What he identified for his hometown were four types of cults, those being Denominational (excluding
Jewish), 'Political,' Superstitious, and Children's,(24) each identified by laying their annual calendar of
ritual events side by side. There is with the examples of minimal categories identified through this section
something similar to his typology of cult institutions in our civil religion, but there is also an
interconnectedness which unifies them somewhat more than his four cults might infer.
     That should not be taken to mean that the American civil religion is a unified, monolithic identity.
There are quite obviously divergent elements within it. It is interesting that the forms and structures of the
construct do serve to bind together that tendency. That fact may be part of what has led Bellah to expand
his original thesis on civil religion to his conceptualization of four major languages in America. There is
also Lipset's achievement/equality pendulum, which itself is somewhat transcended by the forms.

     It is the contention here that there exists a lawful inherent and consistent coherence between the forms
and substance of the American faith and certain of the alternative, even competing or contrasting, belief
systems, however. Exception taken to that thesis would necessitate supportive argument though. It would
be very important if the forms functioned to transcend the competing belief structures in an encompassing,
unifying way. Even were that the case, however, such would not preclude a more lawful, even causal,
relationship between the forms and particular belief patterns. Toward further qualification of such
relationships, some additional commentary on the relationship between such interconnectedness and
mutual supportive causality across the belief systems is appropriate. 
     In the early post-war period, Daniel Boorstein wrote about our unspoken faith, connecting the system
of American values with a belief he termed 'givenness' which held that we have inherited received values
'as a gift from the past,' the Framers having "equipped our nation ... with a ... political theory adequate to
all future needs," "that our theory is always implicit in our institutions" as a gift of the present ( " ... the
idea that the American Way of Life harbors an American Way of Thought ..."), and that these two are
linked by "continuity or homogeneity" through our historical experience in an 'uninterrupted continuum.'
There is a sense of inevitability in our institutional structure which functions as a superstructure for our
way of life and belief system.(25) The principal problem with his theory is that he carries it not very far
toward validation, but there is some basis for it in actuality.
     Political and social commentary has speculated on the changed electorate and population of the United
States over the last half of the twentieth century. Asher devotes considerable discussion to this
phenomenon, for example. One of the key players in forging that change whom we need to understand for
his crucial role in the process was Dwight Eisenhower. His prominence in the 'unification' of American
society contributes much to the understanding which this project seeks to relate: much of the change far
exceeds his contribution although his position at the crossroads of the process established  him with a
representativeness of the developments which go beyond any concrete causality to much of the change.
But we are a very different society because of him. This is so much the case that it is probably as
inevitable as it would be appropriate that Ike will come to be enshrined in a prominent place in our
pantheon. 

     Recently, I had occasion to visit the Magic Kingdom of Disney in Florida. Awaiting the parade that
caps each day's activities, I ventured into one of the shops of souvenir paraphernalia. As I was looking at
tee shirts expressing Walt Disney's admonition for all to remember that 'This was all started by a mouse,'
the parade began and I hastened out to watch the procession with my family. I was particularly struck by
the sight at the conclusion of the parade of hundreds of adults (!) following along behind the procession.
There were youngsters, too, but they seemed at this point quite overwhelmed amid the mass of humanity.
In its wake, they tailed along mesmerized. Some held camcorders high as they shuffled along recording
the event for posterity, but also expressing a level of homage not to be anticipated. It would have been
difficult to conclude this effort to identify examples of Wallace's behavioral units without mention of such
a striking display. All the while, as the crowd of 'worshippers' progressed up the replicated early
American small town street, a fireworks display lighting up the sky above the great central castle ahead,
the words of various Disney film tunes filled the air. Ariel singing of wanting to be 'part of it all' 'where
the people are,' the seven dwarfs singing as they made their way joyfully to work, Jasmine resounding
about a 'whole new world,' and a dozen more equally 'appropriate' sentiments, all with the movements of 
Tomorrowland beyond it all in the shadows, and as the monorail (to Epcot and points beyond) passed by.
In a very real sense, Disney has captured it! It is a small world, afterall, but this was not really about the
mouse. What those people were mesmerized by was not merely the display they had witnessed, but the
American faith, both its forms and its substance. It was about the Gospel of Wealth Creation which is the
American dream.


