In 1992, when I received a flyer from the University of Chicago Press announcing the publication of the second edition of Robert Bellah's The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, I ordered a copy on the spot. I had never read the first edition nor anything else by Bellah at that point. In fact, I'd never heard of the book and had no idea what it was about. But I had a feeling...
The book exceeded all of my expectations and became something of a political handbook for me throughout the 1990's. Nothing Bellah wrote before or after it has had the same effect on me--in fact, I generally found his post-TBC work disappointing. It was almost as if he had embarrassed himself by writing such a stirring "jeremiad" (his word) and was determined never to repeat that mistake. Maybe I should be more charitable, because I owe him so much from this one book; nevertheless, I cannot help but think that what happened to him in its wake was nothing less than a failure of nerve.
Recent events have compelled me to pick up the book again. As I re-read it, I am stunned once more by Bellah's masterful juxtapositions of American Myth and the historical record. For my money, this is religious studies at its best: timely, insightful, self-critical. The Broken Covenant deserves to be considered a classic. If we neglect it, we do so to our shame.
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