As earlier indicated, these minimal units are combined in a series of  more complex associations
ultimately forming a society's religion:

Minimal Units				Rationalization		Cult		Religion
of Religious     -----------> Ritual --------------->             of           ---------->  Institutions ---------->     of
Behavior                                                                 Belief System                                                       
Society   

and these universal formal properties arranged in the fundamental pattern of religion at such levels of
analysis constitute the 'skeletal anatomy' of religion.

     Anthony Wallace defines the cult institution :

	" ... as a set of rituals all having the same general goal, all explicitly rationalized
	by a set of similar or related beliefs, and all supported by the same social group,"(22)

and there is considerable intermingling of aspects of various cult institutions in any society's religion. By
way of illustration, he describes four major such constructs in his home town:

	1) The various denominational congregations
	2) The religious-political cult
	3) Superstition
	4) A children's cult.(23)




     Of these, only the latter two should need elaboration. The 'superstition cult' consisted of subscription to
such things as luck, witchcraft, and a powwow cult, much of  which stemmed from magical and religious
beliefs brought from central Europe by ancestral immigrants to the area. There were also a number of
beliefs about good and bad luck which he suggests "frequently pretend to a relationship with
Christianity."(24) He classified both New Year's Day and Valentine's as the only two ritual events of this
cult in the annual calendar. The 'children's cult' was associated with three events on the calendar, Easter
(with its Easter Bunny), Halloween, and Christmas (with Santa Claus). This series of activities was
arranged or sanctioned by the parents with children being the only believers in any religious sense.(25)
His 'political cult' does seem to be an approximate facsimile of the civil religion under examination here,
but he does not develop it much further than the indication here suggests. While Wallace goes on to
develop varieties of these cults and the main four types of religion which he sets into cultural areas
geographically on the globe, this exercise does not pursue that route. While undoubtedly worthwhile and
interesting, they lie beyond the scope of this endeavor.
     As regards the cult institutions of the American civil religion, some suggestions for contemplation
would be useful. Following the dichotomy which Lipset established in his FIRST NEW NATION study, it
might be argued that an achievement and an egalitarian cult function in the American culture, competing
within the realm he called the religio-political cult in his town. A similar assertion might be entered
regarding the four languages of Robert Bellah (et al) in HABITS OF THE HEART. An important note
concerning either of these alternative cult formations is that they at least structurally overlap to an
extensive degree, tracking one another through the minimal units, beliefs, pantheon, and so forth. This
may help account for the relative success that the faith has maintained in respect to its functioning as a
social cohesive. However, given the emphasis Wallace and the importance of the ritualistic rationalization
of belief, there may be demonstrable greater cohesion between the possible alternative cults, or elements of
them, and the form and structure of the specimen. Such examination may make it  possible to consider the
cohesiveness of this rationalization with Diggins' LOST SOUL OF AMERICAN POLITICS and Hartz'
LIBERAL TRADITION IN AMERICA. Bearing that in mind, there are some observations in Wallace
which are pertinent.

     In Wallace, as appears to be the case in anthropology more generally, ritual is not only the primary
phenomenon, but its primacy is emphasized, too. (26) Belief performs a supplementary function of
rationalizing ritual, through which it is interpreted and directed. He speculates on the possibility of ritual
without, or prior to, belief, and concluding that it was plausible, argues that while myth may be developed
out of ritual, it actually facilitates it as well, so that ritual is of instrumental primacy though the two most
often occur in conjunction with one another. This is not a new view. Instrumental primacy of myth was
stressed by Boaz and even more stringently by Lord Raglan, and while Kluckhohn emphasizes the
consanguinity of them, there is no doubt  even there as to primacy. The goal of the ritual turns out to be
the function of the religion. Writing about rites of passage, Van Gennap demonstrated the same point as
do Chapple and Coon in suggesting a category they called 'rites of intensification.'(27) a group-centered
ceremony intended "to renew and to intensify the fertility and availability of game and crops."(28) With
the addition of the ritual form called divination wherein the objective is "to extract useful information
from nature,(29) the category of ritual as technology is rounded out, but as with those of passage, therapy
and anti-therapy, social control, salvation, and revitalization, it holds a position of primacy.

     Myth is taken to be "the theory of the ritual," explaining, prescribing, and accounting for it. Together,
they constitute religion, and, at this point, Wallace is able to provide a 'more analytic' definition for
religion:

	" ... religion is a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural 
	powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man 
	and nature."(30)

This is not a question of form or structure over substance, but an assertion that it, in fact, is substance, or
perhaps more accurately, that substance flows out of structure.



