The intended meaning of the term civil religion often varies according to whether one is a sociologist of religion or a professional political commentator. The following discussion includes both perspectives followed by a brief history of the concept.

Sociology of religion

The Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. is often used for state funerals for political leaders.

In the sociology of religion, civil religion is the folk religion of a nation or a political culture. June 11, 2004 photo of Washington National Cathedral as Reagan Funeral Procession enters, ABC News, Bob Pearson, photographer This work is copyrighted. ... June 11, 2004 photo of Washington National Cathedral as Reagan Funeral Procession enters, ABC News, Bob Pearson, photographer This work is copyrighted. ... Washington National Cathedral was the site of two Presidential state funerals: for Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald W. Reagan, and a presidential burial in the cathedral mausoleum: Woodrow Wilson. ... Nickname: the District Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Official website: http://www. ... Underwater funeral in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea A funeral is a ceremony marking a persons death. ... The sociology of religion is – among other elements – the study of the practices, social structures, historical backgrounds, development, universal themes, and roles of religion in society. ... Folk religion consists of beliefs, superstitions and cultural practices transmitted from generation to generation. ... One of the most influential doctrines in history is that all humans are divided into groups called nations. ... Politics, sometimes defined as the art and science of government[1], is a process by which collective decisions are made within groups. ... The word culture, from the Latin colo, -ere, with its root meaning to cultivate, generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. ...

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 leaders within that society. On the other hand, it is somewhat less than an 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 laymen and whose leadership is not specifically spiritual. In common usage, leadership generally refers to: the position or office of an authority figure, such as a President [1] a group of influential people, such as a union leadership [2] guidance or direction, as in the phrase the emperor is not providing much leadership capacity or ability to lead... Establishment of religion refers to investing political power in a particular religious faith or body. ... Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. ...

Examples

Such civil religion encompasses such things as:

• 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. Image:Http://www. ... The Taj Mahal in Agra (Uttar Pradesh, India) Monuments are usually created for the dual function of commemorating an important event or person while also creating an artistic object that will improve the appearance of a city or location. ... Many religions and spiritual movements believe that their sacred texts (or scriptures) are the Word of God, often feeling that the texts are wholly divine or spiritually inspired in origin. ... (Latin veneratio, Greek δουλια dulia) In traditional Christian churches (for example, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy), veneration, or veneration of saints, is a special act of honoring a dead person who has been identified as singular in the traditions of the religion, and through them honoring God who made them and... A moral is a one sentence remark made at the end of many childrens stories that expresses the intended meaning, or the moral message, of the tale. ... The United States detonated an atomic bomb over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, effectively ending World War II. The bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima (on August 6) immediately killed between 100,000 and 200,000 people and are the only instances nuclear weapons have ever been used in war. ... Worship usually refers to specific acts of religious praise, honour, or devotion, typically directed to a supernatural being such as a god or goddess. ... A founding myth is a story or myth surrounding the foundation of a nation-state. ... A national myth is an inspiring narrative or anecdote about a nations past. ...

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. Arc de Triomphe by night, loaded from the French Wikipédie Auteur: btd a. ... Arc de Triomphe by night, loaded from the French Wikipédie Auteur: btd a. ... Arc de Triomphe The Arc de Triomphe is a monument in Paris that stands in the centre of the Place de lÉtoile, at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. ... The Eiffel Tower, the international symbol of the city, with the skyscrapers of La Défense business district 5 km/ 3 mi behind. ... A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value, which is prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. ... Defense of the homeland is a commonplace of military patriotism: The statue in the courtyard of École polytechnique, Paris, commemorating the students involvement in defending France against the 1814 invasion of the Coalition. ...

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 Allegiance used in the USA;
• ceremonies concomitant to the inauguration of a president or the coronation of a king;
• retelling exaggerated, one-sided, and oversimplified mythologized tales of Founding Fathers 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 country or the Constitution or the King;
• public display of the coffin of a recently deceased political leader.

The National Day is a designated date on which celebrations mark the nationhood of a country. ... An oath of allegiance is an oath whereby a subject or citizen acknowledges his duty of allegiance and swears loyalty to his monarch or country. ... Dorothea Lange photograph of Japanese-American students reciting the Pledge of Allegiance The Pledge of Allegiance is a promise or oath of allegiance to the United States, and to its national flag. ... The word mythology (Greek: μυθολογία, from μυθος mythos, a story or legend, and λογος logos, an account or speech) literally means the (oral) retelling of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use supernatural events or characters to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. ... Founding Fathers are persons instrumental in the establishment of an institution, usually a political institution, especially those connected to the origination of its ideals. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... The Taj Mahal in Agra (Uttar Pradesh, India) Monuments are usually created for the dual function of commemorating an important event or person while also creating an artistic object that will improve the appearance of a city or location. ... The Oxford English Dictionary defines reverence as deep respect and veneration for some thing, place, or person regarded as having a sacred or exalted character. ...

