Decency: America's 'civil religion'

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Aging sociologist Robert Bellah spent his long career espousing the notion that Americans share a "civil religion" -- a common belief in fairness, equality, compassion, human rights, justice and other bedrock principles of democracy. This national faith even has its martyrs, he wrote, such as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, etc.

Although America is a hodgepodge of many ethnic groups, ideologies and economic classes, a unifying spirit of decent values is a glue bonding the country together.