Civil religion

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Civil religion, also referred to as a civic religion, is the implicit religious values of a

Robert Bellah
in 1960.

Origin of term

Jean-Jacques Rousseau coined the term in chapter 8, book 4 of The Social Contract (1762), to describe what he regarded as the moral and spiritual foundation essential for any modern society. For Rousseau, civil religion was intended simply as a form of social cement, helping to unify the state by providing it with sacred authority. In his book, Rousseau outlines the simple dogmas of the civil religion:

  1. deity
  2. afterlife
  3. the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice
  4. the exclusion of religious intolerance[6]

The Italian historian

political religion.[7]

Sociology of religion

Washington, DC, is often used for state funerals
for political leaders.

Civil religion stands somewhat above

establishment of religion, since established churches have official clergy
and a relatively fixed and formal relationship with the government that establishes them. Civil religion is usually practiced by political leaders who are laypeople and whose leadership is not specifically spiritual.

Examples

Such civil religion encompasses such things as:[8]

  • the invocation of God in political speeches and public monuments;
  • the quotation of religious texts on public occasions by political leaders;
  • the veneration of past political leaders;
  • the use of the lives of these leaders to teach moral ideals;
  • the veneration of veterans and casualties of a nation's wars;
  • religious gatherings called by political leaders;
  • the use of religious symbols on public buildings;
  • the use of public buildings for worship;
  • founding myths and other national myths

and similar religious or quasi-religious practices.

Practical political philosophy

The Arc de Triomphe in Paris commemorates those who died in France's wars.

Professional commentators on political and social matters writing in newspapers and magazines sometimes use the term civil religion or civic religion to refer to ritual expressions of patriotism of a sort practiced in all countries, not always including religion in the conventional sense of the word.

Among such practices are the following:[8]

  • crowds singing the national anthem at certain public gatherings;
  • parades or display of the national flag on certain
    patriotic holidays
    ;
  • reciting
    Bahamas, the Philippines, and South Korea
    );
  • ceremonies concomitant to the inauguration of a president or the coronation of a monarch;
  • retelling exaggerated, one-sided, and simplified
    mythologized tales of national founders and other great leaders or great events (e.g., battles, mass migrations) in the past (in this connection, see also romantic nationalism
    );
  • monuments commemorating great leaders of the past or historic events;
  • monuments to dead soldiers or annual ceremonies to remember them;
  • expressions of
    reverence
    for the state, the predominant national racial/ethnic group, the national constitution, or the monarch or head of state;
  • expressions of solidarity with people perceived as being national kindred but residing in a foreign country or a foreign country perceived as being similar enough to the nation to warrant admiration and/or loyalty;
  • expressions of hatred towards another country or foreign ethnic group perceived as either currently being an enemy of the state and/or as having wronged and slighted the nation in the past;
  • public display of the coffin of a recently deceased political leader.

Relation between the two conceptions

These two conceptions (sociological and political) of civil religion substantially overlap. In Britain, where church and state are constitutionally joined, the monarch's coronation is an elaborate religious rite celebrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In France, secular ceremonies are separated from religious observances to a greater degree than in most countries.[citation needed] In the United States, a president being inaugurated is told by the Constitution to choose between saying "I do solemnly swear..." (customarily followed by "so help me God", although those words are not Constitutionally required) and saying "I do solemnly affirm..." (in which latter case no mention of God would be expected).

History

Prehistory and classical antiquity

head ritually covered
, conducts a public sacrifice at the Temple of Jupiter

Practically all the ancient and prehistoric reigns suffused politics with religion. Often the leaders, such as the

Chinese Emperor were considered manifestations of a Divinity. Tribal world-view was often Pantheistic
, the tribe being an extension of its surrounding nature and the leaders having roles and symbols derived from the animal hierarchy and significant natural phenomena (such as storm).

The religion of the Athenian

Ecclesia deliberated on matters of religion. Atheism and the introduction of foreign gods were forbidden in Athens and punishable by death. For example, the Athenian ecclesia charged that Socrates
worshiped gods other than those sanctioned by the polis and condemned him to death.

Rome also had a civil religion, whose first Emperor

Imperial cult, the worship of the genius of the Emperor.[9]

Rousseau and Durkheim

The phrase civil religion was first discussed extensively by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his 1762 treatise The Social Contract. Rousseau defined civil religion as a group of religious beliefs he believed to be universal, and which he believed governments had a right to uphold and maintain: belief in a deity; belief in an afterlife in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished; and belief in religious tolerance. He said the dogmas of civil religion should be simple, few in number, and stated in precise words without interpretations or commentaries.[10] Beyond that, Rousseau affirmed that individuals' religious opinions should be beyond the reach of governments. For Rousseau civil religion was to be constructed and imposed from the top down as an artificial source of civic virtue.[11] Some scholars critiqued and accused Rousseau's civil religion of inspiring figurative "self worship" amongst citizenry.[12][13][14][15]

Wallace studies Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), the French sociologist who analysed civil religion, especially in comparative terms, and stressed that the public schools are critical in implementing civil religion. Although he never used the term he laid great stress on the concept.[16]

Examples

Australia

Writing in 1965 on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1915

First World War." This date is now commemorated as Anzac Day.[17]

Michael Gladwin has argued that for Australians Anzac Day "functions as a kind of alternative religion, or 'civil religion', with its own sense of the mystical, transcendent and divine", while Carolyn Holbrook has observed that after 1990 Anzac Day commemoration was "repackaged" as a protean "story of national genesis" that could flexibly accommodate a wide spectrum of Australians. According to Gladwin, "The emphasis of Anzac Day is no longer on military skills but rather values of unpretentious courage, endurance, sacrifice in the midst of suffering, and mateship. Anzac Day provides universally recognised symbols and rituals to enshrine transcendent elements of Australia's historical experience, making it a quasi-religion, or at least a 'civil religion'."[18]

