Download or read book Civil Religion written by Ronald Beiner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-25 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Civil Religion offers philosophical commentaries on more than twenty thinkers stretching from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. It examines four important traditions within the history of modern political philosophy. The civil religion tradition, principally defined by Machiavelli, Hobbes and Rousseau, seeks to domesticate religion by putting it solidly in the service of politics. The liberal tradition pursues an alternative strategy of domestication by seeking to put as much distance as possible between religion and politics. Modern theocracy is a militant reaction against liberalism, reversing the relationship of subordination asserted by civil religion. Finally, a fourth tradition is defined by Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of their thought are not just modern, but hyper-modern, yet they manifest an often-hysterical reaction against liberalism that is fundamentally shared with the theocratic tradition. Together, these four traditions compose a vital dialogue that carries us to the heart of political philosophy itself.
Download or read book Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy written by Steven Frankel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by Machiavelli, modern philosophers held that the tension between the goals of biblical piety and the goals of political life needed to be resolved in favor of the political, and they attempted to recast and delimit traditional Christian teaching to serve and stabilize political life accordingly. This volume examines the arguments of those thinkers who worked to remake Christianity into a civil religion in the early modern and modern periods. Beginning with Machiavelli and continuing through to Alexis de Tocqueville, the essays in this collection explain in detail the ways in which these philosophers used religious and secular writing to build a civil religion in the West. Early chapters examine topics such as Machiavelli’s comparisons of Christianity with Roman religion, Francis Bacon’s cherry-picking of Christian doctrines in the service of scientific innovation, and Spinoza’s attempt to replace long-held superstitions with newer, “progressive” ones. Other essays probe the scripture-based, anti-Christian argument that religion must be subordinate to politics espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, both of whom championed reason over divine authority. Crucially, the book also includes a study of civil religion in America, with chapters on John Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders illuminating the relationships among religious and civil history, acts, and authority. The last chapter is an examination of Tocqueville’s account of civil religion and the American regime. Detailed, thought-provoking, and based on the careful study of original texts, this survey of religion and politics in the West will appeal to scholars in the history of political philosophy, political theory, and American political thought.
Download or read book Civil Religion in Political Thought written by Ronald L. Weed and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2010-03 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this volume blend historical and philosophical reflection with concern for contemporary political problems. They show that the causes and motivations of civil religion are a permanent fixture of the human condition, though some of its manifestations and proximate causes have shifted in an age of multiculturalism, religious toleration, and secularization
Download or read book American Covenant written by Philip Gorski and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long battle between exclusionary and inclusive versions of the American story Was America founded as a Christian nation or a secular democracy? Neither, argues Philip Gorski in American Covenant. What the founders envisioned was a prophetic republic that would weave together the ethical vision of the Hebrew prophets and the Western political heritage of civic republicanism. In this eye-opening book, Gorski shows why this civil religious tradition is now in peril—and with it the American experiment. American Covenant traces the history of prophetic republicanism from the Puritan era to today, providing insightful portraits of figures ranging from John Winthrop and W.E.B. Du Bois to Jerry Falwell, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama. Featuring a new preface by the author, this incisive book demonstrates how half a century of culture war has drowned out the quieter voices of the vital center, and demonstrates that if we are to rebuild that center, we must recover the civil religious tradition on which the republic was founded.
