Religion, in One Way or Another, Is Part of America’s Social Contract

Surveying the deep divisions and intense passions that have seized American public discourse since 2016, and some of the attacks on traditional politics from both right and left, Suzanne Garment sees a threat to the country’s underlying social contract, which she terms the “American deal.” Garment defines this deal “as a set of political ideas that have persisted in this country over the past couple of centuries and, most of the time, have kept our political arrangements from falling apart.” Of the twelve rules she enumerates as constituting this deal, the fourth is that “most Americans are religious, more or less.”