scholarly journals Flags, Totem Bodies, and the Meanings of 9/11: A Durkheimian Tour of a September 11th Ceremony at the Flight 93 Chapel

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Riley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Terrorist Attack ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11Th ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
National Hero ◽  
American Flag

Some four miles as the crow flies from the site at which United 93, which was the fourth plane involved in the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack on the United States, struck ground, there sits a small chapel dedicated to the passengers and crew. The Thunder on the Mountain Chapel is considerably less well known than the Parks Department memorial a few hundred yards from the crash site, but it is, arguably at least, equally important in the cultural production of the Flight 93 myth. This article draws from Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life as well as other theoretical sources to look closely at the chapel. I argue that what is going on at the Chapel contributes to a totemic myth that turns the American flag into a representation of the dead national hero and then places the totem object into the beliefs and rituals of an American civil religion.

U.S. Foreign Policy and Religion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Magee
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Religious People ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Nations ◽  
In The Beginning

The United States has been uniquely God-centered among Western nations, and that includes its foreign policy. From George Washington to the present, all presidents and policymakers have had to consider God in varying degrees either for their domestic audience or because they believed in a version of Providential mission in the world. In the beginning, the new United States was filled with religious people whom the founders had to consider in crafting the founding documents. In time, the very idea of the United States became so entwined with the sense of the Divine that American civil religion dominated even the most secular acts of policymakers.

Religious Pilgrimages in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan E. Campo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Sacred Place

Pilgrimage, as a type of religious journey, involves embodied movement across geographic, social, political, cultural, and often religious boundaries to a sacred place or landscape. It is arguably a universal phenomenon that can engage individual pilgrims or millions, especially with the onset of modernity, which has facilitated travel over distances great and small. As an aspect of religious life in the United States, pilgrimage is often overlooked. Nevertheless, the country’s landscape encompasses numerous sites of sacred significance associated with organized religions, civil religion, and facets of its cultural religion that attract millions of visitors annually. As a dynamic set of phenomena, pilgrimages to such sites are constantly evolving, affected by factors such as religious and social movements, national politics, immigration, and tourism.

An American Sufism

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 411-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Rory Dickson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Public Religion ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sufi Order ◽  
Politically Active

The Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi order is a transnational religious organization. Founded by Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani (b. 1922), the order spread throughout the Middle East in the 1950s and 1960s, and then to Britain in the 1970s. In 1990, Nazim’s student Shaykh Hisham Kabbani moved to the United States and established a branch of the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order there. The past fifteen years have seen the emergence of this order as one of the most widespread and politically active Sufi organizations in America. In this paper I ask: Why and how is it that the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order effectively functions as a public religion in America? To answer this question, I will use José Casanova’s theory of public religion to understand why and how the order has developed and maintained a public profile in the United States. I contend that the Naqshbandi-Haqqani order’s public activity is rooted in: (1) the Naqshbandi order’s history of public significance in Muslim societies; (2) the order’s theological and practical appreciation of religious and cultural pluralism; (3) the order’s transnational character; and (4) its adoption of certain elements of American civil religion.

Permission to Dissent: Civil Religion and the Radio Western, 1933–1960

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Kip Anthony Wedel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rhetorical Tradition ◽  
God's Will ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
Large Audience ◽  
Broadcast History ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractRadio drama gave Americans a new form of commercial entertainment in the 1930s, but the stories themselves contained time-honored elements. One of these was the rhetorical tradition scholars have identified as American civil religion. Radio Westerns were particularly well suited to promulgate familiar civil religion themes. They described the United States as an instrument of divine will in history, celebrated Americans as pious people, and associated national expansion with the implementation of God's will.The Lone Ranger was the most famous Western to articulate these themes. The show's writers consciously sought to create in their hero a “composite of all men who uphold the laws of God and man.” During its long broadcast history from 1933 to 1954, the show attracted a large audience and inspired publishing, film, and television ventures. By the late 1940s, however, owing in part to World War II and in part to the Cold War, some Americans on both sides of the microphone found the old formula unsatisfactory.Gunsmoke, which premiered in 1951, exemplified a second generation of radio Westerns. Though still civil religious, these Westerns located the United States' religious significance less in national triumph than in personal triumphs of its citizens. In doing so, they critiqued the earlier Westerns and shifted from what Martin E. Marty has called the “priestly” to the “prophetic” form of civil religion. Their impatience with the older Westerns' use of civil religion also paralleled theological critiques of the popular Christianity of the 1950s.