     It isn't often, in fact to be very cynical almost never, that rituals fulfill the function for which they were
intended. It is crucial to understand, however, that they do fulfill some function, that there is an
'economic' gain returned to the participants. If it were the case that the costs of ritual outweighed the
gains, such ritual would at least begin to fade, and would probably face extinction. The function which is
actually performed, however, may not always be very apparent, and determining causality between
numerous variables creates steep barriers, covariance being the statistical achievement of studies the
author references.(31) The cost of ritual failure would fuel system failure, probably religious collapse, and
necessitate either what Wallace describes as 'revitalization' or major displacement. For the purposes of this
effort, the direction of causality between ritual and ideology is really not so important as is the
establishment of the relationship itself, and the mutual interdependency between them. Wallace
approaches his discussion of religious function as he did in discussing the primacy of rituals, by
considering the objective or goal of ritual,(32) but:

	"Most statistical studies of the functional connections of religion have been 	
	directed at those practices that are ideological in intent; that is, at those 
	conservative, equilibrium-maintaining myths and rituals which aim precisely
	at education and social control. Although some of the studies emphasize 
	sociological and others emphasize personality factors, they all fall nicely into
	a general circular paradigm which charts the principal flow of influence in an
	idealized, stable, and slowly changing socio-cultural system. Even in this
	oversimplified form, the figure [below] indicates that religion is a function of both 
	the basic kinship, economic, and political institutions of the society and the
	child-training practices, and that these systems in turn are functions of religion.
	Thus changing any one system will likely lead, directly or indirectly, to a change
	in the others. Because this amounts to saying that they are all mixed together,
	and because the dependencies are likelihoods rather than certainties, determining 
	the precise weight of each of the influences would be a nearly impossible task.
	Nevertheless, we can usefully demonstrate in statistical form that some of the
	interdependencies do exist."(33)




Chart IX-I  The Function of Belief Systems and Mythology (34)

Maintenance Systems:   							Personality
Economic, Political, and							Variables
Kinship Institutions                                                                                                                     |
            |		     ^					                           ^            |
            |                            \                                                                                               /               |
            |                               \                                                                                          /                 |
            |                                  \   ------------------------------------------------------          /                   |                                                                     
            |                                                                                                               \      /                     |
            |                        --------------------------------------------------------------------  /                      v                                                                 
           v                    /                                                                                             \                 Projective 
Child-Training     /                                                                                                  \                Systems, 
    Practices                                                                                                                 \   Particularly
Religious
                                                                                                                                             Belief and
Ritual








We are reminded by Wallace that a change in political  and economic institutions was shown by Max
Weber to have resulted from alteration of religious belief in his PROTESTANT ETHIC  study
demonstrating Wallace's point "that the maintenance system of society was a function of (among other
things) the religious belief system."(35) But it is asserted that most of the research since then has "tended
to emphasize the dependence of religion on economics and politics rather the reverse."(36)

     Rejecting the extreme form of this viewing religion as an 'opiate' in Marxism, he terms the evidence
for intimate relation between belief and maintenance system as mutually supportive unequivocal.(37) John
Whiting has demonstrated this in his work CHILD TRAINING AND PERSONALITY, as have Guy
Swanson in THE BIRTH OF THE GODS and George Murdock in his SOCIAL STRUCTURE, as well as
Spiro and D'Andrade (1958 "Cross-Cultural Study of Some Supernatural Beliefs," Am Anth 60:456-66),
McClelland and Friedman (1952), Lambert, Tiandis, and Wolf (1959), and Levi-Strauss (1955), Ruth
Benedict (1938), and Hallowell (1955), research concerning revitalization movements to the contrary
notwithstanding. In fact, the bulk of the remainder of Wallace's work is an effort at documentation of this
point. 

     In human society, institutionalized ritual has had unequivocal importance in the maintenance of order
and society and in shaping behavior and thought patterns (he makes mention of the importance in all
animal societies of ritualized fighting -- such in human society  would be approximated by 'sport') (38),
and he goes on to argue that comparative or historical treatments do not compare to functional ones.(39)
This suggests for purposes here why it is that most previous analysis of American civil religion does not
suffice.(40) And while we might well question the conclusion he reaches for, that the rate of technological
development is gradually displacing and segregating 'religion' and that ultimately a new 'religion' of
science and government will drive out all the old 'superstitions,'(41) even if he importantly  places such
developments or evolution on the level of individual consciousness and offers caveats concerning the
dangers of such deification of governance, the value of the structural-functionalist methodology is given a
strong foundation in his work.

