Onward Christian Soldiers: US Civil War & (original) (raw)

Common Faith: Civil Religion in the US

The United States has never had a state religion; however, it is impossible to say that America is, or ever was, a Godless country. The existence and acceptance of various faiths has resulted in the establishment of an all-encompassing civil religion. This study examines the phenomenon of faith as a political issue–in the sense that a decisive majority of Americans share the same or similar values, which are based on spirituality and the belief in God.

The measure of American religion: Toward improving the state-of-the-art. Social Forces 79(1):291–318

2000

Recently, scholars have devoted renewed attention to the role of religion in American life. Thus, it is important that they use the most effective means available to categorize and study religious groups. However, the most widely used classification scheme in survey research (T.W. Smith 1990) does not capture essential differences between American religious traditions and overlooks significant new trends in religious affiliation. We critique this scheme based on its historical, terminological, and taxonomical inaccuracy and offer a new approach that addresses its shortcomings by using denominational affiliation to place respondents into seven categories grounded in the historical development of American religious traditions. Most important, this new scheme yields more meaningful interpretations because the categories refer to concrete religious traditions. Because of increased accuracy in classification, it also improves model fit and reduces measurement error. Since the rise of the...

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.

Restructuring of American Religion: Further Evidence

Sociological Inquiry, 1996

Data are analyzed from three national surveys conducted in 1984, 1989, and 1992, supplemented by other data from a 1991 and a 1992 survey, to examine the distribution of religious conservatives, moderates, and liberals, and to consider the social and ideological correlates of these religious orientations. The results suggest overall stability in the distribution of these orientations and offer modest support for status group, religious socialization, and religious organization interpretations of their sources. The results also indicate that religious views correspond with positions on a number of contested social policy issues, but cast doubt on arguments about deeper differences in worldview and moral perspectives. The ways in which the data support and help to refine arguments presented in The Restrucruring of American Religion are discussed.

Politics and Religion in Contemporary United States of America 315

Although there has been much speculation about the way that religion shapes American attitudes on foreign policy, there are few empirical analyses of that influence. This paper draws on a large national sample of the public in 2008 to classify religious groups on Eugene Wittkopf's (1990) classic dimensions of foreign policy attitudes, militant internationalism and cooperative internationalism. We find rather different religious constituencies for each dimension and demonstrate the influence of ethnoreligious and theological factors on both. Combining the two dimensions, we show that American religious groups occupy different locations in Wittkopf's hardliner, internationalist, accommodationist, and isolation-ist camps.

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

The Rise of religious movements in the United States

Originally, the Democrats enjoyed the support of mainline Catholics and some mainline Protestants, however, with the 2004 election we saw a new religious movements that incorporate varieties of Christian denominations from difference spectrum throwing their support to the Republican's incumbent president, George W. Bush. The work of Frank T. Lambert refers to this phenomenon as the fall of the Christian left; they were less concerned about religious doctrine but concentrated more on social justice while at the same time, there was a corresponding rise of the Christian right who held a more orthodox and conservative worldview. James Davison Hunter, however, argued in his work that this new trend was the result of a cultural war; a conflict over the moral vision of the progressivists and the traditionalists that dated back to the founding of the country. The first half of the paper will asset both theories, and debunking misconceptions, the latter part of the paper will be applying it with the surveys to see whether the theories reflect the changing trench. This paper conclude that Hunter offered a more cohesive arguments, with supporting polls. The rise of the new religious movement was indeed the result of a cultural war between progressivist and traditionalist.