Constitutionolatry
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Etymology: From Constitution + -o- + -latry.
Senses: examples: text: […] the written Constitution bequeathed by them to the country became a Holy Scripture. A man was permitted to think as he pleased about the Bible; but it was accounted blasphemy to whisper a suspicion that any clause in the American Constitution was not written by Divine inspiration. Our fathers had devoured Metis herself, and lo! panoplied Wisdom sprang from their brain. This Constitutionolatry was real in the first generation after the formation of the Federal Union.
ref: 1866 June, an American, “Anomalies of the American Constitution”, in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, volume LXXIII, number CCCCXXXVIII, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., page 717, column 2:
text: Yet we find even Mr. Gladstone praising our Constitution as the creation of the men in 1787; and in America there has been a kind of Constitutionolatry which has tended to obscure the historic origin of its methods and principles through the very intensity of the admiration felt for its wisdom.
ref: 1889 November 23, T., “[Reviews.] The Origin and Growth of the English Constitution. An Historical Treatise, [etc.] By Hannis Taylor. In Two Parts. Part I: The Making of the Constitution. Pp. xl. and 616. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.”, in The American: A Journal of Literature, Science, the Arts, and Public Affairs, volume XIX, number 485, Philadelphia, Pa., pages 110–111:
text: The Constitution-olatry that holds a secular document as sacred, despite its flexibility in the hands of the Justices of the Supreme Court; the popular belief that has grown up that the Supreme Court alone has the final power of interpretation over not only the executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government, but also over the states in matters not only legal but often executive and political, and the fact that the Judges rule practically for life without any necessary restraint whatever from popular opinion and will—all these factors make the Supreme Court in many varied matters an almost absolute dictator of an otherwise democratic republic.
ref: 1931 June 12, L. E., “[Letters from the People] Justice Hughes and the Supreme Court”, in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, volume 83, number 279, St. Louis, Mo., page 2C, column 1:
text: In 1776 it was the tyranny of a despot; in 1936 it is the pressure of the dead hand upon the living present; a constitutionolatry like that of the Scribes and Pharisees for the Pentateuch, of the Talmudic rabbis for the Mosaic code.
ref: 1936 February 1, A. W. Slaten, “Aloha Tower”, in Honolulu Star-Bulletin, number 18574 (Evening Bulletin) / volume XLIII, number 13715 (Hawaiian Star), Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, page six, column 5:
text: Constitutionolatry / Many good epigrams have been coined about the British constitution—that myth—but it always pleases me to find one I had not heard of before. My latest discovery I owe to J. E. C. Bodley, Dilke’s secretary, who, in his classic work on France published in 1898 and in the course of some pungent remarks about continental anglophilia, said of the British constitution: ‘As the Church of England says of one of its sacraments, it is not intended to be “carried about or worshipped”.’ Alas! it is not in much danger of that these days.
ref: 1962 August 10, Queequeg, “Spectator’s Notebook”, in The Spectator, page 181:
text: Justice Leroy Matson wrote the court’s opinion. An earnest lawman given to fussy detail, constitutionolatry, and dryness of touch, he drily allowed Pierce to keep the field.
ref: 1980 winter, Walter N. Trenerry, “Last Campaign of the Civil War: Aged Minnesota Veteran Takes On the GAR”, in Minnesota History, volume 47, number 4, page 137, column 1:
text: THE DANGERS OF CONSTITUTIONOLATRY / Sterba’s Disturbing View of the Role of Constitutional Rights / A Commentary / Robert C. L. Moffat
ref: 1989, Christopher B. Gray, editor, Philosophical Reflections on the United States Constitution: A Collection of Bicentennial Essays (Studies in Social and Political Theory; 4), Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston; Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, →ISBN, page 169:
text: The parallels between the “Bibliolatry” of Milton’s day and the “Constitutionolatry” of ours are striking.
ref: 1996, Daniel Lazare, The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy, Harcourt Brace & Company, →ISBN, page 305:
text: There has been a strain of Constitutionolatry that dismisses the Antis as bitter and indebted farmers and shiftless mechanics, indurated knuckledraggers all, who darkly and unfairly viewed the document as having been framed by aristocrats in the service of the money power.
ref: 2008, Bill Kauffman, Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Martin Luther, ISI Books, →ISBN:
text: @jianghomeshi American "constitutionolatry" is so bizarre. It was written TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. Things change, moron!
ref: 2011 March 18, Phil 🇨🇦 (@kashicat), Twitter, archived from the original on 18 Jun 2023:
text: Constitutionolatry isn’t about the contents of the Constitution. It’s about claiming privileged access to the divine Word that is presumed to have created it, the voice of the Lord that can whisper in the ears of individual citizens and give them an authority that trumps that of Constitutionally-elected officials.
ref: 2016 January 11, Jim Burklo, “Captain Moroni and Divine Revelation: On the Oregon Protesters and Christian Jihadism”, in Patheos, archived from the original on 14 Jan 2016:
text: Many if not most of those Constitution-wavers really don't know or care care what the document says. They wave it to cast a ceremonial blessing on their opinions. It's Constitutionolatry, a word I just made up, which means the worship or idolatry of the Constitution, without being mindful of its contents. It's a kissin' cousin to pistolatry, the worship of guns. […] Pistolatry and Constitutionolatry are kissin' cousins to bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible without being mindful of the cultural or historical contexts in which its books were composed.
ref: 2016 March 21, Jim Burklo, “The Mindful Mirror of Passion Week”, in HuffPost, archived from the original on 26 Jun 2025:
text: What’s weird (to me too) is what you might dub constitutionolatry - the notion that the Founders were geniuses who discovered the uniquely best way to govern society. So much American political debate is conducted through “interpreting” the Founders’ constitutional intent.
ref: 2018 January 21, Henry Farrell (@henryfarrell), Twitter, archived from the original on 18 Jun 2023:
glosses: The worship of the Constitution.