Twenty Years after Bellah: Whatever Happened to American Civil Religion?

The year 1987 marked the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Robert N. Bellah's provocative essay “Civil Religion in America.” Because of that anniversary and because we have read less about civil religion lately, an assessment of the status of American civil religion, especially during the 1980s, is in order. This article has three purposes. The first is a bibliographic review of the American civil religion literature, with emphasis upon the 1980s. The second is an argument for four phases in, or a periodicity of, discussion about American civil religion since 1967. The third purpose is a brief explanation for the waning of discussion and the current state of American civil religion.