France

Secular states in Europe by the late 19th century were building civil religion based on their recent histories. In France's case, Baylac argues, the French government

encouraged a veritable state religion, worshiping the flag and multiplying the national holidays and commemorative monuments. ... July 14 became a national holiday in 1882; the centennial of the French Revolution was celebrated in 1889. In Italy, the secular state multiplied the celebrations: State holidays, King and Queen's birthdays, pilgrimage of 1884 to the tomb of Victor-Emmanuel II. A patriotic ideology was created.[2]

Soviet Union

Statue of Lenin at Dubna, Russia, built in 1937; it is 25 metres tall

The Soviet Union made

Stalin statues had been removed in the 1950s and mention of him was erased from encyclopedias and history books. However under Vladimir Putin in the 21st century the memory of Stalin has been partly rehabilitated in search of a strong leader who made the nation powerful. For example, school textbooks were rewritten to portray "the mass terror of the Stalin years as essential to the country's rapid modernization in the face of growing German and Japanese military threats, and amid the inaction or duplicity of the Western democracies."[21]

United States

Main article: American civil religion

Civil religion is an important component of public life in America, especially at the national level for its celebration of nationalism. Sociologists report that its "feast days" are Thanksgiving, Veterans Day, and Memorial Day. Its rituals include salutes to the flag and singing "God Bless America".[5] Soldiers and veterans play a central role of standing ready to sacrifice their lives to preserve the nation. Bellah noted the veneration of veterans.[8] The historian Conrad Cherry called the Memorial Day ceremonies "a modern cult of the dead" and says that it "affirms the civil religious tenets".[22]

American Revolution

Further information: Commemoration of the American Revolution

The American Revolution was the main source of the civil religion that has shaped patriotism ever since. According to the sociologist Robert Bellah:

Behind the civil religion at every point lie biblical archetypes: Exodus, Chosen People, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, and Sacrificial Death and Rebirth. But it is also genuinely American and genuinely new. It has its own prophets and its own martyrs, its own sacred events and sacred places, its own solemn rituals and symbols. It is concerned that America be a society as perfectly in accord with the will of God as men can make it, and a light to all nations.[23]

Albanese argues that the American Revolution was the main source of the non-denominational

Constitution, and the Bill of Rights).[24]

Although God is not mentioned in the

Constitution of the United States of America, mention is specifically made of "Nature's God" in the opening sentence of the Declaration of Independence.[9]

Historiography

Christian flag
displayed alongside the flag of the United States next to the pulpit in a church in California. Note the eagle and cross finials on the flag poles.

In the 1960s and 1970s, scholars such as

Civil Rights Movement
as three decisive historical events that impacted the content and imagery of civil religion in the United States.

The application of the concept of civil religion to the United States was in large part the work of sociologist

Founding Fathers have been treated as almost sacred texts. With the Civil War, says Bellah, came a new theme of death, sacrifice and rebirth, as expressed through Memorial Day rituals. Unlike France, the American civil religion was never anticlerical or militantly secular.[23]

Current issues

This assertive civil religion of the United States is an occasional cause of political friction between the US and Europe, where the literally religious form of civil religion has largely faded away in recent decades. In the United States, civil religion is often invoked under the name of "

example needed].[26]

Some[who?] scholars have argued that the American flag can be seen as a main totem of a national cult,[27] while others[who?] have argued that modern punishment is a form of civil religion[how?].[28] Arguing against mob violence and lynching, Abraham Lincoln declared in his 1838 Lyceum speech that the Constitution and the laws of the United States ought to become the "political religion" of each American.[29]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Wimberley & Swatos 1998.
  2. ^ a b Baylac, M.-H. (1997). Histoire 1ère (in French). Paris: Bordas. p. 134. Quoted in Lindaman & Ward 2013, p. 148.
  3. ISBN 978-0-19-934037-8
    .
  4. ^ Fait, Stefano (11 September 2001). "Civil Religion". Middle Tennessee State University | Middle Tennessee State University. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  5. ^ a b Bruce & Yearley 2006, p. 34.
  6. ^ Bellah 1967; Juergensmeyer 2003, p. 245; Meyer-Dinkgrafe 2004, p. 30; Shanks 2000, p. 29.
  7. ^ Gentile 2006.
  8. ^ a b c Bellah 1992.
  9. ^ a b O'Donovan 1996.
  10. ^ Beiner 1993.
  11. ^ Demerath & Williams 1985.
  12. ISBN 978-0-299-34204-3
    . Retrieved 26 February 2023.
  13. ISBN 978-0-415-29016-6
    . Retrieved 26 February 2023.
  14. ISBN 978-1-4899-0188-0
    . Retrieved 26 February 2023.
  15. ^ University of Prince Edward Island (1978). Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism: Revue Canadienne Des Études Sur Le Nationalisme (in French). University of Prince Edward Island. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
  16. ^ Wallace 1977.
  17. ISSN 0025-6293
    .
  18. ^ "Anzac Day as Australia's alternative religion?". Charles Sturt University. 21 April 2016. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  19. ^ Tumarkin 1983.
  20. ^ Plamper 2012.
  21. ISSN 1530-9177. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 25 February 2018. Retrieved 25 February 2018.
  22. ^ Wilsey 2015, p. 24.
  23. ^ a b c Bellah 1967.
  24. ^ Albanese 1977.
  25. ^ Marty 1989, p. 295.
  26. ^ Schmidt 2004.
  27. ^ Marvin and Ingle (1996). "Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion" Archived 28 August 2005 at the Wayback Machine.
  28. ^ SpearIt 2013.
  29. ^ Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois January 27, 1838 [1]

Sources

Further reading

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