Obama refashions America's old-time civil religion
Daniel Burke & Kevin Eckstrom/Religion News Service
Issue date: 2/1/09 Section: Divine Intervention
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"We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things," Obama said, quoting St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians in one of the few explicitly Christian references in his address.
Although at times Obama adopted the cadences of the Black church that he called home for 20 years, he borrowed little of its content.
Instead, Obama's inaugural address, like that of previous presidents, drew heavily on what scholars deem America's civil religion: the transcendent ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence and other foundational documents.
Those ideals are often assumed - but not always said - to be divinely inspired or granted. On Inauguration Day, Obama seemed to channel the spirit of President John F. Kennedy, who reminded a nation in 1961 that "the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."
"The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit," Obama said, "to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
America's civil religion has been a fixture at inaugural ceremonies since George Washington's, when the peaceful transfer of power at the high altar of American politics takes on an almost sacred air. Obama drew on Washington and other American icons as exemplars of banding together for the common good, a key tenet of civil religion.
"Throughout his speech he is challenging us to be 'We the people,'" said the Rev. Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, professor of African-American studies at Colby College in Maine.
But Obama's unique personal history and the perils of the present moment added new elements to America's old time religion, said Martin E. Marty, the religion scholar and former professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
"In talking about civil religion, you make a great deal of the power of the nation to do things," Marty said. On Tuesday, "there was a twist; it wasn't that the nation is perfect ... but that we have failed to live up to our ideals."
Author and religion scholar Diana Butler Bass said the speech's strain of modesty was a break from the past. "This is very different from what you would have heard in the civil religion of the 1950s, which was a more jubilant exultation of American rightness, that we're a chosen people," Bass said. "This speech had much more of a 'We're an almost-chosen people.' This is the kind of civil religion that Lincoln is famous for."
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