     On his reasoning, it is possible that the civil faith has been a development which has evolved due to
perceptions of an inability of conventional traditional religious ritual to fulfill its functions, perhaps due to
the crosscurrents of competing religions or the ascension of the 'scientific' paradigm here. Even short of
that, if, for example, the civil religion is derivative of a number of other alternative explanations (such as
perhaps the American form of the 'Reformation' marking nation-state development), at the very least we
have a form of chicken and egg debate as to the direction of causality between institutionalized ritual and
belief structure, with a strong suggestion that primacy may possibly rest with the former.


X   THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE INVENTION

     We formed at the old shopping center just south of town. It's gone now for the most part having burned
almost completely some years ago much as the old Chevy dealer had two decades earlier, just across the
street. There's a Burger King where that once was -- although the last time I passed by it was boarded up
which is a rarity in that neighborhood -- and they are rebuilding the shopping center, but very slowly --
there's a lot more competition to it nowadays. I crawled up inside my sousaphone wearing my Custer
Junior High jacket and we took our position to head out. It was a rather small band from a rather small
school some years before the area school districts merged. And it wasn't long before we were marching
down Monroe Street toward the river a dozen blocks ahead. We had only a few marches in our repertoire,
but we were really  into it -- and I'm sure the crowd that lined the route one or two families deep at least
knew what it was we were supposed to be playing, and that we meant well: Stars and Stripes Forever,
Grand Ole Flag, Coast Guard March, Marines' Hymn, the infantry caisson march, Anchors Away, Off We
Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder, a version of Custer's favorite fife piece, and our school rendition of the
Notre Dame victory march. In front of the band was a good friend of mine, Dick Dusseau, carrying the
colors of Old Glory as we proceeded through town. It was 1960 and this was the Fourth of July. My
brother played snare drum and two of my 'best' buddies were trumpeters. One of them and I had a ball
game later that afternoon -- I don't remember who won, but it was probably not us because wins did not
seem to be our strong suite that summer. Not many years later, Richard Dusseau would fall in Vietnam
and another member of the band, Earl Strokutter, would be severely wounded. A number of others were
more fortunate in that regard, but there were few of the guys who didn't have the 'opportunity.' The
procession halted for a while when we reached the old Post Office -- now converted into an Historical
Museum housing artifacts of Custer memorabilia more than anything else -- because some of the local
'leaders' were conducting a memorial service, tossing wreaths over the bridge into the River Raisin. I
never got to witness that, though we could hear the salutary rifles firing. And after a short delay, we
ventured on. Along the route, at one point was by Grandmother and her husband sitting in their car
waving as we marched by. Standing next to the car were my mother and father, waving and beaming in an
obvious show of pride I probably didn't begin to grasp until becoming a father myself nearly three decades
later. The were situated in front of the local savings and loan which would become a centerpiece of my
early adult years because my now ex-wife worked there. Scarcely a block was transgressed but that there
wasn't some family somewhere along here or there -- aunts and uncles and cousins galore. And then we
were on the bridge over the river and immediately thereafter turning west onto Elm Street in front of what
had even by then become our namesake nemesis, the statue of Monroe's own George Armstrong Custer.
Made of copper, it had long since taken on a perhaps appropriate slimy green coloring, and periodically
had to suffer the outrage of being peppered with rubber-tipped suction arrows from all angles. It went on
like that pretty much, although there were fewer kinfolk north of the river -- it was sort of a 'class' thing I
think as to which side of the river you lived on --  at least until we reached Roessler Field where just
before we broke were another group of cousins with an aunt and uncle who had made the trek across the
Roessler Street bridge which was near their house, so they could catch the festivities. Hurriedly, I broke
from the crowd, and anxiously awaited my father's arrival in the family car, the 1957 Chevy he had
bought three years earlier for $1957. But I had ulterior motives -- there was a Tiger double header on the
radio and I couldn't miss that. I did catch a good bit of it as we made the rounds, to Aunt Gertie's, and
then to see Uncle Charlie just up the street on Hubble, then around the corner to Uncle Tony's on Adams,
and finally a short stop to see Aunt Irene, again just around the corner on Ninth Street. We didn't stay
there long because she was getting ready for a family picnic later that day at Cairn's Field a half block
down the street from her home. From there it was home, just long enough to put on my baseball uniform,
and be driven over to the fields behind Custer School to play ball. The second Tiger game was just
starting, so I waited in the car while the rest of the family went into Uncle Herb's new house, on the way
and only a block or two from our house. And after the game, it was back to Cairn's Field for the picnic
with all my Dad's family, including Aunt Tootsie who had come down from Detroit for the day. A quick
snack and Pepsi and I was ready -- for the ball game with my cousins mostly. And, when it had gotten
dark, we could stand at Cairn's Field for a pretty good view of the fireworks display off to the west over
the trees and woods at the Fairgrounds. I don't remember what I was doing after that -- not much, I don't
expect, in part having become used to being busy working every night at the skating rink south of town
owned by our next door neighbor, but not having to go there this night -- while my Dad and his older
relatives enjoyed a few beers as the early July night chill grew slowly. My mother brought me a jacket to
put on, though, as the evening went on. And that's about how I remember it, except for the brief adventure
indulged in by my Uncle Tony, the 'Kite Man', who on such occasions would send up a huge kite with a
dummy attached which would be released to parachute (on this occasion into Lake Erie a couple of miles
east). Not a lot different, probably, than the day spent by millions of others around the country, though I
was only superficially aware of all that. I do recall that there was no time for TV that night by the time we
got home. My Aunt from Detroit spent the night with her family that night, as they often did on such
occasions. She had brought my Great Aunt Gertrude Taylor with her this time for a visit.

