God's Role in the American Civil Religion (original) (raw)
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Theological Features of American Civil Religion
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Civil Religion and American Christianity
2018
Building upon the work that Robert D. Linder and Richard V. Pierard started in Civil Religion and the Presidency, this book begins with examinations of how Lyndon Johnson, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton employed civil religion during their presidencies. Convinced that the influence of civil religion expands beyond the White House, the contributing scholars of this volume also explore the broader effects of civil religion upon Christian denominations and American social development. This thought-provoking work analyzes the effects of American civil religion upon American politics and Christian denominations. Focusing upon particular presidencies and specific denominations, these essays examine how civil religion has helped to define religio-political discourse, revise the way certain Christians--most notably, Baptists, Mennonites, and Pentecostals--related to American life, and frame elements of debates about controversial issues such as gender, nationalism, and civic duty.
Politics and Religion
In a brief essay published around the first anniversary of President Trump's inauguration, John D. Carlson, who directs Arizona State University's Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, lamented the "corrosive effects on the American tradition of civil religion" of Trump's inaugural address (to say nothing of the president's first year in office more generally). Unlike its predecessors, Carlson wrote, Trump's address "failed to affirm even basic commitments to freedom, democracy and human dignity-ideals that many Americans hold as universal, self-evident, even God-given." Trump's "battering of civil religion" was made even more objectionable, Carlson went on, by the fact that "Americans place our sacred trust in the principles, purposes and aspirations of this civil religion," which he described as "the moral backbone of our body politic-a heritage of shared beliefs, stories, ideas, symbols and events that explains the American experience of self-government with reference to a moral order that transcends it" (See Carlson, "Donald Trump and the Battering of Civil Religion," online at https://religionnews. com/2018/01/19/donald-trump-and-the-battering-of-civil-religion/). I mention Carlson's essay-which remains well worth reading, and rereading, even as the Trump phenomenon continues to leave its distinctive mark upon our national discourse-as a way of introducing the two books under review here, because they all seek to illuminate the same cultural phenomenon: "American civil religion," first elaborated by Robert 195
Important Debates and Current Challenges in American Civil Religion Today
In 1967, Robert Bellah coined the American Civil Religion (ACR): the denominationally non-specific system of symbols, beliefs, and rituals that purportedly relates Americans transcendently to the nation. Over the last several decades, however, the U.S. population has become increasingly polarized and diverse, as well as less traditionally religious. This chapter begins by covering the theoretical origins of the concept in Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Émile Durkheim. Against the backdrop of this debate, it lays out the salient debates in civil religion today: how narrowly or broadly to define religion, whether the ACR is unifying or divisive, and whether it encourages self-criticism or self-worship. Finally, it lays out the central challenges facing the ACR: religio-political polarization, increasing demographic diversity, and the "Rise of the Nones." The chapter ends with further areas for scholarly attention.
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In some regards, the chief executive of the land is the high priest of how Americans define the country to the world. After all, the presidential/vice presidential slate is the only one up for election every four years and the person who wins the office represents the cherished beliefs of the American people.
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This book provides a comprehensive investigation of the political dimensions of civil religion in the United States. By employing an original social-psychological theory rooted in semiotics, it offers a qualitative and quantitative empirical examination of more than fifty years of political rhetoric. Further, it presents two in-depth case studies that examine how the cultural, totemic sign of ‘the Founding Fathers’ and the signs of America’s sacred texts (the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence) are used in attempts to link partisan policy positions with notions that the country collectively holds sacred. The book’s overarching thesis is that America’ s civil religion serves as a discursive framework for the country’s politics of the sacred, mediating the demands of particularistic interests and social solidarity through the interaction of social belief and institutional politics like elections and the Supreme Court. The book penetrates America’s unique political religiosity to reveal and unravel the intricate ways in which politics, political institutions, religion and culture intertwine in the United States.