American Civil Religion

[Claude]

Recently I was reading about American culture as compared to Western European culture when I came across something very interesting. A facet of patriotism, both in Europe and America, is the civil religion. This is the reverence of national symbols, holidays and figures. Countries that underwent a revolution, the U.S. and France for example, have very distinct and well formed civil religions.

Here's a quick overview of what is accepted as parts of the American CR.

• There is a deistic concept of "God"
• There are three "goddess" that personify America's chief virtues and the nation as a whole:Lady Liberty, Lady Justice and Columbia
• There are saintly figures represented by the Founding Fathers and other notable Americans who played a pivotal role in history
• There are sacred documents like the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address
• There are sacred sites like the tombs of dead Founders, famous battles (Yorktown), memorials, etc
• There are national rituals:The Pledge of Allegiance, elections, Presenting of the Colors, state funerals etc
• There are national holidays: Fourth of July, Presidents Day (Washington's Birthday), Thanksgiving (unique to the U.S.), Memorial Day, Columbus Day, Marin Luther King Day, etc
• Lastly, there are sacred symbols: The Eagle, Old Glory, etc

Personally, I find this idea so shocking because it's so obvious. So what do you lot think?

A quick example in France that I find entertaining, it's still illegal to name a pig Napoleon.

[Torey]

Re: American Civil Religion

I suppose it makes sense. Could explain the "blind patriotism" of some countries - and when it's likened more closely to a religion, it makes a great deal more sense to me. I suppose there are fundamentalist patriots, too? I honestly never really thought of it that way.

[Aeran]

Re: American Civil Religion

I never really thought of it as being that codified, but I have noticed that, for example, a lot of Americans talk about the founding fathers with the kind of reverence usually reserved for holy figures. Similarly, the flag is often treated like a holy symbol.

[Malflick]

Re: American Civil Religion

Oh wow. This really was so obvious... I had been thinking about this before thanks to Bioshock Infinite (where in a magic city the founding fathers of America are literally deified), but not quite in these terms.

Its notable how Pagan these concepts seem. I always found it odd that we were revering national symbols in a manner that could be seen as so idolatrous when many of the same people who generally would find anything non-Christian abhorrent were all over these sort of mild acts of worship...

One final (nerdy) note: in the RPG Scion, there is an American Pantheon of Gods, including those Triple goddesses, with Uncle Sam in a lead god role. I just found that amusing.

PS: The Napoleon/Pig thing made my day.

[Nightingale]

Re: American Civil Religion

on a semi-related note, has anyone here read Niel Gaiman's American Gods? because that deals with the same concept, but with commercialism instead of nationalism/patriotism. the "American Gods" in that book are things like the TV, the highway, the radio, etc.

and the TV manifests itself as Lucille Ball...

[MaskedOne]

Re: American Civil Religion

Which book has that pantheon, Mal?

If I'm not broke at some point this summer, I may have to get it for the lols.

[Malflick]

Re: American Civil Religion

Which book has that pantheon, Mal?

If I'm not broke at some point this summer, I may have to get it for the lols.

Its in "Scion Companion" I believe. The game itself is very very fun, and I'd recommend the whole thing.

[Nightingale]

Re: American Civil Religion

on the subject of naming pigs Napoleon: first of all, it makes me think of Animal Farm, and second of all, who'd want to name a pig after that idiot anyway? even if it's a French pig. even French pigs are greater than Buonaparte. He's not even French.

France needs no Corsica to be great.

[thalassa]

Re: American Civil Religion

Regarding the OP...have you read Founding Faith, American Gospel or Faiths of the Founding Fathers? All of them (other than being interesting) touch on the idea of a civil idea of "god", as a specific construct of the Enlightenment, being "adopted" by the FF (considering a number of them were deists, unitarians, etc, that should be of no surprise). If you do enough reading into the subject, this God is a pretty specific conceptualization, and its one of the reasons why I don't necessairly object to things like inagural prayers or "in god we trust" on my money (although I do object to "under god" as a bastardization of the original words and idea of the author).

[Claude]

Re: American Civil Religion

I completely agree Thalassa. The concept of god that the Founding Fathers held in such high regard has little to do with Yahweh and more to do with the Enlightenment philosophers.

I for one completely believe that the civil religion is a positive social device in America. People often talk about American culture and how difficult it is to pinpoint it since we are essentially a nation of immigrants. I've always explained to people that American culture isn't based on traditions, ethnicity or even necessarily a common history. Instead, American culture is a corpus of ideas embodied by the principles found in the civil religion. Historically speaking, diversity has been the bane as well as the promoter of many republics and democracies. Civil religions, rather institutionalized like in Rome or implied like in America, help to lessen the negative effects of an extremely diverse population by unifying it under common ideals. Now I'm not suggesting we start praying to the saintly Founding Fathers or sacrificing at the shrine of Lady Liberty, but active participation in the civil religion (voting, holidays, etc) and research into America's history and founding philosophies should be encouraged.

[B. de Corbin]

Re: American Civil Religion

Dan Brown's book (fiction), The Lost Symbol, plays with this idea.