scholarly journals From Civil Religion to Presidential Public Theology—A Re-evaluation of the American Civil Religion Phenomenon. The Case of George H. W. Bush

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
Kjell O. Lejon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Theology ◽  
American Presidency ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Public Papers ◽  
Empirical Material

Since the inauguration of the civil religion debate in the United States in 1967, it has been argued that the religious dimension of American presidency should be understood as a kind of civil religion, normally based upon the definition of Jean Jacque Rousseau, or variations of this his definition. However, in this article the author argues, based upon the empirical material presented in Public Papers of the President and elsewhere, that a more accurate description of the religion dimension of some modern presidencies is public theology. He uses the presidency of George H. W. Bush as a case study.

Soviet and American Civil Religion: A Comparison

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Brian M. Lowe ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
Social Unity

The United States and the former Soviet Union offer pertinent case studies for an application of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's conception of "civil religion." This essay demonstrates that in both societies phenomena akin to Rousseau's civil religion emerged, which included the generation of myths about the history and destiny of the nation, the celebration of historical dates and persons, the production of sacred writings, and the presence of civil Religious "virtuosos," Civil religion emerged in historically and culturally diverse contexts via two major dynamics: spontaneously by the population; and more consciously, promoted by various elites. The major difference between the Soviet and American models in this respect is that in the United States civil religion emerged with little input from the state. Despite important differences, Rousseau's conception of civil religion is helpful in that it enables us to recognize how modern states evolve forms of civil religion which serve to create some degree of social unity.

American Presidential Rhetoric from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush: Another Look at Civil Religion

2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wade Clark Roof
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Presidential Rhetoric ◽  
Religious Nationalism ◽  
Recent Period ◽  
American Civil Religion

The period since 1980 in the United States offers an opportunity to reexamine the “American civil religion” hypothesis as put forth by sociologist Robert N. Bellah. In a time of massive changes both domestically and globally, presidential rhetoric on God and country underwent important shifts in substance and style. The author examines several major myths by which Americans have affirmed their identity historically, and how these have informed the rhetoric of presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush. It is argued that popular and highly contested “public faiths” in the United States blending religious and political ideals take diverse forms of expression and vary in the degree to which they approach a civil religion of the sort Bellah imagined. In this recent period, a shift toward religious nationalism is clearly evident.

scholarly journals Towards a New Religious Narrative in the United States of America?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio García
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Civil Religion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
American Civil Religion ◽  
Religious Narrative ◽  
The One

American secularisation is considered a exceptional case in the Western world because of, on the one hand, the softer way it seems to have occurred in relation to other Western countries and, on the other, the fusion it seems to have been done among Judeo-Christian traditions into what is known as American civil religion. The point proposed before is problematic and needs to be called into questions under the light of both the revisions made to the secularization theory by scholars such as Casanova through the interpretation of empirical data collected through the world about the religiosity of people and the multiple works made about the use of “sacred” language in American public life. However, this paper takes those problematic dimensions for granted in order to deepened into what can be considered another secular human endeavour endowed with a religious spirit, namely: the spirit of Silicon Valley. This new secular-sacred narrative is not just American but is being exported as a narrative with “Messianic” traces that seems to aspire to embrace the whole world. Thus, this article explores the origins and evolution of this narrative in the United States, on the one hand, and the expansion of what can be considered a “salvation” ideology abroad that country, on the other.

An Overview of the History of Religious Life in the United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Wittberg ◽  
Thomas P. Gaunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Order ◽  
Religious Institutes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Socioeconomic Composition

This chapter briefly describes the history of religious institutes in the United States. It first covers the demographics—the overall numbers and the ethnic and socioeconomic composition—of the various institutes during the nineteenth century. It next discusses the types of ministries the sisters, brothers, and religious order priests engaged in, and the sources of vocations to their institutes. The second section covers changes in religious institutes after 1950, covering the factors which contributed to the changes as well as their impact on the institutes themselves and the larger Church. The chapter concludes with a brief overview of the subsequent chapters.

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