I. The American Context -- Our Elan Vitale A. The American Experiment 1. Our Contemporary Predictament 2. Ritual and Politics 3. Symbolically nourished conceptions 4. The capacity for critical faculties in man B. The Civil Construct 1. Religion as more than symbols 2. Religion and Order 3. Symbolic Implications of Philosophy 4. Civilization and State Worship C. The Community Engendered 1. Legitimating and Democratizing Elements 2. The City on a Hill 3. A Dynamic Process--An Intellecky without a Telos II. The Function of Civil Religion A. The Scope of the Research 1. Religiousity 2. Substance 3. Performance 4. Analytic Tool B. The Origin of the Concept 1. Rousseau 2. Anthony Wallace C. Methodology 1. Fleshing in Wallace's Schema 2. Validity and value of the Construct 3. A Service of Community 4. Discourse on the Construct D. The Genealogy of the Specimen 1. The Theology of America 2. American Forms and American Substance 3. Structure, Ideology, and Mythology 4. The National Spirit 5. The Imagined Community: An Image of Communion III. Community and Invention A. Community As Central Timber 1. E Pluribus Unum -- the American Race 2. Community in the Declaration 3. Institutions and Spirit 4. Construct Husbandry -- Sustaining Community B. Invention In Service of Community 1. Abbott's Inventions 2. The Development of Inventions 3. The Invention Matrix 4. Invention Sustenance -- Replicative Procedure 5. The American System of Manufactures As A Doctrine of Salvation 6. Man His Own Arbitrar 7. Markets and Inventions 8. American Capitalism and Inventive Reorganization 9. The Rising Tide: The Role of Social Surplus 10. Invention and the Public Sector Alabatros 11. Theory As Invention -- Invention and Ideology 12. The Web of Civil Religion: Institution and Community 13. Cross Generational Conduction IV. Discourse and Debate/ A Survey of the Literature A. Gehrig's Catalogue: A Theoretical Map 1. An Intellectual History 2. Model Types 3. Treatment of the Construct In The Sociological Tradition 4. Theoretical Propositions and Empirical Support 5. Placing the Invention in Theories of Religious Evolution 6. Beyond This Survey B. The Definition of Civil Religion 1. The Categories of Richey and Jones 2. A Synthesis of Classifications: Instutitions, Belief, and Community 3. Social Bonds in Rousseau: Regime and Religion 4. Description in Rousseau and Prescription in Tocqueville C. Public Ritual and Differentiation 1. Functional Aspects of Religious Categories 2. The Constitution As Covenant in Bellah 3. Differentiation and Languages 4. Bellah's Stages of Religious Evolution D. Religiousity Born of Cultivation of Cohesion 1. Levels of Function 2. Institutional Bases for the Construct 3. Religious Secularization E. Social Construction of Reality and Religious Forms 1. The Religious Construction of Reality 2. The Construct As A General Cultural Frame 3. Institutional Carriers of Civil Religion F. An Universal Defining of Religion 1. The Legal Order and Civil Religion 2. Peter Williams' Permeative Popular Religion 3. Religious Symbol 4. Religion as Neurotic Behavior and Collective Neurosis 5. The Uniform Typological Pattern G. Provision of Legitimacy 1. Symbolic Behavior 2. Totem and Taboo H. A Conscious Design of the Framers 1. Constructing the Innovation 2. Civic Virtue and Civil Religion 3. Evolved Symbolic Systems 4. Inculcating Values 5. A Trivialization of Sacraments 6. Moving Beyond the Constrained Interpretation I. Literature Sampling 1. Books 2. Articles V. The Constitution of Religion A. The Study of Religion 1. Defining Religion 2. Rationalizing Religious Study 3. Methods of Studying Religion B. Cosmologies 1. The Spiritual Compass or Blueprint 2. Spiritual Questions and Crises: Genetic and Analytic Priorities 3. Reflections of Cosmologies in Architecture 4. Analytic Priority and Causation: Origins and Persistence of Religion 5. Religion, Science, the Unconscious, and Society 6. Comparative Cosmologies C. Religious Heroes 1. Myth and Heroes 2. The Social Message of Gilgamesh 3. Ritual and Rites of Passage Schemes 4. Archetypical Heroes and American Myth D. Theodicy: Divine Justice 1. The Theodicy Trilemna 2. Solving the Problem 3. Comparative Responses