📘Lexicon Entry: Civil Religion
Theological Genealogy | April 8, 2025
Definition
Civil Religion refers to the implicit religious dimensions of a society's public life, expressed through beliefs, rituals, symbols, and narratives that provide sacred meaning and purpose to national identity and experience. It represents a set of quasi-religious attitudes, values, and practices that exist alongside formal religious institutions but operate in the civic rather than ecclesiastical realm.
Key Characteristics
Transcendent framework: Provides sacred meaning to national identity and purpose
Ritual expressions: Public ceremonies, holidays, and observances with religious dimensions
Sacred symbols: Flag, monuments, founding documents treated with reverence
National saints: Founding figures and heroes memorialized and venerated
Providential narrative: Historical events interpreted as divinely guided or significant
Moral foundations: Ethical frameworks that guide national self-understanding
Sacrificial themes: Valorization of self-sacrifice for national purposes
Historical Development
The concept of civil religion was developed by sociologist Robert Bellah in his influential 1967 essay "Civil Religion in America," though the term itself goes back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Bellah identified a distinct set of religious elements in American public life that existed alongside, but separate from, formal church institutions.
American civil religion emerged from multiple sources:
Puritan covenant theology and its vision of America as a "city upon a hill"
Enlightenment deism that influenced many founding figures
Protestant Christian traditions that shaped early American culture
Civic republican ideals about virtuous citizenship
Historical experiences including the Revolution, Civil War, and World Wars
Prophetic and Priestly Traditions
Bellah identified two competing strands within American civil religion:
The priestly tradition celebrates American accomplishments, emphasizes divine blessing on national enterprises, and tends toward uncritical affirmation of national policies. This tradition risks idolatrous nationalism and has been easily coopted by Dominative Christianism.
The prophetic tradition holds America accountable to its highest ideals, calls for national repentance when those ideals are violated, and maintains critical awareness of the gap between American promises and practices. This tradition, exemplified by figures like Lincoln and King, offers resources for Prophetic Patriotism.
Contemporary Manifestations
Think of civil religion like an operating system running in the background of public life. Most citizens don't consciously think about it, but it provides the frameworks and assumptions through which national events and identities are interpreted and understood.
Contemporary expressions include:
Presidential inaugurations and their quasi-religious ceremonies
Military funeral services and Memorial Day observances
The reverential treatment of national symbols like the flag
Public invocations of divine blessing on American enterprises
The sacralization of founding documents like the Constitution
Political rhetoric that frames national purposes in transcendent terms
Theological Assessment
Civil religion presents complex theological challenges. At its best, it can foster civic virtue, social cohesion, and moral accountability in public life. At its worst, it devolves into idolatrous nationalism that absolutizes relative political arrangements and sacralizes particular national interests.
Both Dominative Christianism and Providential Identitarianism draw heavily on civil religious themes, though in different ways:
Dominative Christianism often employs civil religious language to sacralize conservative political positions, traditional social arrangements, and American power projection.
Providential Identitarianism frequently invokes civil religious ideals to frame progressive causes as fulfillment of America's divine purpose and certain identity groups as specially chosen to advance that purpose.
Related Terms
This lexicon entry was last updated on April 8, 2025