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). Arms of the see of Canterbury The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior clergyman of the established Church of England and symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with President of the United States oath of office. ...

History

The Ara Pacis, dedicated to Peace as a goddess, embodied the civil religion of the Roman Empire.

The first government to have an identifiable civil religion was the Roman Empire, whose first Emperor Augustus officially attempted to revive the dutiful practice of Classical paganism. Greek and Roman religion were essentially local in character; the Roman Empire attempted to unite its disparate territories by inculcating an ideal of Roman piety, and by a syncretistic identifying 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 Emperor and his family worshipping the gods. He also encouraged the publication of works such as Virgil's Æneid, which depicted "pious Æneas", the legendary ancestor of Rome, as a role model for Roman religiosity. Roman historians such as Livy told 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 genius of the Emperor. Ara Pacis detail; from a photo in Winstons Cumulative Cyclopedia of 1914. ... Ara Pacis detail; from a photo in Winstons Cumulative Cyclopedia of 1914. ... Sculpture on the Ara Pacis The Ara Pacis Augustae (Latin for Altar of Augustan Peace, and commonly shortened to Ara Pacis) is an altar to peace envisioned as a Roman goddess. ... Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture A goddess is a female deity, in contrast with a male deity known as a god. A great many cultures have goddesses, sometimes alone, but more often as part of a larger pantheon that includes both of the conventional genders and in some cases... For other senses of this name, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ... For other senses of this name, see Roman Empire (disambiguation). ... Augustus (Latin:IMPERATOR CAESAR DIVI FILIVS AVGVSTVS[1]; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), known to modern historians as Octavian in English for the period of his life prior to 27 BC, was the first and one of the most important of the Roman Emperors, though he downplayed... Paganism (from Latin paganus) and heathenry are blanket terms which have come to connote a broad set of spiritual or religious beliefs and practices of natural or polytheistic religions, as opposed to the Abrahamic monotheistic religions. ... Religion in ancient Rome combined several different cult practices and embraced more than a single set of beliefs. ... Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. ... // Greek mythology consists in part in a large collection of narratives that explain the origins of the world and detail the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, dick heeds and heroines. ... Sculpture on the Ara Pacis The Ara Pacis Augustae (Latin for Altar of Augustan Peace, and commonly shortened to Ara Pacis) is an altar to peace envisioned as a Roman goddess. ... Roman Emperor is the term historians use to refer to rulers of the Roman Empire, after the epoch conventionally named the Roman Republic. ... A sculpture of Virgil, probably from the 1st century AD. For other uses, see Virgil (disambiguation). ... The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC (between 29 and 19 BC) that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy where he became the ancestor of the Romans. ... Aeneas flees burning Troy, Federico Barocci, 1598. ... // For other senses of this word, see Legend (disambiguation). ... City motto: Senatus Populusque Romanus – SPQR (The Senate and the People of Rome) Founded 21 April 753 BC (mythical), early 1st millennium BC (archaeological) Region Latium Area  - City Proper  1285 km² Population  - City (2004)  - Metropolitan  - Density (city proper) 2,553,873 almost 4,300,000 1. ... A portrait of Titus Livius made long after his death. ... The Imperial cult in Ancient Rome was the worship of the Roman Emperor as a god. ... In Roman mythology, every man had a genius and every woman a juno (Juno was also the name for the queen of the gods). ...

The phrase "civil religion" was first discussed extensively by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 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. Beyond that, Rousseau affirmed that individuals' religious opinions should be beyond the reach of governments. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778) was a Franco-Swiss philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. ... Look up deity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The afterlife (or life after death) is a generic term referring to a continuation of existence, typically spiritual and experiential, beyond this world, or after death. ... Virtue (Greek αρετη; Latin virtus) is moral excellence of a man or a woman. ... The cross of the war memorial and a menorah for Hanukkah coexist in Oxford. ...

In the 1950s and 1960s, scholars such as Martin E. Marty and Robert N. Bellah studied 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 Movement as three decisive historical events that impacted the content and imagery of civil religion in the United States. The 1950s were a decade that spanned the years 1950 through 1959. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... Martin E. Marty (b. ... Robert Neelly Bellah is a sociologist at University of California at Berkeley and author of a number of books including Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. ... Cultural anthropology, also called social anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, forms one of four commonly-recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of humanity. ... Roman Catholic priests in traditional clerical clothing. ... A prophet is a person who has directly encountered God, of whose intentions he can then speak. ... The American Revolution was a revolution that ended two centuries of rule in Thirteen Colonies of North America by the British Empire and created the modern United States of America. ... Combatants Union (remaining U.S. states) Confederate States of America Commanders Abraham Lincoln† Ulysses S. Grant Jefferson Davis Robert E. Lee Strength 2,200,000 1,064,000 Casualties KIA: 110,000 Total dead: 360,000 Wounded: 275,200 KIA: 94,000 Total dead: 258,000 Wounded: 137,000+  The... The civil rights movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all citizens of United States. ...

