Tea Partiers treat the Constitution as a sacred text akin to the Bible

Evidence

Despite the fact that there were often sharp disagreements about the meaning of the Constitution among legal scholars, Tea Partiers insisted that its meaning was clear to anyone with eyes. To secular observers, these practices probably seemed very odd. To those who knew the evangelical subculture, they were all too familiar. Pocket Bibles, Bible study groups, and biblical literalism were among its defining elements. Conservative white evangelicals simply applied them to another sacred text: the US Constitution. — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross, 273

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: the Constitution as a fourth canon of scripture for white evangelicals — informational literalism migrating from Bible to founding documents.
• XREF: Echoes the original-instrumentalist literalism debates and cultural cognition work on how interpretive communities sacralize their founding texts, could connect to Walter Ong or general biblical-literalism literature. — connects to: Racial anxiety about Obama ignited the Tea Party movement — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 270; Protestant literalism paid for symbolic power with obedience to the written word

Broader Connections

• Protestant literalism paid for symbolic power with obedience to the written word #corroborates (0.72)