We Hold These Truths

Each year, Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, parades, and barbecues. Celebrating July Fourth is part of what some scholars identify as America’s civil religion. And like any religion, civil religion is built in part upon foundational myths and symbols that Americans, regardless of their religious faith, believe in and rally behind.

Those symbols include documents like the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. There are many Americans who view those two documents as sacred texts, both in a figurative and literal sense.

We're joined by our colleague, Lisa Woolfork, who teaches a version of the Declaration of Independence that tackles the tension between those documents as sacred texts, and the reality of the government they created.