Issues

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

Within the contexts of the monotheistic, prophetic, revealed faiths, civil religion can be problematic from a theological perspective. Being identified with a political culture and a leadership hierarchy of an existing society, civil religion can interere with the prophetic mission of a religious faith. It is hard to make civil religion a platform for rebuking the sins of a people or its institutions, because civil religion exists to make them seem sacred in themselves. Download high resolution version (1760x1168, 523 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (1760x1168, 523 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... The Christian flag The Christian flag is a flag designed to represent all of Christianity, but flown mainly by Protestant churches in North America, Africa, and Latin America. ... Monotheism (in Greek μόνος = single and θεός = God) is the belief in the existence of one God, or in the oneness of God. ... A prophet is a person who has directly encountered God, of whose intentions he can then speak. ... For information on the last book of the New Testament see the Book of Revelation. ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. ... For the various types of hierarchy, see hierarchy (disambiguation) A hierarchy (in Greek: Ιεραρχία, it is derived from ιερός-hieros, sacred, and άρχω-arkho, rule) is a system of ranking and organizing things or people, where each element of the system (except for the top element) is subordinate to a single other element. ... A prophet is a person who has directly encountered God, of whose intentions he can then speak. ... SiN is a computer game developed by Ritual Entertainment and published by Activision in late 1998. ... In various religions, sacred (from Latin, sacrum, sacrifice) or holy, objects, places or concepts are believed by followers to be intimately connected with the supernatural, or divinity, and are thus greatly revered. ...

The United States of America, while a group of British colonies, was settled in part by religious dissenters from 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. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Colonialism. ... The term dissenter (from the Latin dissentire, to disagree), labels one who dissents or disagrees in matters of opinion, belief, etc. ... The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England, and acts as the mother and senior branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as a founding member of the Porvoo Communion. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ...

This assertive civil religion of the United States is 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-Christian tradition", a phrase originally intended to be maximally inclusive of the several monotheisms practiced in the United States, assuming that these faiths all worship the same God and share the same values. This assumption tends to dilute the essence of both Judaism and 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 totem of a national cult.^[1] 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.^[2] Europe is conventionally considered one of the seven continents of Earth which, in this case, is more a cultural and political distinction than a physiographic one, leading to various perspectives about Europes borders. ... Judeo-Christian (or Judaeo-Christian) is a term used to describe the body of concepts and values which are thought to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, and typically considered (along with classical Greco-Roman civilization) a fundamental basis for Western legal codes and moral values. ... Monotheism (in Greek μόνος = single and θεός = God) is the belief in the existence of one God, or in the oneness of God. ... Worship usually refers to specific acts of religious praise, honour, or devotion, typically directed to a supernatural being such as a god or goddess. ... Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people with around 15 million followers as of 2006 [1]. It is one of the first recorded monotheistic faiths and one of the oldest religious traditions still practiced today. ... Christianity is a monotheistic religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recounted in the New Testament. ... A totem is any natural or supernatural object, being or animal which has personal symbolic meaning to an individual and to whose phenomena and energy one feels closely associated with during ones life. ...

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: Oryx Press, 1999), p.53.

See also

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

In the terminology of some scholars working in sociology, a political religion is a political ideology with cultural and political power equivalent to those of a religion, and often having many sociological and ideological similarities with religion. ... This article may be confusing for some readers, and should be edited to be clearer. ... The sociology of religion is – among other elements – the study of the practices, social structures, historical backgrounds, development, universal themes, and roles of religion in society. ... Civic virtue is the cultivation of habits of personal living that are claimed to be important for the success of the individual, the family, and the community, or other groups of people. ... The term Merry England, or in more jocular, half-timbered spelling Merrie England, refers to a semi-mythological, idyllic, and pastoral way of life that the lucky inhabitants of England allegedly enjoyed at some poorly-defined point between the Middle Ages and the completion of the Industrial Revolution. ... // Secular movements In political terms Secularism is a movement toward the separation of church and state as opposed to a union. ... A secular state is a state with no state religion and in which the state is officially neutral in matters of religion, neither supporting nor opposing any particular religious beliefs or practices. ... Flag desecration is a blanket term applied to various ways of intentionally defacing or dishonoring a flag, most often a national flag (though other flags may be defaced as well). ... Marianne busts with features of Brigitte Bardot - Catherine Deneuve - Mireille Mathieu Marianne, a national emblem of France, is a personification of Liberty and Reason. ... The Juche Idea (pronounced // in Korean, approximately joo-cheh) is the official ideology of North Korea, and informally the political system based on it. ...

External links

• Civil Religion in America by Robert N. Bellah
• Civil religion - entry in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society
• Public Policy and Religion News

References

• 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