Civil Religion

Abstract

The concept of 'civil religion' suggests that a pervasive, nonsectarian understanding of morality and transcendence sacralizes the nation-state, the polity, and the history and destiny of a society. The concept became popular in social science circles following Robert Bellah's (1967) article. Civil religion has generally been credited with functioning as a source of cohesion and coherence in political life. However, recent empirical and theoretical developments have undermined the notion that civil religion is inherently an expression of social solidarity. We first explore definitional distinctions in the literature on civil religion, focusing on the United States, where the concept became important for understanding 'American exceptionalism' with regard to religiosity. We then turn to three developments that complicate the use and application of the civil religion concept as initially formulated: increasing religious pluralism, increasing religio-political polarization, and cross-national comparisons.

Civil Religion and National Politics in a Neoliberal Era

“…In the United States, the content of civil religion generally refers to the vaguely Judeo‐Christian beliefs and practices that tie the nation and its people to the Divine. It is regularly understood, in this formulation, as a meaning‐system that provides cohesion and coherence to political life (Fuist and Williams, forthcoming). Given that the ethnically and religiously diverse nation‐state is a fairly recent historical development (in part leading Lipset [] to call the United States the “first new nation”), and that societies were traditionally assumed to be threatened by competing interests and value‐systems, civil religion was initially conceptualized as a way to defuse and diffuse the passions associated with religion and integrate them within the polity.…”