Review of Robert Bellah's The Broken Covenant

The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. By Robert N. Bellah. Seabury Press, 1975. $7.95

The Broken Covenant has received wide attention, probably as the result of the enduring interest in American civil religion first stimulated by Bellah in a 1967 Daedalus article. While several authors were quick to point out that Bellah’s suggestion was not new (Rousseau had actually coined the term “civil religion” and a wide range of historians and social and political theorists had made similar observations), the article was timely and generated a flurry of scholarly response. Without reviewing the range of response, two central questions regarding civil religion which form the backdrop for this work by Bellah should be noted: First, if there is such a phenomenon as American civil religion, what will be the result of its apparent demise? Second, and related to the first question, is civil religion necessary for the cohesiveness of a society and thus to be valued?

The Broken Covenant is based on six lectures given in 1971 at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Bellah begins by asserting that the emerging problems in the United States are ultimately moral and religious, arguing a la Durkheim that a set of religious understandings are basic for the cultural legitimation of a society. Thereby, Bellah chooses to define religion functionally rather than substantively, and this is simply inadequate.

In the puzzling setting of contemporary America where increasing corruption is accompanied by “continuous pressure for higher moral behavior,” Bellah sees a tendency toward the erosion of the shared moral and religious understandings. This is reflected in the stress on individualism giving supremacy to personal gratification and in the deepening cynicism regarding basic national institutions. As an antidote to this erosion Bellah suggests “the Pilgrim Fathers had a conception of the covenant and of virtue which we badly need today.” While such a covenant was typically “broken almost as soon as it was made,” Bellah finds this biblical imagery the basic framework for a civil religion or myth system whereby individuals and societies derive meaning and contend with such times of national trial as the revolutionary war, the civil war, and the present crises.

As always, Bellah provides many helpful insights, but this book is not Bellah at his best. For the reader already familiar with his writings, many of these ideas will be recognized as being taken from earlier works where they are more thoroughly and cogently presented. The material presented in Chapters 1 and 2 are important exceptions; especially helpful is the first chapter, “America’s Myth of Origin,” in which the early dialectic between paradise or promised Canaan and the wilderness is recovered. The means for transforming the American wilderness into a “foretaste of the New Jerusalem” is said to have been secured by means of individual conversions and covenantal societal relationships.

The conversion/covenant dialectic, so skillfully developed in Chapter 1, is, however, unfortunately neglected in the following chapters, except for a cursory mention in the conclusion. Indicative of the problem one faces in trying to follow Bellah’s fragmented argument is the imprecise definition given to the present time of trial. One is never certain whether the Vietnam war, political corruption, self-serving individualism, economic exploitation, or racism and genocide is central to the present crisis. Certainly the current problems are legion, yet the reader waits for a synthesis which is never provided.

It is clear that Bellah fears the continuing demise of American civil religion could well result in anarchy and/or tyranny. Likewise, it follows he values national religious understandings in providing social cohesiveness and sees an emphasis on the covenant as necessary. Bellah sees our economy as a heroin addict asking for just one more shot of profit and our imperialism as the natural outworking of racism and capitalism. Unfortunately, Bellah gives only a vague suggestion in response to the present time of trial. He calls for a “decentralized democratic socialism” with moral and religious vision. Bellah does, however, catch the vision of the creative role alternative or marginal groups play as witnesses over against the American experiment and as generators of new myths and lifestyles.

In much of the recent literature on the nature and function of civil religion, there is a real danger of calling the church to provide a “fifth column” in American government, acting as a custodian of morality. With this, then, I wonder how these formulations would have been viewed by the Confessing Church in Germany in the 1930s; is not an endorsement of public piety in fact a capitulation to an oppressive civil religion which can give a dangerous sanction to the state or to a social order and diminish the biblical tension between the church and the world?

Bellah identifies the impending crises we face as a nation and suggests ways for renewing the great enlightenment experiment called America. It may be that the more appropriate task for the church is to discover how we can better identify ourselves as the people of God apart from America. An affirmation of the priority which must be given to kingdom membership serves as a warning that covenant faith may not be so neatly collapsed into enlightenment religion.

When this article appeared, Philip Amerson taught Urban Studies at the San Francisco campus of Westmont College.