XI.  SURFING THE INVENTION NET


     Among the tired old horses that was put out to pasture during the 1994 Congressional elections which
gave Republicans control over both Houses for only the second time in over six decades was the so-called
'Fairness Doctrine.' The name is typical of the Orwellian chickanery of the ousted elite which could with a
straight face claim that reduction in the amount of increase was a cut when it came to deficits, but not
school lunches (where an actual increase was called a cut), or that Congressional appropriations at record
deficit levels were somehow attributable to a President of the other party who could do little but sign or
veto the measures and thereby shut down government. Hence, the Fairness Doctrine meant either equal
time be accorded anyone disagreeing with some forms of media speech, but certainly not to 'unbiased' new
reporting. That would have precluded stations allowing free speech, even if it was popular enough to win
market approbation. It was not inaccurate to call the proposed return to earlier effective censorship the
'Hush-Rush' Doctrine, because it would have effectively muzzled most of 'Talk Radio,' and especially Rush
Limbaugh, and others like him such as Michael Reagan, though not Peter Jennings or Dan Rather. The
impact of such 'celebrities' on the 1994 election may be arguable, but it is somewhat less than likely that
somehow the results of those contests stand the prospect of being reversed in the near future. Reversals
may come, though that is certainly debatable, but the fact that nearly half of the seats newly won by
Republicans in the House were probably the result of long-term trends in the South or a more normal
expression of redistricting in states like California just now resulting from adjustments from anomalies
caused by the atypical division of the electorate in the 1992 race, the first following the current
reapportionment. The key area of campaign funding shows evidence of substantive 'realignment,' too, with
awesome prospects for 1996 indicated as a result.(Bus Wk April 95)

     What seems to alluded some analysts was that the successes achieved by so-called conservative talk
shows can only be attributed to their popularity with the American people. It is also probably difficult for
ideologies which hold people as beneath control of their own lives and in need of paternalistic government
to comprehend that the election returns were anything other than an expression of the ineptitude of voters,
something that no doubt can be rectified given proper guidance. Equally elusive would seem to be views
by some of the same pundits of the '92 sweepstakes. In spite of an electorate somewhat angered by Bush's
compromise with Congressional Democrats which was taken to be a betrayal of his 'read my lips' pledge
of 1988, George Bush, even in the three way race which media largely created, almost won. Had he come
out swinging, had he still more obviously possessed the 'fire in the belly,' had his campaign not started so
slowly and sputtered for direction throughout, had it taken advantage of changes in the media by tapping
cable networks and the internet more effectively, the outcome would have been different. 

     The sublety of the media bias is important to remember. Media pronouncements regarding the 1992
campaign that Clinton was simply posing a positive agenda for economic recovery and not whining over
manufactured crises to scare people while it was the Bush campaign that was frantically trying to instill
fear in people's hearts over alleged unpreparedness and character flaws in Clinton (THE MARKETING
OF THE PRESIDENT, Bruce Newman)are no surprise to anyone long familiar with the tricks of referring
to SDI as Star Wars to tilt the impact. That is not to fashion the Bush Presidency as anything like what
might have been anticipated from it (Bush afterall had branded Reaganomics as 'voodoo' economics long
ago).

     The point of this excursion in political speculation is to illustrate yet another manifestation of
America's public faith. Talk radio, cable, and the internet, in as much as they are rather 'populist'
expressions of public philosophy, may be quite properly viewed as an indication of the Geist as a spectre
haunting America as we approach century's end. Even more than such exemplification of Wallace's
minimal units    of religious behavior as constitutive of an anatomy of our public faith has been a
substantial literature in testimony of that civil religion as a reality in fact. Reference has been made
elsewhere in this discourse to Charles Henderson's somewhat skewed estimation of THE NIXON
THEOLOGY, but such allegory is so pervasive as to make a full accounting of it virtually impossible. A
broad sampling of such literary acclamation of most of the elementary forms should suffice.
                                                                                                                                                                          
     One of the earliest of these testaments was a portrayal of a prototypical set of Memorial Day festivities
as a religious event. "An American Sacred Ceremony" was first published by W. Lloyd Warner in 1953.
In Warner's estimation, not only is it a legal holiday but both a 'holy day' and a holiday involving a
position on the 'American sacred calendar' that in his opening lines mourns for the nation's dead in the
midst of spring's rebirth. While he limits that calendar to only Christmas, Thanksgiving, and
Independence Day in addition to Memorial Day, he suggests that:

	"This calendar functions to draw all peoples together to emphasize their similarities
	and common heritage; to minimize their differences, and to contribute to their thinking,
	feeling, and acting alike." (1)

This is a particular necessity the more complex the society, and utilizes, along with some ancillary
ceremonial rites like Armistice Day, a variety of rituals and symbols, and does so in a manner that
transcends diversity of tradition and religion, as well as any number of other divergencies.

