From Civil to Political Religion: The Intersection of Culture, Religion and Politics

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.

Author: Marcela Cristi
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Published: 08/23/2001
Pages: 300
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.30w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9780889203686

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2002 pg. 1255
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2002 pg. 11
Library Journal 01/01/2002
Choice 06/01/2006 pg. 1745

About the Author
Cristi, Marcela: - Marcela Cristi is an assistant professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University.