nationalism and one that has largely reflected the culture of the Anglo-Protestant majority… it was far from universal and often rested upon the exclusion and repression of alternative and oppositional identities and solidarities.” She believes scholars should abandon the concept of civil religion in favor of nationalism because it is “a far more slippery concept that elides questions of power, identity, and belonging that nationalism places at the center of inquiry” (Danielson 2019, p. 1).

• I also included a couple of references to Danielson's article elsewhere in the paper. In addition, I referenced Weiss and Bungert (2019) when noting that some scholars still find the concept of civil religion valuable and important (lines 149-150). Finally, I quote Compton's piece on line 147, and then in footnote 9, I briefly discuss why he thinks ACR has lost its power.

In addition to these articles, my literature review now includes (some in response to the other reviewer) discussions of these articles and book chapters:

Bonikowski, Bart and Paul DiMaggio. 2016. "Varieties of American Popular Nationalism." American Sociological Review 81(5):949-80. doi: 10.1177/0003122416663683.

Chappell, David L. 2004. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Domke, David S., and Kevin Coe. 2008. The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gorski, Philip S. 2017b. "Why Evangelicals Voted for Trump: A Critical Cultural Sociology." American Journal of Cultural Sociology 5(3):338-54. doi: 10.1057/s41290-017-0043-9

____. 2019. “Preface to the Paperback Edition,” Pp. vii-xvi in American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, Paperback ed. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Mason, Lilliana. 2018. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Sutton, Matthew Avery 2014. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Weiss, David. 2016. "Civil Religion or Mere Religion? The Debate Over Presidential Religious Rhetoric." Pp. 143-64 in The Rhetoric of American Civil Religion: Symbols, Sinners, and Saints, edited by Jason A. Edwards and Joseph M. Valenzano III. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Comment 2: "Second, I am not entirely clear on how the list of “nationalist” and “civil religious” terms used in Tables 3 and 4 was compiled. On the one hand, both lists seem logical. On the other hand, I am curious to know whether the existing literature provides any guidance on the question of which terms belong to which rhetorical tradition. Note 18 addresses this question in a somewhat defensive manner, asserting that the author’s list of terms is “no less arbitrary” [should this be “no more arbitrary”?] than the lists compiled by other scholars. Perhaps the answer is that there simply is no agreed-upon framework for divvying up keywords between rhetorical traditions. But if that is the case, it would be nice to see a more thorough explanation of the problem (probably in a footnote)."

• The old endnote does sound defensive, doesn't it? I've rewritten it (and located it earlier in the text). It is now #20 and reads as follows:

Scholars disagree on what words/terms are associated with American civil religion and which ones are associated with na-tionalism. For instance, where Bellah (1967) sees references to civil religion, Danielson (2019) sees markers of nationalism. The terms identified in this paper draw from the works of other scholars who have explored one or both sets of concepts (e.g., Baker, Perry and Whitehead 2020; Bonikowski and DiMaggio 2016; Christenson and Wimberley 1978; Whitehead, Perry and Baker 2018; Whitehead and Perry 2020; Wimberley 1976).

Comment 3: "Third, although this may be beyond the scope of the paper, I would be interested in how the presidential tradition of employing civil religious rhetoric intersects with, or is shaped by, the respective ideological commitments of the two parties. Bellah’s original conception of civil religion was clearly left-leaning, in the sense that he viewed civil religious appeals as a spur to egalitarian political reforms (anti-slavery, civil rights, etc.). Moreover, his shift to a more pessimistic outlook in his later years coincided with the rise of a powerful conservative movement that used (somewhat different) religious appeals for very different purposes. For a conservative movement that was strongly anti-government, anti-federal action on civil rights, etc., the kind of “common good” rhetorical appeals that comprise the heart of the civil religious tradition were not very useful...
 
"From this perspective, it is perhaps not surprising that the author finds interesting differences in the rhetoric employed by our two most recent presidents, with Biden relying more on civil religious appeals and Trump more on nationalistic appeals. Clearly, the author lacks the space to fully flesh out the relationship between partisan ideology and civil religion. But I wonder whether more could be said about the (arguably) declining usefulness of civil religious rhetoric for Republican presidents vis-à-vis Democratic ones. For example, does Trump’s rhetoric differ noticeably from than that of his most recent Republican predecessors? For that matter, does civil religion retain the same importance for Democratic presidents now as compared to the 1960s? (If so, this would be an interesting finding, given the long-term secular drift of the Democratic party.)"

• My updated conclusion reflects some of these issues raised here (it has also been influenced by the comments of the first reviewer):

Does the above analysis “prove” Bellah’s thesis? Of course not. No amount of empirical data can do that. Some will interpret the prevalence of certain beliefs, practices, and discourse as supporting Bellah’s thesis (Gorski 2017a); others will see them as merely confirming the pervasiveness of religious nationalism in the United States (Danielson 2019). However, the analysis does show that language that some would consider consistent with American civil religion can be found in the inaugural addresses of both Biden and Trump. However, the level at which Biden and Trump employ American civil religious language differs. Biden not only used far more terms associated with American civil religion, but they played a much more central role. If Gorski (2017a) is correct that American civil religion can help rebuild “the vital center” and recover what was once a vibrant civil society, then the central role that American civil religion played in Biden’s inaugural address can be seen as a positive. However, one cannot help but wonder whether Bellah and others are right that American civil religion has lost its power to bring together disparate aspects of American society. American civil religion may be a throwback to an earlier time in American history, a set of beliefs, symbols, and practices that hold little or no sway in our current era, neither on the secular left nor the secular right (see Figure 2). The results presented here are certainly consistent with such a conclusion.

Comment 4: "Finally, I caught one minor typo: In line 160 (p. 4), “for instance” is repeated."

• Thanks! It is corrected.