     Warner lays out a four part schedule for the celebration which is longer than the actual event itself
which emphasizes sacrifice, but also unity and renewal. He puts special attention on the character of
Lincoln as a larger than life hero whose Gettysburg Address is treated much like a prayer, but says:

	"Three dominant themes compose the Lincoln image. The first -- the theme of the
	common man -- was fashioned in a form pre-established by the equalitarian ideals 
	of a new democracy ... From the log cabin to the White House succinctly symbolizes 
	the sacred theme ... [which] ... epitomizes the American success story, the rags-to-riches
	motif, and the ideals of ambitions ... [while] ... a third powerful theme ..."(2)

is built upon the sacrifice of his assassination rising him to a Christ-like character who died for us and so
that we might realize ourselves, and he contends that Lincoln was being "apotheosized into the man-God
of the American people."(3)

     Although some of Warner's diagnosis of the psychological impact of war on communities is at best
arguable, its impact can promote solidarity, although that is not necessarily always the case. Warner, for
example, might have to reflect again on this commentary were his essay to be written keeping the
Vietnam experience in mind. But, it is undoubtedly true that ritualized figures and acts can perform as the
functional equivalent of patriotic societies and institutions, thus showing up "the social solidarity of a
complex and heterogeneous society."(4) Durkheim contended basically the same thing by suggesting that
"Religious representations are symbol system which express collective realities."

     Warner specifically delineates the interrelationship between such religious things and the community:

	"That which is beyond, yet part of, a person is no more than the awareness
	on the part of individuals of their participation in a social group. The religious
	symbols, as well as the secular ones, must express the nature of the social
	structure of the group of which they are a part and which they represent,"(5)

but he may go too far in his claim that what people are doing is actually "collectively worshipping their
images." Nor need the public faith be termed a 'cult' in his non-organized character. Not that the word
necessarily is derogatory, but that the civil religion may be quite more of an established actuality than
Warner was aware of at the time of his writing. Neither is it so certain that Memorial Day represents a
'cult of the dead.' Surely, the sacrifice in death is witnessed, but the sacred nature of the events transcends
such limitations.



     William Zinsser has put together an account of pilgrimages to some of what he calls America's most
'cherished sites' in a book called AMERICAN PLACES. At points in the text, they are approached almost
quite literally as shrines to the values and people of the nation. A number of these 'sacred sites' really
extend the concept even beyond that considered above. It is no surprise at all to find the inclusion of
Mount Rushmore, Lexington and Concord, the Alamo, Appomatox, Mount Vernon, and Pearl Harbor,
although the absence of anything in Washington, D.C., or the city itself, is a little surprising. His criterion
of locations to which millions flock each year should probably dictate a more expansive listing, although
some of the selections are no doubt representative of others. Thus, the inclusion of Yellowstone and
Niagara Falls should probably be taken to represent others such as the Grand Canyon, the Rockies, the
Mississippi, etc.



     Some of the locations in his itinerary speak volumes about America's public faith even as they do not
seem out of place in this category. Kitty Hawk is there for the obvious reasons, Montgomery, or course,
and Abilene, primarily due to its Eisenhower connection. If some might raise questions as to the presence
of Disney theme parks, they really should not do so. Not only do they belong, but a number of other places
which would be considered somewhat 'recreational' beg inclusion. Perhaps even mass gatherings at public
spectator sports should qualify. Camping at Chautauqua can be seen as reflective not only of the proactive
of summer camp, but more broadly of 'camping out' and related activities generally. Hannibal mostly
seems a good choice, not only because Mark Twain may be considered an archetypal American by may,
even with or perhaps in part because of his  biting tongue and wit, but most especially due to the
importance both Tom and Huck have held in our national tradition. Rockefeller Center would be the only
one of his choices which might be seen as really out of place. Not that it isn't popular, but that the Statue
of Liberty or any other of dozens of locations in the northeast could be just as or more valid and valuable,
including Wall Street, Plymouth, Independence Hall, the Empire State Building, and more.

