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This chapter elaborates on the variety of “constitutional faiths.” It discusses the parallels between Protestant and Catholic approaches to Christian doctrine and “protestant” and “catholic” modes of approaching the U.S. Constitution. It argues that there is double message contained within the analogy of the Constitution to a sacred text or the Supreme Court to a holy institution. The first, emphasizing unity and integration, is the one we most tend to be familiar. The chapter proposes to examine the alternative message, which is the potential of a written constitution to serve as the source of fragmentation and disintegration. The analysis aims not only to present a somewhat different perspective from which to look at the Constitution, but also to attack by implication any confidence of having “the Constitution” as a common symbol guarantees meaningful national political unity.

This chapter considers the relationship between the Constitution—and the sovereign people ostensibly represented in its terms—and morality. Constitution faith requires the linkage of law and morality even as most twentieth-century jurisprudence has emphasized their analytic separation. All calls for renewed faith in the rule of law and renewal of the constitutional covenant imply that submission to the Constitution will create not only order but also the conditions of a social order worthy of respect. In order to see the logic and desirability of submission to the rule of the Constitution, the assumed linkage between it and morality must be closely examined.

Chapter 3 considered the merits of loyalty oaths in general. It left unexamined an assumption of the debate about requiring such oaths—that they have some genuine content. This chapter examines that assumption: What exactly is one affirming when pledging loyalty to the Constitution or announcing one’s “constitutional faith”? It is possible that the national covenant is without content, or at least is unspecifiable? The chapter includes an intensive examination of one particular case requiring what might be termed as a “meta-analysis” of the Constitution. The subject matter of the case involves the meaning of the “attachment” to the Constitution required in order to become a naturalized citizen of the United States.

The previous chapters traced some of the implications of treating law as a quasi-religious system. This chapter develops another aspect of the religious analogy through the self-conscious examination of tensions generated when one “professes” law, particularly in the institutional role of a “professor of law.” Only such an examination will allow us to decide whether an otherwise qualified individual should be hired to profess constitutional law. It considers the imagined application of one William Scheiderman to join a faculty of law. It argues that while law school may be aimed at a more adult clientele, the mixed and contradictory tasks of both generating autonomous adults and preparing them to reproduce the central institutions of the culture are no less present.

This chapter presents an extended treatment of our feelings about a variety of oaths and affirmations. Oaths are a mixture of pure form and substantive content. Their formal nature may remind us of the “contentless” seals formerly used to give legal validity to contracts. Vows also signify a desire to be considered a member of a particular community and a willingness to remain within its boundaries. This chapter focuses on the American political community and its extraction of loyalty oaths attesting to a shared commitment to certain beliefs—usually involving the legitimacy of the state, its particular political structure, or its ideological aspirations. It also considers two other kinds of communities. One is the classical religious faith community. The other is the marriage by which two individuals join together in constituting a special kind of common enterprise.

This chapter attempts to formulate an answer to the question regarding constitutional faith: To leap or not to leap? It returns to the Second Bank of the United States and the bicentennial exhibit, “Miracle in Philadelphia,” located there. In September 1787, visitors were confronted by two endless scrolls, each with the same two questions directed to the viewer: Will You Sign this Constitution? The exhibit implicitly directs a question at us: How do we stand vis-è-vis the Constitution? The answer is at the same a sign of our willingness to join in affirming a “constitutional faith” whatever the attendant difficulties in giving content to the notion.

This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to clarify the ambiguities of constitutional faith, i.e., wholehearted attachment to the Constitution as the center one’s (and ultimately the nation’s) political life. The book argues that there is an important conversation to be initiated about what it means to be an “American” in the late twentieth century. This conversation is not merely historical, to be safely distanced somewhere in the past. It assumes that there are many persons who share a very strong sense of “being” American, but are without an equally confident sense of what it means, especially in regard to what, if any, political commitments that identity entails.

Cultural defense policies create a Paradox of Liberalism. Liberal democracies, in order to protect what they perceive as a liberal regime, resort to illiberal means that violate the same values they seek to protect. Herein lies the paradox. Either the liberal should tolerate illiberal practices, or turn to illiberal means in order to “liberate” the illiberal. Either choice undermines liberalism. The idea that one should adopt a liberal way of life as a prerequisite for living in a liberal society is, in itself, illiberal. This is because liberalism contains the freedom to choose not to hold liberal beliefs or live a liberal way of life as long as a person’s way of life complies with law and order. Overall, the chapter illustrates risks involved in immigration and citizenship policies which, in order to protect liberal values, embrace illiberal means that violate those very same values.