The Political Pulpit Revisited
Roderick P. Hart and John L. Pauley III
Purdue University Press
West Lafayette, Indiana
2005

This is a review of the earlier book, 25 years later.
Reprints the original as part II, then gives a set of essays commenting on the original.

Carolyn Marvin
argues that Hart is wrong, civil religion is not rhetorical, because rhetoric talks while religion does. What civil religion does is providing unification, replacing separate personal or confessional faiths with a single shared national faith, and this faith is tied to the coercive power of the nation. Denominational religion must bow to the authority of religious nationalism. (Paraphrase) There is an American sacraficial authority.

Note
My 2nd volume has to examine the civil religion of civil rights, esp beloved community, MLK, and the Nation of Islam