     Now, that account may not rank with Warner's depiction of a typical American Memorial Day
celebration. That was probably one of the first articles written which formally treated such events under
the nomenclature of an American civil religion ritual. I do remember recollecting specifically this day,
along with many others not unlike it, when I first read that article as part of an Anthropology course a
decade later at Wayne State. It was in that course with Dr. Ben-Dor that I also first encountered Anthony
Wallace's schema outlined in the previous section here. By then, I was married and had begun my career
as a teacher, but, I do recall reading a part of that book as I sat in my car at Cairn's Field waiting for a
softball game I was going to play in. Our team was a sad-sack lot called the Monroe Patriots, whose
record on the field surpassed even that of the earlier squad.

     Sitting there then, I actually got very little read. I was also thinking on that sitting of the trip I had
made to Washington, D.C. in August of 1963. That had been my first pilgrimage to the capital.  We had,
in whirlwind fashion, done all the things one was supposed to do -- toured the Capitol, the Treasury, the
Supreme Court building, several of the Smithsonian buildings, climbed the Washington Monument,
walked up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, gone across to Arlington where I recall standing on the hill
where Kennedy would shortly thereafter be buried. We watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of
the Unknown Soldiers and then visited the Iwo Jimo statue and rode passed the Pentagon. We also went
on a tour through the White House. President Kennedy was there at the time, although we did not see him.
We did see for a fleeting moment the First Lady, however. And that was a particularly eventful time frame
to be in Washington, and I managed, over all efforts to dissuade me because of the perceived 'danger'                                            
there would be to my person, to slip into the procession just a couple of days later and to hear just a
portion of Dr. King's speech. It had been, in fact, one of my personal objectives in going to participate at
least minimally in that event. Going from there, as we did, to spend a few days outside Raleigh, North
Carolina, in a little town called Raper, proved to be quite a dramatic sequence of events, encountering as I
did the gas stations with three rest rooms, separate fishing holes for white folks and 'Negroes' (although, it
having been 'fished out,' nobody used the white quarry for anything but swimming, as everybody fished
the 'black hole'), and segregated cemeteries, and the like.

     This little excursion into nostalgia aside, it having been entered into as a precursory examination, it is
readily possible to draw upon such aspects of American culture with a mind to identifying exemplary
items to fit each of Anthony Wallace's minimal units of religious behavior, and, if as he suggests, they can
be used to construct the rudiments of any religious system, which they can in this instance, there would
appear then to be a substantive base for quite firmly establishing an American religion of this sort as a
reality to a degree much greater than anyone has heretofore actually done. And, when that is not only
combined but actually joined in a mutually supportive manner, to the ideology or 'theology' of that
construct as this project attempts to do, its existence in real terms is only matched in importance by the
utility that such a system accords for political analysis.

     During the Christmas holiday season in 1968, the United States had sent a group of astronauts aboard
an Apollo spacecraft to the moon. Their task was simply to orbit, in preparation for a lunar landing later
that  following year in July when Neil Armstrong would actually set foot on the surface for the first time.
As they orbited, sending back pictures of the moon and earth live for all of us to see, one of the astronauts,
appropriately for the season, read excerpts from the opening lines of the Book of Genesis. Whatever the
ACLU might have thought of the event, such examples of Wallace's first category 'Prayer' are quite
common. Armstrong would 'address the supernatural' while he was on the surface the following July. But
astronauts are certainly not alone in such expression. From graduation speeches to key-note address
deliveries, the references are almost exclusively, or at least predominantly, Judeo-Christian, and while the
ACLU has been attempting to control the activity, invocations and benedictions, often given by clergy, are
a wide-spread practice throughout the land. Bellah's analysis of Presidential Inaugural Addresses, while it
certainly makes a similar point, also emphasizes an apparent 'generic' quality to much of the religious
character of such events, although that may be more the case for Inaugurals than more day to day
expressions.




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