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. SpellerAuthor
Chicago Theological SeminaryInstitution
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