From Civil to Political Religion : The Intersection of Culture, Religion and Politics.
Title:
From Civil to Political Religion : The Intersection of Culture, Religion and Politics.
Author:
Cristi, Marcela.
ISBN:
9780889209381
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (300 pages)
Contents:
Table of Contents -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Theoretical Foundations -- One European Pedigree, Two Different Traditions -- Rousseau on Civil Religion -- Rousseau's Ideal Citizen -- Durkheim on Civil Religion -- Religion, Social Order, and the State -- Chapter 2 American Civil Religion and the American Debate -- The Rebirth of Civil Religion -- Setting the Ground Rules -- Civil Religion as a Source of Integration -- Other Voices of Dissent -- Civil Religion as a Source of Legitimation -- Chapter 3 The "Problem" of Legitimacy, Power, and Politics -- The Intellectual Roots of the Problem -- Legitimacy in Sociological Theory -- Religion and Legitimation Today -- The Invisibility of Power -- The Consensus Legacy and Its Problems -- Civil Religion: Its Agents and Structural Support -- Chapter 4 State-Directed Civil Religions in Comparative Perspective -- Civil Religion as Political Religion -- Sacred and Secular Civil Religions -- From "Archaic" to "Modern" Civil Religions -- Religion as a Society-Oriented Institution -- Chapter 5 Chile, 1973-1989: A Case Study -- Pinochet's Civil Religious Discourse -- Pinochet's Civil Religion and the Catholic Church -- Analysis of Pinochet's Civil Religion -- Chilean Civil Religion in Comparative Perspective -- Chapter 6 Civil Religion and the Spirit of Nationalism -- Nationalism as a Civic Duty -- Nationalism in the United States -- The Structural Ambivalence of Civil Religion -- Conclusion: Durkheim versus Rousseau Revisited -- Notes -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.
Abstract:
Prompted by the shattering of the bonds between religion and the political order brought about by the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau devised a "new" religion (civil religion) to be used by the state as a way of enforcing civic unity. Emile Durkheim, by contrast, conceived civil religion to be a spontaneous phenomenon arising from society itself - a non-coercive force expressing the self-identify or self-definition of a people. In 1967, the American sociologist Robert Bellah rediscovered the concept and applied it to American society in its Durkheimian form. Ever since Bellah's publication, most authors have sought to explain civil religion in terms of an alleged "spontaneous" integrative role for society. They have emphasized the religious and cultural dimension of the concept, but failed to give due consideration to its political-ideological foundations. Thus, the coercive potential of civil religion has received little attention or has been wrongly relegated to Third World countries. Cristi provides a critique of the civil religion thesis, and identifies the most basic deficiencies of literature on this topic. By contrasting Bellah's Durkheimian conception with Rousseau's original formulation, the author discloses the dubious conceptual and empirical basis of the former. She demonstrates the need to rethink Bellah's thesis in the light of a reinterpretation of Rousseau's and Durkheim's classical approaches, and substantiates her critique with a brief comparative survey of state-directed civil religions, and with an informative case study of civil religion in Pinochet's Chile.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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