Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the flag The sanctity of American institutions The belief in God or a deity The idea that rights are divinely given The notion that freedom comes from God through government Governmental authority comes from God or a higher transcendent authority The conviction that God can be known through the American experience God is the supreme judge God is sovereign America's prosperity results from God's providence America is a "city on a hill" or a beacon of hope and righteousness The principle of sacrificial death and rebirth America serves a higher purpose than self-interests He further found that there are no statistically significant differences in the amount of American civil religious language between Democrats and Republicans, incumbents and non-incumbents nor Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. This belief system has historically been used to reject nonconformist ideas and groups. Theorists such as Bellah hold that American civil religion can perform the religious functions of integration, legitimation, and prophecy, and other theorists, such as Richard Fenn, disagree. Development Alexis de Tocqueville believed that Christianity was the source of the basic principles of liberal democracy, and the only religion capable of maintaining liberty in a democratic era. He was keenly aware of the mutual hatred between Christians and liberals in 19th-century France, rooted in the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In France, Christianity was allied with the Old Regime before 1789 and the reactionary Bourbon Restoration of 1815–1830. However he said Christianity was not antagonistic to democracy in the United States, where it was a bulwark against dangerous tendencies toward individualism and materialism, which would lead to atheism and tyranny. Also important were the contributions of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). The American case Most students of American civil religion follow the basic interpretation by Bellah and Durkheim. Other sources of this idea include these: philosopher John Dewey who spoke of "common faith" (1934); sociologist Robin Murphy Williams's American Society: A Sociological Interpretation (1951) which describes a "common religion" in America; sociologist Lloyd Warner's analysis of the Memorial Day celebrations in "Yankee City" (1953 [1974]); historian Martin Marty's "religion in general" (1959); theologian Will Herberg who spoke of "the American Way of Life" (1960, 1974); historian Sidney Mead's "religion of the Republic" (1963); and British writer G. K. Chesterton, who said that the United States was "the only nation ... founded on a