by

Ted Daniels, Ph.D.

Electronic version copyright © Ted Daniels 1997. All rights reserved
Originally published in Millennialism: An International Bibliography by Garland Publishing New York, 1992. Reproduced here by permission.
URL for this article is http://www.
18. Anthony, Dick and Thomas Robbins. "The Effect of Detente on the Rise of New Religions: The Unification of Reverend Sun Myung Moon." In Understanding the New Religions edited by Jacob Needleman and George Baker. New York: Seabury, 1978a.
        Sets forth the authors' notion that, while American civil religion narrowly and rigidly prescribed certain actions, it left plenty of scope for self-indulgence.



  1. 19. ———. "Culture Crisis and Contemporary Religion." In In Gods We Trust edited by Thomas Robbins and Dick Anthony. New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Press, 1981b.
        American civil religion, according to Robert Bellah (1967, 1970 a and b, item 80), who coined the idea, is a set of "national symbols" which have served to unite the country through most of its history. It includes the ideas of America as a savior nation and of its people as specially chosen. It imposes a set of more or less rigidly defined ethical principles, outside of which individualism and self-indulgence are given free play. In recent years this system has come to be undermined by several trends in American history, giving rise to a revival of religious conservatism and to various new religious movements, which can broadly be seen to fall into two types: dualistic belief systems like the Unification Church, wherein the church sets up model communities to give battle to Satanic forces, notably communism, and monisms, like the Meher Baba movement, in which personal improvement is seen as the eventual source of social and/or cosmic renewal.


  1. 20. ———. "Spiritual Innovation and the Crisis of American Civil Religion." Daedalus 111 (1), 1982a: 215-34.
        Extrapolates Bellah's (1967, 70a and b) work on "civil religion" (T. Robbins, 1983.) The authors argue that some groups at least are remnants of civil religion and respond to the moral ambiguity engendered by its demise (Barker, 1986: see item 56).
        Among the perspectives on the "revival" of the seventies are those which call it a result of secularization (D. Bell, 1979a; R. Fenn, 1978; B. Wilson, 1976: see item 755), and those which attribute it to "a crisis of community" (Marx and Ellison, 1975). Others relate it to "cultural confusion and the loss of value consensus" (Appel, 1980; Bellah, 1976: item 84; Glock, 1976). This analysis draws on Bellah's notion of American civil religion, and the other perspectives can be subsumed in this view. An important part of this complex is the allegedly common view of the country as a "redeemer nation" and of Americans as "chosen people." This is pluralistic, varying according to various interest groups. See also the following entry.


  1. 21. ———. "Contemporary Religious Ferment and Moral Ambiguity." In New Religious Movements: A Perspective for Understanding Society edited by Eileen Barker. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1982b: 243-66.


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