Volume 44, Number 13 · August 14, 1997
Dusting Off the Declaration
By Gordon S. Wood
American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence
by Pauline Maier
Knopf, 304 pp., $27.50
Scholars who talk about America's 'civic religion' often don't appreciate the half of it. Not only have we Americans turned profane political beliefs into a hallowed religious-like creed, but we have transformed very secular and temporal documents into sacred scriptures. We have even built a temple to preserve and display the great documents consecrating the founding of the American creed—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. At the National Archives in Washington, D.C., these holy texts are enshrined in massive, bronze-framed, bulletproof, moisture-controlled glass containers that have been drained of all harmful oxygen. During the day these 'Charters of Freedom' are on display in the rotunda of the National Archives for the faithful to pay homage to; but at night the documents and their containers are lowered into a vault of reinforced concrete and steel that is twenty-two feet deep and weighs fifty-five tons. Once inside the vault with the huge doors on top swung shut, the scriptural texts, the National Archives assures us, are safe.
Review, 4696 words
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