E. Religious Ritual and Community 1. Function of Ritual 2. Community Transformation 3. Our Public Faith: Protestant and Catholic 4. Dual Religiousity 5. The Organic Principle of Unity VI. The Social Construction of Religion A. The Social Construction of Reality 1. The Socialization Process a. Generational Hypothesis b. The Sociology of Knowledge 2. The Efficiency Mechanism of Cognition a. Conditioning and Determinism b. The Liberating Process and Responsibility 3. The Intellectual Antecedents of Social Construction a. Marxian b. Nietzschen c. Historicist 4. Situational Determinism a. Max Schaler b. Karl Mannheim c. Talcott Parsons d. C. Wright Mills 5. Societal Genesis of Cognition a. Weltanschauunger into Lebenswelt b. Durkheim's 'reality sui generis' c. Lippman's public philosophy and Bellah's civil religion 6. The Public Faith Paradigm a. The Paradigm Dialectic b. Paradigms and Research Projects 7. The Withering Away of Reason a. The Delimitation of Reality b. The Inhibition of Will c. Escape Through Culitvated Will d. The Cell That Becomes a Tomb 8. Religion and Society a. Feyerband's Vision b. America's Public Faith c. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism d. Differentiation and Dissonance Reduction in Durkhei B. The Social Construction of Individual Consciousness 1. Civilization As The Work of Society a. Self-conscious active co-operation b. The Eminence of Religious Life 2. The Idea of Society And the Soul of Religion a. Mystic Mechanics b. The School of Collective Life c. The Individual In Collective Expression d. From Symbols and Ritual to Moral Life 3. Organic Solidarity and Contract a. The System of Contract, Order, and Union b. Received Rules vs Cooperative Society c. The Community of Beliefs and Supportive Structures 4. Communication and Communion a. Communal Ritual and Emblem b. Expression of Social Unity c. The Fusion of Sentiments d. Collective Representations and Association e. External Origin and Internal Expression f. Creation of the Sacred g. Sanctification of Objects and Individuals C. Acculturalization and Socialization 1. Parallel Processes in Development of Political Reality 2. Internalization of Attitudes, Predispositions a. Perceptual Screens b. Interpretation by Internal Processes of External Stimuli c. Katz' Four Types of Attitudinal Functions d. Belief/Behavior Linkages 3. The Nature of Belief Systems 4. The Child's Political World 5. Political Culture a. A Complex of Attitude Clusters Held in Common b. Role of Symbols 6. Lane's Three Paramount Theories of Political Socialization a. Psychoanalysis b. Cognitive Learning Theory c. Observational or Social Learning 7. Jennings and Niemi: Agents of Socialization 8. The Civic Culture 9. Impact of Symbols In Socialization 10. Public Philosophy and Public Religion a. Tunnel of Causality b. Life-Cycle Effect c. Economic Theory of Participation d. Civic Duty e. Civic Competence D. Religion and Regime 1. Social Physics a. Typology of Political Orientations b. Levels of Infrastructure of a Political System c. A Construct of Socially Structured Ramparts 2. Constituting Arrangements a. Consitutional Arrangements and Theological Variation b. Characteristics of Basic Regime Types 3. Centrist Regimes, the Nation-State, and the Development of Industrial Capitalism. VIII. Liberty and Its Antithesis A. Comparative Analysis of Religious Thought B. Social Cooperation and Existence 1. The Third System and the Road to Serfdom 2. the Efficacy of Markets 3. Hayek and von Mises 4. The Definitive Semantic Inversion of Liberalism 5. The Inherent Flaws of Collectivism 6. Visions in Sowell 7. The American Constitutional Regime 8. Reverence for the Polity Akin to Religion in Burke 9. Relevant Issues At Law 10. Concord in Adam Smith -- Primacy of Individual Pursuit 11. Securing Mutuality Through Individual Efficiacy C. The Freudian Ship of State 1. The Structure of Personality 2. Psychopathology of Everyday Life 3. Civilization and its Discontents 4. The Future of an Illusion 5. Salvation from Illusion 6. Freud and Constrasting Views of Civil Religion D. The Opiate of the Masses 1. The Function of Religion in Society 2. The Structure of Social Control 3. The Religion of Marx 