Civil religion

The intended meaning of the term civil religion often varies according to whether one is a sociologist of religion or a professional political commentator.

Sociology of religion

Image:Washingtonnationalcathedral.jpg In the sociology of religion, civil religion is the folk religionof a nationor a politicalculture.

Civil religion stands somewhat above folk religion in its social and political status, since by definition it suffuses an entire society, or at least a segment of a society; and is often practised by leaderswithin that society. On the other hand, it is somewhat less than an establishment of religion, since established churches have official clergyand a relatively fixed and formal relationship with the government that establishes them. Civil religion is usually practiced by political leaders who are laymen and whose leadership is not specifically spiritual.

Examples

Such civil religion encompasses such things as:

• the invocation of Godin political speeches and public monuments;
• the quotation of religious textson public occasions by political leaders;
• the venerationof past political leaders;
• the use of the lives of these leaders to teach moralideals;
• the veneration of veterans and casualties of a nation's wars;
• religious gatherings called by political leaders;
• the use of religious symbolson public buildings;
• the use of public buildings for worship;

and similar religious or quasi-religious practices.

Practical political philosophy

Image:250px-Arc-de-triomphe-paris.jpg

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

Among such practices are the following:

Examples

• crowds singing the national anthem at certain public gatherings;
• parades or displaying of the national flag on certain patriotic holidays;
• oaths of allegiance, such as the Pledge of Allegianceused in the USA;
• ceremonies concomitant to the inauguration of a president or the coronation of a king;
• retelling exaggerated, one-sided, and oversimplified mythologizedtales of Founding Fathersand other great leaders or great events (e.g., battles, mass migrations) in the past (in this connection, see also romantic nationalism);
• monumentscommemorating great leaders of the past or historic events;
• monuments to dead soldiers or annual ceremonies to remember them;
• expressions of reverencefor the country or the Constitution or the King;
• public display of the coffin of a recently deceased political leader.

The two concepts are related

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. In the United States of America, 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

Image:Arapacis.png The first government to have an identifiable civil religion was the Roman Empire, whose first Emperor Augustusofficially attempted to revive the dutiful practice of Classical paganism. Greekand Roman religionwere essentially local in character; the Roman Empire attempted to unite its disparate territories by inculcating an ideal of Roman piety, and by a syncretisticidentifying of the gods of conquered territories with the Greek and Roman pantheon. In this campaign, Augustus erected monuments such as the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace, showing the Emperorand his family worshipping the gods. He also encouraged the publication of works such as Virgil's Æneid, which depicted "pious Æneas", the legendaryancestor of Rome, as a role model for Roman religiosity. Roman historians such as Livytold tales of early Romans as morally improving stories of military prowess and civic virtue. The Roman civil religion later became centred on the person of the Emperor through the imperial cult, the worship of the geniusof the Emperor.

The phrase "civil religion" was first discussed extensively by Jean-Jacques Rousseauin 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 afterlifein which virtueis rewarded and vice punished; and belief in religious tolerance. Beyond that, Rousseau affirmed that individuals' religious opinions should be beyond the reach of governments.

In the 1950sand 1960s, scholars such as Martin E. Martyand Robert N. Bellahstudied civil religion as a cultural phenomenon, attempting to identify the actual tenets of civil religion in the United States of America, or to study civil religion as a phenomenon of cultural anthropology. Within this U.S. context, Marty wrote that Americans approved of "religion in general" without being particularly concerned about the content of that faith, and attempted to distinguish "priestly" and "prophetic" roles within the practice of American civil religion, which he preferred to call the public theology. Bellah wrote that civil religion was "an institutionalized collection of sacred beliefs about the American nation." Bellah identified the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movementas three decisive historical events that impacted the content and imagery of civil religion in the United States.

Issues

Image:ChristianFlagEtc CovenantPresbyterianLongBeach20050213 CopyrightKaihsuTai.jpg Within the contexts of the monotheistic, prophetic, revealedfaiths, civil religion can be problematic from a theologicalperspective. Being identified with a political culture and a leadership hierarchyof an existing society, civil religion can interere with the propheticmission of a religious faith. It is hard to make civil religion a platform for rebuking the sinsof a people or its institutions, because civil religion exists to make them seem sacredin themselves.

The United States of America, while a group of British colonies, was settled in part by religious dissentersfrom the established Church of England, who desired a civil society founded on a different religious vision. State churches have not existed in the United States since the early nineteenth century. Religious denominations compete with one another for allegiance in the public square. These facts have made public displays of religious piety by political leaders important to a large sector of the population; lacking an established church, they need public assurance of those leaders' religious beliefs.

This assertive civil religion of the United Statesis an occasional cause of political friction between the U.S. and its allies in Europe, where (the literally religious form of) civil religion is often relatively muted. In the United States, civil religion is often invoked under the name of "Judeo-Christiantradition", a phrase originally intended to be maximally inclusive of the several monotheismspracticed in the United States, assuming that these faiths all worshipthe same God and share the same values. This assumption tends to dilute the essence of both Judaismand Christianity; recognition of this fact, and the increasing religious diversity of the United States, make this phrase less heard now than it once was, though it is far from extinct. Some scholars have argued that the American flag can be seen as a main totemof a national cult.^{[{{fullurl:Template:FULLPAGENAME}}#endnote_Flag-cult]} Abraham Lincoln declared in 1838 that the Constitution and the laws of the United States had to become the ?political religion? of the American nation.^{[{{fullurl:Template:FULLPAGENAME}}#endnote_Lincoln1838]}

Notes

1. ^  Marvin and Ingle (1996), [1]
2. ^  In J.D. Schultz, J.G. West and I. MacLean (eds.), Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics (Phoenix: Onyx Press, 1999), p.53.

See also

• political religion
• ecclesia
• sociology of religion
• civic virtue
• Deep England
• secularism
• secular state
• Marianne— the national emblem of France
• Juche— the official ideology of North Korea

External links

• Civil Religion in Americaby Robert N. Bellah
• Civil religion- entry in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society

Reference

• Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in a Time of Trial (1992), Robert E. Bellah, University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-04199-9
• A Nation of Behavers, Martin E. Marty (1976), U. Chicago, ISBN 0-226-50892-7

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil+religion Wikipedia article Civil religion.