Review of The Rhetoric of American Civil Religion (original) (raw)
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Chapter 1 The Political Dimensions of the American Civil Religion (ACR): An Introduction
The Politics of the Sacred in America: The Role of Civil Religion in Political Practice, 2018
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.
Theological Features of American Civil Religion
public political speech by politicians, is inevitably shaped by theological and sacred ideas, most often Christian thought and ideas. In this paper, I will show this in three primary ways: first, it provides the primary structure for common political speech; second, it influences one of the primary contradictions in American political thought, that of the simultaneous affirmations of both intense tribalism and welcoming universalism; and third, it guides a preference for great salvific figures. In exploring these three ideas, I will draw on the works of
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
Lincoln's Romantic Political Thought: Law, Political Religion, and Slavery
Abraham Lincoln’s political thought is an important turning point in American political ideas and practices. For Harry Jaffa, Lincoln represented a return to the principles of the Declaration of Independence while Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey saw him derailing the American political tradition. More recently Joseph R. Fornieri has portrayed Lincoln’s enduring legacy as a product of his status as a “philosopher statesman” rather than a pragmatist and Grant N. Havers has demonstrated the centrality of “charity” to his political religion. In a new book on his political thought, George Kateb has also added Lincoln to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman as an innovator in the development of “democratic individuality,” and maintains the secularity of Lincoln’s political religion. What has not been addressed directly by political theorists, however, is the distinctly “Romantic” bent of Lincoln’s political thought. Despite his fidelity to the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s evocations of “natural” or “human” rights are quite limited and although he was deeply influenced by Enlightenment radicals like Paine and Volney, his unorthodox religious language has little in common with their anti-clericalism. Rather, Lincoln’s political thought should be understood in a mid 19th century intellectual context where Romantic political ideas could be found throughout American culture. The Romanticism of literary figures like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, and its formative effect on the Transcendentalist movement and Second Great Awakening has been well documented, but its influence on American politics has been understudied. Lincoln was part of a generation of political thinkers and actors that was forced to rethink the Enlightenment and classical ideals of the Founders in the context of slavery. Liberal Enlightenment ideals like the natural right to property and the rule of law had been used to defend slavery intellectually while liberal and democratic institutions had been captured by slave power. Perhaps most disturbing to Lincoln and his generation was that this seizure was possible because of the legalism inherent in the liberal institutions of the founding. Lincoln’s political thought represents a Romantic renewal of Enlightenment liberalism in a time of crisis, one that reimagined law, rights, and democratic institutions as a kind of “political religion,” with an emotional and aesthetic appeal instead of a cold, impersonal, unlovely, and instrumental means for preserving liberty.
Religion in American Political Life Syllabus
The objective of this course is to help students understand the historical significance and continued relevance of religion in American political life. Students will be asked to critically examine the interplay of religion and politics through class discussion and the writing of four papers rooted in close textual analysis of the required reading. The course is divided into four units. The first section will explore the contemporary debates concerning the First Amendment through the lens of the Founding Fathers. The second part will examine one of the classics of American political thought, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. The third section will survey how religion has affected American political life during three particular historical moments (the Civil War, the immigration of Catholics and Jews in the late nineteenth century, and the Civil Rights Movement). The course concludes with contemporary reflections on the state of the so-called culture wars.