4. The Failure of Communist Ideology 5. Secular Humanism/ Socialist Humanism and the Worship of Man 6. The Failure of Collectivism VIII. Elementary Forms of Religious Life A. The Social Character of Cognition and Religion 1. Comparative Operational Units 2. Comprehensible Discernible Categories 3. The Intellectual Tradition 4. Religion As A Primary Agent of Social Construction 5. Communicative Representational Systems 6. The Individual Societal Continuum 7. The Spiritual Way of Social Power B. Durkheim's Elementary Forms 1. Durkheim's Schema 2. Coexistant Dual Religious Forms IX. Minimal Units of Religious Behavior A. The Reductionist Quagmire 1. Pitfalls 2. Utility B. Wallace's Minimal Units 1. Religion's Defining Characteristics 2. The Supernatural Premise 3. A Finite Number of Behavioral Categories 4. The Fundamental Pattern of Religion C. The Organization of Units 1. Ritual 2. Rationalization of Belief Systems 3. Cult Institutions 4. The Religion of A Society 5. The Tension of Primacy Between Myth and Ritual 6. Substance Flowing from Structure 7. The Function of Ritual 8. Mutual Interdependency of Form and Substance 9. Society As A Function of Religious Belief Systems 10. Ritual and Order 11. Inadequacies of Previous Civil Religious Analysis 12. The Derivation of Civil Religion X. The Construction of the Invention A. Reminiscences -- An Excursion Into Nostalgia B. Identification of Exemplary Items of the Minimal Units in American Culture C. Postulation of Lawful Inherent Consistent Coherence of Forms and Substance of the American Faith D. Our Received Values E. The Gospel of Wealth Creation. XI. Surfing the Invention Net A. A Voice of the Geist 1. A Sea Change 2. Market Forces 3. Media Bias 4. 'Populist' Media B. America's Sacred Units in Warner 1. An American Sacred Ceremony 2. The American Sacred Calendar 3. A Larger Than Life Hero 4. The Gettysburg 'Prayer' 5. Symbols and Collective Reality 6. The Functional Equivalent of Patriotic Societies 7. Social Solidarity of a Heterogeneous Society 8. Religion and Community C. Sacred Sites and Temples on Zinsser 1. Included Places 2. Excluded Sites 3. An American Itinerary D. Vexing Elaborations of Minimal Units 1. Friedman's Inventors of the Promised Land 2. Bloom's American Religion 3. Bailey's Presidential Greatness 4. Novak's Chosen King 5. 'The Only Nation Founded on A Creed' 6. The Dynamic of Perfection 7. Robert Alley's Fluid Reality 8. Novak's Concrete Reality XII. The Constitution of the Faith A. An English Heritage 1. Of Tautologies and Monoliths 2. Rejection and Dependence 3. Religious Influences 4. A Spirit of Self-Governance 5. English Constitutional Evolution 6. The Archetypical American 7. A Pan-European Influence 8. An Universal Spirit B. The Two Sets of British Political Thought 1. Hooker, Hobbes, Milton, Locke, et al 2. Blackstone and Adam Smith 3. Natural Law and Limited Government 4. Labor Theory of Value and Theory of Labor Power 5. There is No Freedom Without the Law 6. Adam Smith's System of Natural Liberty C. Puritan Origins of the American Self 1. The Impact of the Reformation 2. The Puritan Psyche 3. Bercovitch and Weber 4. The Elect and the Chosen 5. The Nation With the Soul of a Church 6. Contract and Covenant D. Bellah's Civil Religion 1. The Religious Dimension of American Life 2. The Establishment Clause 3. Major Themes of Civil Religion 4. Impact on Aspects of the American Psyche E. An Exceptional Place 1. The Resolution of a Fundamental Antinomy 2. Paradise Regained 3. The Nature of Governance and the Nature of Man XIII. Association and Geist A. The Possibility of Human Rationality 1. Separation of Mind and Body 2. The Fear of Thermidore 3. Formalizations Toward Cultivation of Capacity for Rational Thought 4. The Scale of the Successful Republic 5. Republican Virtue As Cultivated General Will 6. The Processes of Perfection 7. The Resurrection of Man 8. The Essence of the American Soul B. The Alegherian Aspect 1. Timurid and Renaissance 2. Misspecified Languages 3. For Whom the Bell Tolls 4. The Renaissance Paradigm C. Hegel's Ghost 1. The Owl of Minerva 2. History As Rational Progress Toward Human Freedom 3. The Potential for Autonomous Rationality 4. Cultural