Democracy as a Religion

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Today's encore selection -- from Achieving Our Country by Richard Rorty. John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer; Walt Whitman (1819-1892) an American poet, essayist and journalist. Both hoped for a thoroughly secular "democracy" as a civic religion displacing conventional religion: "Whitman and Dewey were among the prophets of [an American] civic religion. They offered a new account of what America was, in the hope of mobilizing Americans as political agents. The most striking feature of their redescription of our coun­try is its thoroughgoing secularism. In the past, most of the stories that have incited nations to projects of self-improve­ment have been stories about their obligations to one or more gods. For much of European and American history, na­tions have asked themselves how they appear in the eyes of the Christian God. American exceptionalism has usually been a belief in special divine favor, as in the writings of Joseph Smith and Billy Graham. .../.../