Download or read book Civil Religion Today written by Rhys H. Williams and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An important concept that scholars have used to help understand the relationship between religion and the American nation and polity has been 'civil religion.' A seminal article by Robert Bellah appeared just over fifty years ago. A multi-disciplinary array of scholars in this volume assess the concept's origins, history, and continued usefulness. In a period of great political polarization, considering whether there is hope for a unifying value and belief system seems more important than ever"--
Download or read book Religious Rhetoric and American Politics written by Christopher B. Chapp and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-05 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Reagan's regular invocation of America as "a city on a hill" to Obama's use of spiritual language in describing social policy, religious rhetoric is a regular part of how candidates communicate with voters. Although the Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test as a qualification to public office, many citizens base their decisions about candidates on their expressed religious beliefs and values. In Religious Rhetoric and American Politics, Christopher B. Chapp shows that Americans often make political choices because they identify with a "civil religion," not because they think of themselves as cultural warriors. Chapp examines the role of religious political rhetoric in American elections by analyzing both how political elites use religious language and how voters respond to different expressions of religion in the public sphere. Chapp analyzes the content and context of political speeches and draws on survey data, historical evidence, and controlled experiments to evaluate how citizens respond to religious stumping. Effective religious rhetoric, he finds, is characterized by two factors-emotive cues and invocations of collective identity-and these factors regularly shape the outcomes of American presidential elections and the dynamics of political representation. While we tend to think that certain issues (e.g., abortion) are invoked to appeal to specific religious constituencies who vote solely on such issues, Chapp shows that religious rhetoric is often more encompassing and less issue-specific. He concludes that voter identification with an American civic religion remains a driving force in American elections, despite its potentially divisive undercurrents.
Download or read book The Politics of the Sacred in America written by Anthony Squiers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-12-21 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Tragedy of U S Foreign Policy written by Walter A. McDougall and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-22 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fierce critique of civil religion as the taproot of America’s bid for global hegemony Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Walter A. McDougall argues powerfully that a pervasive but radically changing faith that “God is on our side” has inspired U.S. foreign policy ever since 1776. The first comprehensive study of the role played by civil religion in U.S. foreign relations over the entire course of the country’s history, McDougall’s book explores the deeply infused religious rhetoric that has sustained and driven an otherwise secular republic through peace, war, and global interventions for more than two hundred years. From the Founding Fathers and the crusade for independence to the Monroe Doctrine, through World Wars I and II and the decades-long Cold War campaign against “godless Communism,” this coruscating polemic reveals the unacknowledged but freely exercised dogmas of civil religion that bind together a “God blessed” America, sustaining the nation in its pursuit of an ever elusive global destiny.
Download or read book Civil Religion in Israel written by Charles S. Liebman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-05-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.
Download or read book Politics as Religion written by Emilio Gentile and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emilio Gentile, an internationally renowned authority on fascism and totalitarianism, argues that politics over the past two centuries has often taken on the features of religion, claiming as its own the prerogative of defining the fundamental purpose and meaning of human life. Secular political entities such as the nation, the state, race, class, and the party became the focus of myths, rituals, and commandments and gradually became objects of faith, loyalty, and reverence. Gentile examines this "sacralization of politics," as he defines it, both historically and theoretically, seeking to identify the different ways in which political regimes as diverse as fascism, communism, and liberal democracy have ultimately depended, like religions, on faith, myths, rites, and symbols. Gentile maintains that the sacralization of politics as a modern phenomenon is distinct from the politicization of religion that has arisen from militant religious fundamentalism. Sacralized politics may be democratic, in the form of a civil religion, or it may be totalitarian, in the form of a political religion. Using this conceptual distinction, and moving from America to Europe, and from Africa to Asia, Gentile presents a unique comparative history of civil and political religions from the American and French Revolutions, through nationalism and socialism, democracy and totalitarianism, fascism and communism, up to the present day. It is also a fascinating book for understanding the sacralization of politics after 9/11.
Download or read book Varieties of Civil Religion written by Robert N. Bellah and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1980, Varieties of Civil Religion was the latest statement in the field of civil religion pioneered by Robert Bellah. Over thirty years later, scholarly interest in the field continues to grow. By examining the force of religion in politics and society, this book offers a comparative treatment that deepens the understanding of American civil religion and provides a lens for exploring civil religion in other societies, particularly those of Italy, Mexico, and Japan. Bellah and Hammond trace the historical development of the peculiarly American brand of civil religion as they unravel its sometimes baffling intricacies. Themes include the conviction that America is a chosen country and American power in the world is identical with divine will. The book also examines the vigorous counterbalance that has opposed unjust wars or demanded racial and social justice. Altogether, the health of a civil religion may be a prime indication of the overall health of any society. The authors state that when civil religious symbols are co-opted by ultraconservatives, and the philosophy of liberalism seems less adequate as a guide for public or private lives, a revival of public philosophy is urgently needed. Varieties of Civil Religion supports such a revival by making the religious aspect of our central tradition understandable in a nonreactionary way. It also reaffirms that American civil religion, with its deeper tradition of openness, tolerance, and ethical commitment, can make an essential contribution to a ""global order of civility and justice."""