Products and the Spirit of the Times 5. Process and Ends 6. The Concrete Person in the Civic Community 7. Self-Seeking and Mutual Dependence 8. Individual and General Wealth Generation 9. The State As Realized Ethical Spirit 10. Public Institutions, Public Utility, and Public Power XIV. Society and Community A. Society, Community, and Communion 1. Gemeinschaft as Living Mechanism 2. Gesellschaft as Mechanical Artifact 3. Transubstantiation 4. Confluence In Toennies 5. Verstehen and Concordia 6. Exchange Gesellschaft and Adam Smith 7. Schmalenbach's Sociological Communion 8. The Spirit of Society 9. Religious Congregation and Communion 10. Communal Bonds and Association in Contract B. Association In the American Geist 1. Henry Carey's Association Principle 2. The Unity Principle in Liebniz 3. Producing the Good Life 4. Association vs Social Union 5. Daniel Raymond's Gospel of Wealth Creation 6. The Fountain of Value 7. The Laws of Nature Reflected in Government 8. Preservation of Property and Labor Power 9. Erasmus Peshine Smith and Expanded Wealth 10. The Proper Identification of Discrete Particulars 11. The Exceptional Case of America C. The Estimation of Human Nature 1. Inadequate Theoretical Orientation of Kymlicka 2. Circumscription of Wealth Creation in Rawls 3. The Harmony of Interests 4. Expanded Reproduction in Carey and Marx 5. The Derivation of Rights 6. Justice in Association 7. Injustice in Dworkin 8. The Road to Serfdom Out of Carey 9. Law and Justice 10. The Great Leveler and Liberator D. The Elevation of the Condition of Man 1. Public Energy 2. The Laissez Faire Cliche 3. The Organic Analogy of Society 4. American System vs Laissez Faire 5. Habits of Industry 6. Increasing Potential Population Density 7. Public Energy and Public Sector Complex 8. The Value of Labor and the Question of Slavery 9. The Natural Tendency of Man 10. Enlightened Self-Interest XV. The Genealogy of American Civic Religion A. The Genesis of the Republic 1. The British and American Constitutions 2. The Commentaries of Blackstone 3. Preventing Constitutional Decay 4. The First and Second Framings 5. The Vehicle of Wealth Creation 6. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution 7. Extension into Constitutional Law B. The Apotheosis of Abraham 1. Deification and Demythification 2. An Exemplar of the American Race? 3. Lincoln and the American System 4. Constitutional Dictator or Savior? 5. The Constitution and Higher Law 6. The Constitution As The Social Contract 7. The Political Economy of Abraham Lincoln 8. Lincoln and the American Presidency 9. Magnanimous Man or Golden Soul? 10. The Empire of the Mind. XVI Democracy In America A. A Litmus Test of the Faith 1. The Image of America 2. Its Own Apotheosis 3. A New Zion? B. Catalogue of Substance of the American Union 1. Spirit of Religion and Spirit of Liberty 2. The Empire of Religion 3. Companion in Battle 4. Separation of Powers and Dispersed Community 5. Decentralized Community and Public Virtue 6. Public Virtue and Commonweal 7. The Infrastructure Thus Accorded 8. Inhibiting the Tyranny of Interests 9. The Inherent Fallacy of Central Power 10. Judicial Superintendency 11. Marketplace of Ideas and Rays of Human Genius 12. The Public Spirit of the Union C. The Three Heads of Maintainence 1. American Exceptionalism, Law, and Custom 2. A Common Store of Improvement 3. The Moral and Intellectual Conditions of the People 4. Habits of the Heart 5. Proliferation of Madison D. The First Political Institution 1. Mystic Chords of Memory 2. Faith of the People and Support for Maintainence and Legitimation 3. Presciences, Premonitions, Prejudice, Prophecy and Problems E. The Menace to Society 1. The Paradox of Equality 2. The Danger to Republics 3. The Spirit of the People 4. The Constitution of the Faith F. The Handmaiden of Civil Religion 1. Human Perfectability 2. The Product of Equality 3. Labors of the Mind 4. Wealth and Stability 5. The New Aristocracy of Equality 6. The Theory of Manufactures and the Value of Labor 7. Achievement As the Source of Equality 8. The Paradox of Ambition 9. A Multitude of Undertakings 10. The Theology of the Faith G. The Civil Religion of the American Union 1. The