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Since the publication fifty years ago of Robert N. Bellah's classic article “Civil Religion in America,” the concept of civil religion has provoked continuing debates among scholars who study religion and American culture. This essay is a contribution to these debates and an attempt to move beyond them. It considers American civil religion as theory and as practice, examining its meaning through an investigation of how it functioned at an important and too little studied point in its past. Arguing that civil religion is both a cultural and a political construct, it shows how at the close of World War I, a loosely linked network of civic, military, and patriotic groups came together to create a sacralized form of patriotic nationalism and incorporate it into the American civil religious tradition. Contending that the relationships between civil religion and more conventional forms of organized religion are often close and at times contentious, it examines how religious bodies of the time were instrumental in supporting this process and intractable in resisting it. Proposing that civil religion can come in a variety of sometimes competing versions, it discusses the conflicts over civil religious practices that ensued within American churches during the next decade, relying on reports from the time to describe how these conflicts divided church leaders, denominations, and congregations. Finally, working from the premise that civil religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals are invariably involved in the political process, it examines how they became increasingly used for partisan purposes over the course of the decade, raising issues about the relationship between church and state. In closing, it comments on the enduring character of civil religion, and speculates on its continuing importance for American religion and politics.

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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.

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