Download or read book American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion written by John D. Wilsey and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of America's special place in history has been a guiding light for centuries. With thoughtful insight, John D. Wilsey traces the concept of exceptionalism, including its theological meaning and implications for civil religion. This careful history considers not only the abuses of the idea but how it can also point to constructive civil engagement and human flourishing.
Download or read book Tocqueville s Civil Religion written by Sanford Kessler and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tocqueville's thinking about American religion is highly relevant to contemporary debates regarding America's origins, the current strength of American Christianity, and the proper role of religion in American public life. Kessler skillfully demonstrates how Tocqueville incorporates his ideas into an analysis of the American character, a factor in American politics that he considered more important than the Constitution
Download or read book God and War written by Raymond Haberski, Jr. and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-23 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have long considered their country to be good—a nation "under God" with a profound role to play in the world. Yet nothing tests that proposition like war. Raymond Haberski argues that since 1945 the common moral assumptions expressed in an American civil religion have become increasingly defined by the nation's experience with war. God and War traces how three great postwar “trials”—the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror—have revealed the promise and perils of an American civil religion. Throughout the Cold War, Americans combined faith in God and faith in the nation to struggle against not only communism but their own internal demons. The Vietnam War tested whether America remained a nation "under God," inspiring, somewhat ironically, an awakening among a group of religious, intellectual and political leaders to save the nation's soul. With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 behind us and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, Americans might now explore whether civil religion can exist apart from the power of war to affirm the value of the nation to its people and the world.
Download or read book Civil Religion Today written by Rhys H. Williams and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An important concept that scholars have used to help understand the relationship between religion and the American nation and polity has been 'civil religion.' A seminal article by Robert Bellah appeared just over fifty years ago. A multi-disciplinary array of scholars in this volume assess the concept's origins, history, and continued usefulness. In a period of great political polarization, considering whether there is hope for a unifying value and belief system seems more important than ever"--
Download or read book Southern Civil Religions written by Arthur Remillard and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of the Civil War, the Lost Cause gave white southerners a new collective identity anchored in the stories, symbols, and rituals of the defeated Confederacy. Historians have used the idea of civil religion to explain how this powerful memory gave the white South a unique sense of national meaning, purpose, and destiny. The civil religious perspectives of everyone else, meanwhile, have gone unnoticed. Arthur Remillard fills this void by investigating the civil religious discourses of a wide array of people and groups—blacks and whites, men and women, northerners and southerners, Democrats and Republicans, as well as Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. Focusing on the Wiregrass Gulf South region—an area covering north Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama—Remillard argues that the Lost Cause was but one civil religious topic among many. Even within the white majority, civil religious language influenced a range of issues, such as progress, race, gender, and religious tolerance. Moreover, minority groups developed sacred values and beliefs that competed for space in the civil religious landscape.
Download or read book Religion and Politics in the United States written by Kenneth D. Wald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From marriage equality, to gun control, to immigration reform and the threat of war, religion plays a fascinating and crucial part in our nation's political process and in our culture at large. Now in its seventh edition, Religion and Politics in the United States includes analyses of the nation's most pressing political matters regarding religious freedom, and the ways in which that essential constitutional freedom situates itself within modern America. The book also explores the ways that religion has affected the orientation of partisan politics in the United States. Through a detailed review of the political attitudes and behaviors of major religious and minority faith traditions, the book establishes that religion continues to be a major part of the American cultural and political milieu while explaining that it must interact with many other factors to influence political outcomes in the United States.