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Civil Religion

Civil religion became a popular topic of discussion in the sociology of religion during the late 1960s with the publication of Robert Bellah's essay “Civil Religion in America.” The definition of civil religion has been a major point of contention throughout the debate, but Bellah initially writes of it as the religious dimension of civil life marked off by rituals, discourse, myths, beliefs, and symbols that unify the national community and point the nation toward proper domestic and international action. And even though previous researchers had written about similar topics in similar terms, Bellah's article struck a chord in the academy and was picked up by social commentators in the following years. But the origins of the term are found much earlier.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Civil Religion

While many writers have traced civil religion back to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire, JeanJacques Rousseau was the first to use the term civilreligion in his work, The Social Contract. Rousseau claimed that religion, and specifically Christianity, was antithetical to the cohesion of a political community. He believed that Christianity divided the allegiance of citizens between this world and the world of the afterlife. But Rousseau recognized that religion afforded legitimacy and authority to all known civil systems and that such a means to legitimacy and authority was necessary for good citizens and a properly functioning state. To implement his social contract without the entanglements of otherworldly religion while retaining that authority, Rousseau posited a civil religion that the state would recognize and maintain. This civil religion would consist of basic religious principles that all members of the society could agree upon without reference to a particular religion and its particular otherworldly concerns. This civil religion would consist of six simple, unembellished doctrines: (1) the existence of a benevolent deity; (2) the next life, where (3) the good are happy and (4) the wicked are punished; and (5) the sacred nature of the laws and the contract. These are the five positive doctrines. The sole negative doctrine is the rejection of intolerance, which is yet another reason for the exclusion of particular religious traditions from civil religious consideration.

From this viewpoint, civil religion is state controlled. According to Rousseau, the state sets the doctrines and enforces them on pain of banishment or death. And while such a civil religion may not have ever existed, at least not for any significant period of time, Rousseau's influence on the subject remains.

Emile Durkheim and Civil Religion

While Émile Durkheim never used the term civil religion, he saw himself developing a science of morality derived from and reinforcing social solidarity throughout his work. France was in turmoil after facing defeat in war with Germany in 1870, and the nation had been through seven governments and 14 constitutions since 1789. The rise of the Third Republic was an attempt to give new life to French Revolutionary principles. A morality grounded in society would find its legitimacy in that grounding and would be a force for stability in this republican form of government, which needed, as all republics do, a strong moral basis. Like so many other thinkers in tumultuous eras, Durkheim strove to develop an orderly system for a time of disorder and instability. Bellah attempts to do the same in The Broken Covenant and “Religion and the Legitimation of the American Republic.” Like Durkheim's concern with military defeat and political unrest, Bellah's concern in these works is that the experiences of Vietnam and Watergate undercut authority and trust in leadership, and this requires a rearticulation of the meaning of the republic and the civil religious covenant. Bellah's work in the 1980s goes on to deal with individualism as a reaction to the overtly self-interested use of authority in society. In much of Bellah's work, he attempts to show that this abuse was harmful in itself and in the reaction that it produced in Americans.

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