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TruthBook Religious News Blog



Sunday, December 30, 2007

Civil religion quietly unifies and guides American public life

Saturday, 12/29/07
By RAY WADDLE

Opinion

Americans say they're more likely to vote for a homosexual than an atheist when choosing a president, a USA Today/Gallup survey reported in February.

This all-American wariness of unbelief suggests we want leaders to make decisions within a familiar moral tradition (biblical, more or less), with a providential deity somehow assisting.

Civil religion is not Christianity, it's not a denomination, and these days it's not fashionable. Yet it has been a unifying feature of national life for 200-plus years. Will it survive America's 21st century search for identity?

The American civil religion was spelled out 40 years ago by sociologist Robert Bellah, who found it in places small and large — on the currency ("in God we trust") and in inaugural addresses ("here on earth God's work must truly be our own": John Kennedy).

It endorses human liberty and stirs public purpose. It has its own "sacred" texts, such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and King's Dream speech, stressing sacrifice, rebirth, rededication.

It claims holy days: Thanksgiving and Memorial Day. And hallowed ground: Arlington Cemetery and all other military burial grounds.

Imprecision is the key

Civil religion does not replace traditional religions but functions alongside. Yet it has few defenders these days.

It is too neutral and imprecise for religious partisans, not neutral enough for atheists.

But its imprecision is what makes it work. It declares a cosmic baseline for morality, but it's not overly doctrinaire or aggressive.

It's the religion that people mean when they appeal to the common good or a common moral inheritance, as Mitt Romney did recently in his religion speech.

Civil religion has hazards. It can turn into worship of the nation. But Bellah once argued that true civil religion places us under divine judgment when we stray from our principles. It should inspire self-criticism.

Can American civic life keep its civil religion in the surging face of pluralism? Is there room for non-believers, or must it be scrapped? National civil religions emerged after the demise of the divine right of kings as a way to ennoble national solidarity.

The big question persists. Can there be a public morality that rallies public purpose without reference to a creator?

Notable regimes have tried — Hitler, Mao, Stalin, all discredited. History offers no shining modern examples yet of civil religion without God. Americans, so far, are voting with history.

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