This book examines the rhetoric of the Founding Fathers, activists, presidents, and contemporary actors who play a large role in helping to define American civil religion. It demonstrates how America's civil religion is forged through contestations of its beliefs, rituals, places, events, and myths by different groups and individuals.

The tie that binds all Americans, regardless of their demographic background, is faith in the American system of government. This faith manifests as a form of civil, or secular, religion with its own core documents, creeds, oaths, ceremonies, and even individuals. In The Rhetoric of American Civil Religion: Symbols, Sinners, and Saints, contributors seek to examine some of those core elements of American faith by exploring the proverbial saints, sinners and dominant symbols of the American system.