This course will examine the origins, structures and parameters of American Civil Religion and discuss its presence in and influence on American society and American religion. This study will focus on the speeches, addresses, sermons and essays of Benjamin Franklin, Lucretia Mott, Abraham Lincoln, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Frederick Douglass as they each responded to the issues of authority, freedom, justice and social transformation, and in so doing, reveals important aspects of this phenomenon on the issues of their time.

This syllabus was created for the Young Scholars in American Religion program.

Julia M. Speller
Author

Chicago Theological Seminary
Institution

Seminary
Institution Type

Syllabus
Resource Type

Graduate Course
Class Type

1999
Date Published

Religious Studies, American Studies, History
Discipline

General Comparative Traditions, Protestant
Religous Tradition

Class/Power, Gender/Women/ Sexuality, Politics/Law/Government, Race/Ethnicity, Nationalism/War/Civil Religion
Topics