     Lawrence J. Friedman sought to look at the roots of 'major social inequities' which he attributed to 'out
cultural insecurity' and 'need for inventing a national identity' in a book brimming over from cover to
cover, including in the title, with connotations for the American 'religion.' INVENTORS OF THE
PROMISED LAND is about the vision of building a 'city on a hill' with increased 'moral perfection' and
'social stability' for itself, but also as a model or exemplar for the rest of the world. he elaborates on Noah
Webster's conscious effort to cultivate a "separate, distinctly American culture,"  and the "gestation ... of
the myth of George Washington," but one wonders about a general slant expressed in some of the
commentary, such as concerning Charles Brockton Brown, and his harshness toward some of the faults in
the heritage seems a trifle misplaced. That is not to ignore problems, or gloss over or dismiss such failings
as slavery, but it is almost as if Friedman misses the importance of the process that came to confront such
problems of its very nature in a misinformed notion of static, not dynamic, and misplaced 'perfectibility.'
A further huge question mark appears with the honor he seems to accord to Andrew Jackson. 

     THE AMERICAN RELIGION is a somewhat different sort of approach to the whole question of the
public faith. Harold Bloom does intersperse notions of a special relationship felt by many Americans                           
between their people and God, an American self which stands in a manner 'outside' of the creation of
which it is a coexistent and co-expansive part, the U.S. as a uniquely 'religion-soaked' country, and our
national soul, but in the context of religions which have sprung up here in the more traditional sense of
the term. It turns out to be for Bloom a rather Gnostic entity, but as much as it offers us valuable
perspective, it also seems to veer off the path in some of the belief structures it so represents in a
sometimes fundamental antinomy to the faith this examination seeks to identify.

     And in PRESIDENTIAL GREATNESS, Thomas Bailey seems to verge on approximations of several
of the examples mentioned here in the context of the constitution of this invention and its 'minimal units,' 
although one gets a feeling that the usages are strained and almost reduced to metaphysical expressions.
There are presidential cults of Jefferson, a Wilsonian 'enshrinement,' a pantheon at the capital, 'natal days'
and holidays, horseback heroes, and the obvious 'martyrdoms.' Bailey, further, raises the treatment of
Presidential Libraries as 'shrines' and talks about Presidential examples of preachers and teachers
sometimes sermonizing or shaking rafters from the 'pulpit.' Some are described as near super-human
heroes or 'warriors in frock coats' and there is a 'religious halo' that has become fixed about numbers of
them. He even identifies a sort of  'royal family.' But what may be a rather interesting if less than profound
treatment of leadership and greatness does not approach the attachment to such terminology implied by
this examination even if from this perspective more can be read into it.

     If that limitation constrains the Bailey book, Michael Novak goes much further toward the
interpretation in CHOOSING OUR KING, dedicating a goodly proportion of his writing per se to the
concept of civil religions, although he does put a spin on it. However, Novak is bold in the exercise,
proclaiming that "The religion of America is not Christianity,"(6) but it is a nation with a 'soul,' 'founded
on a creed,' possessed of 'basic national scriptures,' and indeed, the religion is the country itself.(7) Novak
proceeds through a litany of such comment. Sidney Reed called our public faith 'the religion of the
Republic,' and while Robert Bellah referred to it as 'the civil religion,' it was 'the common faith' to John
Dewey. Walt Whitman wanted religion "consigned henceforth to Democracy        en masse" and this
'vessel of salvation,' in Novak's words, was "moralistic and 'moral conscious'" as no other civilization had
been according to Gunnar Myrdal, whose consideration of "the ordinary American, ... [was as] ... a
rational being,"(8) whose 'schools teach,' 'churches preach,' and 'courts pronounce' in terms of the tenets
of its creed. Everyone "finds himself espousing the national creed."

     For Chesterson, this was the "only nation in the world that is founded on a creed ... set forth with
dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration ..." This was a home for all the wayward where
anyone might be reborn as a 'new man' in an effort at creating a 'new world.' More than one anthology has
been organized of our sacred documents, from Conrad Cherry's GOD'S NEW ISRAEL to William
Bennett's THE BOOK OF VIRTUES.  And for Novak, traditional churches were blocked from
guardianship of the central symbols and "the nation became its own unifying symbol system ..."(9)
     Novak suggests that presidential candidates are not aware that they are seeking "religious office," and
that the nation "conducts itself like a religion" even if "the national religion is ... quite pragmatic and
secular."(10) It seems that the religion of America may bring salvation by rendering the profane into the
sacred. Much that is problematic in our society really dictates the necessity of such a faith, and the rather
deliberate weakness of traditional sources instills a necessity for the state to take up the weight of symbolic
meaning. Hence, the decorating of even the currency in cryptic sacred messages by a nation whose "belief
... is especially deep."