Social Contract 2. Unity of Man and Unity of God 3. The Justification of Pursuit 4. The Species of Morality 5. Morality and Community 6. The Worship of Freedom 7. Community and Civic Faith 8. Free Exercise of Will and Reason 9. Association and Community 10. The Categorical Imperative Covenant XVII. Invention Performance A. An Attenuation of Adversial Politics 1. Politicalization of Judicial Appointment 2. Katzmann's Commentary 3. Sundquist's Congress 4. The Injection of Ideology 5. False Choices in Dionne 6. Politicalization of the Law 7. Constitutional Relativism in Tribe 8. Erosion of Separation of Powers 9. Bork's Case for Judicial Restraint 10. Schlesinger's Yale Thesis 11. Transcending the Constitution 12. The Bulward Against Tyranny 13. The Illegitimation of the Law 14. Judicial Reconstitution 15. Media Objectivity and Bias 16. The Politics of Illusion 17. Pack and Attack Journalism 18. Cultural Conflict 19. Expansive Governance 20. The Challenge to Legitimacy B. Dueling Civil Religions 1. Tocqueville's Prophetic Warnings 2. The Straining of Bonds 3. Imposition of an Alternative Geist 4. Bellah's Operative Ethic 5. Achievement and Equality in Lipset 6. Sociological Determinism: Structural Correlates of Behavior 7. Countervailing Values 8. The Community of Memory 9. Language Strands 10. An American Identity 11. Independent Nuclei of Power 12. Recovering the Language of Community 13. The Dichotomy of Cleavage 14. A Jaded Americanism 15. A Poverty of Economics 16. Commensurability in Bellah and Lipset 17. Paradox and Resolution of Competing Visions 18. The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution 19. Confounded Conversation and the Wisdom of the Framers 20. The Rosetta Stone of Civic Faith XVIII. Geist and Anti-Geist A. A Semantic Inversion 1. Juxtaposed Liberalisms 2. The Vision of Man and Governance 3. The Paradox of the Liberal Mind 4. Collective and General Will 5. Hartz' Rationalization of Liberalism 6. The Foundation of a Republic 7. Jaded Jacobinism B. Misspecification in Hartz 1. Misconstruing Myth and Hero 2. Hartz' Unity of Opposites 3. Uprooting the Repubic 4. Mischaracterization of the Spirit 5. Mischaracterization of the Faith 6. European Optimism and American Pessimism ? 7. Exceptional Regimes 8. Flawed Attribution in Hartz' Project C. Observation of the Spirit 1. Noble Life and Community in America 2. Hartz' Puzzlement Over Association 3. The Moral Imperative of Capitalism 4. The Conscious Cultivation of Mutual Dependence 5. Conformity vs Community 6. A Desire to Invert Madison 7. A Reinvention of Government 8. Community of Values and Liberation of Creative Powers 9. Alleged Tyranny and Psychopathic Paranoia 10. Superficial Treatment of Association 11. Taking Aim At Republican Virtue 12. Arguing for the Civil Religion Invention 13. Taking Liberties with the History of Liberty 14. The Long Established Civil Culture of the Republic 15. Contravention of the Three Heads of Maintainence 16. Jeffersonian Alchemy 17. Falling for Capitalism 18. Bemoaning the Gospel of Wealth Creation 19. The Real McCarthyism 20. American Fears, Patron Saints, and Cliches D. The Hidden Thermidore 1. Settling the Philosophical Question 2. Southern Feudalism or Jeffersonian Fraud 3. Liberal Democracy vs Republicanism 4. Containing the Tyranny of Majority 5. The Redundancy of Feudal Socialism 6. Calhoun and Lowie 7. A Breach in the Civic Faith 8. A Tacit Acceptance of Marxist Interpretation of History 9. A Drift Toward the Southern System 10. A Tyranny of a Majority Within Liberal Democratic Framework 11. Prophets of the Anti-Geist 12. The Conservative Carey and the Liberal Calhoun E. Hartz' Slight of Hand 1. The Interventionist Social Control Mechanism of Democratic Liberalism 2. Progressivism, Liberalism, and Socialism 3. The Death of God: The Murder of the Geist 4. God Is Not Dead: The Resurrection of the Geist 5. Liberal Democracy and Social Democracy 6. Mundane Deceit 7. The Play's the Thing 8. The Emperor's New Clothes 9. The Premature Burial 10. Hartz' Obituary for the Public Faith 11. The Absolutism of Kepler and Galileo 12. Civil Religion and the Interfacing of America 13. The Anti-Geist and the Loss of Our Soul Continue 1