Abstract
American Presidents since Washington have contributed to the maintenance and transformation of the nation 's civil religion. In his 1967 essay Bellah found the principal themes of this transcendent secular religion in the major public addresses of Presidents of the United States. In this paper I look at one of the contributions of Ronald Reagan to the American civil religion-his public utterances on voluntarism (private initiative). Four major themes in Reagan's pronouncements on voluntarism are described: the volunteer 'spirit, activism, big government, and revival. The heroism of volunteers and the idea of community/neighborhood are two other themes which are discussed. Taken together, these themes tell a simple mythic story about sin and salvation in American society.
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