     Writing in 1972, Novak wanted to have an effort "to reconstruct our national project,"(11) amidst a
people rift with cynicism and doubting its faith, but part of the problem was his expression that the 'state'
should take up the burden. It would be more appropriate to find the weaknesses there, with the onis on the
state rather than on the people where to the degree that the state so usurps the function, the people may be
less able to perform that role. And among the ironies he describes, the one unmentioned, that as "symbolic
power of the ... civil religion was flickering down" here, "nations are every one becoming politically
religious; politics is regarded as a means of salvation."(12)

     A further irony is embodied in his citation of Max Lerner's contention of several American traditions
and his criticism of the 'exclusive' character of the faith especially toward minorities. Bellah's 'languages'
is probably a slightly weaker expression of much the same sentiment(though it may, too, suffer from a
degree of 'ethnic purity'). From that point, Novak alters his description to one of a nation almost divorced
of  its symbols and in need of renewal. But he quickly rebounds with assertion that even with all that, even
opposing sides "hold up an especially bright standard for the nation."(13) Even in disagreement, we are
united by strong commonalities. For "all central symbols" fulfill each a duality of pattern, of movement
ahead and stability of a faith that is "both republican and democratic," of love of law and lawlessness, of
dream and skepticism, equality or opportunity and inequality of status, of guilt and hope, and America as
first, and humble.(14) One might add Lipset's characteristic of the pendulum swing between equality and
achievement in our 'first new nation.'
     As Rousseau argued that the state would become the church, Will Herberg in 1960 contended that our
developing faith had begun to function much on the order of the "state religions of ancient Greece and
Rome," though it seems that Bellah's view might be more optimistic in the realization:

                " ... that there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from
	the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America."(15)

     It is Novak's argument that the civil religion is not the traditional churches, not "some common core"
or lowest common denominator, not merely our way of life, "does not command worship of the American
nation" in place of God, and is not of a drab oneness like Marcuse's one-dimensional man.(16) He builds
from Robin Williams and his sociological formulization:

	"Every functioning society has, to an important degree, a common religion ...The
	possession of a common set of ideas, rituals, and symbols otherwise riddled with 
	conflict."(17)

     This is a distinctive and unique unifying factor conceiving of a nation with a destiny, values by which
other nation's development can be measured, veneration of national heroes, a determining role  for our
history in man's future, pilgrimages to Disney land to celebrate our vision, laissez faire attitude, a sense of
Hemingway's well-lighted space, as a shrine to the Supreme Being, patriotism, and determined will,
together with a 'Shrine of Enlightenment' encompassing the media of all form, though perhaps his holy
city on New York as the residence of our 'illuminati' has more recently been replaced or at least expanded
to include Washington(18):
	"The nation has its holy calendar, its sacred cities and monuments and pilgrimages,
	its consecrated mounds and fields. It has in its president, a priest, a prophet, and 
	a king."(19)

Another 'prophet' of our venue, wrote in his 1850 WHITE JACKET:

	"The root of the nations will soon be in our rear. We are the pioneers of the world,
	the advance guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things to break a new
	path in the New World ... long enough have we debated whether, indeed, the political
	Messiah had come. But he has come in us."

And if Godot has arrived, his civil religion:

	" ... is a public perception of our national experience in the light of universal and
	transcendent claims upon human beings, but especially upon Americans; a set
	of values, symbols, and rituals institutionalized as the cohesive force and center
	of meaning uniting our many peoples."(20)

     Novak, with the obvious evidence in hand, makes considerable point of some of the defects in the
American experience, although he is not quite clear enough that the process is in reality a process of
perfection which recognizes it as a dynamic not static thing. If we have had, for example, racial problems,
they are not part of our creed, and, indeed, contradict it. But, in truth, in practice, that tragic and sorry
barricade was being transgressed even in its erection by Matzeliger, Rillieux, McCoy, Morgan, Daniel
Hale Williams, Drew, and countless others. He wants us to recognize several civil religions in American,
although it is to be feared that such hyper-pluralism may elevate the group at the expense of the
individual, and insists on two senses of the phrase, one looking to established documents and symbols,
and the other to the evolving, not yet integrated resources. (21) Valid enough on its own merits, this
insistence does recognize, as well, the potency of symbols, or as he quips:

	"Power issues first from the barrels of symbols."(22)


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