Is Civil Religion in America a Good Thing?
Civil Religion is Good for America
Civil religion is good for the country in the following ways: (1) sets the country’s overall psychological and cognitive tone (obligation, duty, morality, conscience); (2) drives the collective actions of national, regional, and local actions organizations (rituals); and (3) fills in the implicit (symbolic) behaviors that Bellah considers “indicative of deep-seated values and commitments“ (Bellah, 2005, p. 41)
The Constitution mandates the separation of church and state; however, civil religion — bridges the gap — by allowing the human administrator the latitude to choose their own personal spiritual practice while restricting conduct that infringes on the right of others.
Civil Religion Removes Religious Bias
At the same token, by retaining civil religion as a foundational element of the Constitution, the country can throttle down the influence of institutionalized religion in such a manner that decisions, judgments, and rulings cannot be determined by views of systemized religious groups.
Humanity is the Core of Civil Religion
At the granular level, civil religion aims to protect the sanctity (and the unalienable rights) of the human — as an individual — without considering whether one is a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Atheist, or Wiccan. Through the humanistic, secular-guided-by-the-spiritual approach, the US can ground its national decisions more firmly on humanitarian values.
Civil Religion Inculcates a National Conscience
Based on Rousseau’s five dogmas (Bellah, 2005, p. 43), I feel that spiritual/moral element of civil religion has the most powerful influence on society. It is the moral conscience that facilitates the administration of political, economic, social, cultural, and financial policies. Morals unite a community, as well as ensures the “exclusion of religious intolerance.”
Civil Religion Facilitates the Legislative and the Judicial Process
During my Public Administration Theory class at CLU, I discussed with my professor and colleagues (and I paraphrase) that, “conscience is necessary because we cannot possibly have enough paper to codify/write down all laws, nor do we have the time to keep up with the variations of every single law/policy, or the changes to law as the result of their daily usage, interpretation, challenge/rebuttal after application, and re-interpretation” (Casiple, 2020).
If all arguments are solved only by the courts, the country would have an enormous caseload and public service momentum would grind to a halt. It is therefore necessary to empower citizens — through Rousseau’s dogma, or through other non-biased measures — to act morally on their own, without supervision.
Civil Religion as the Panopticon
From a pragmatic sense, civil religion can be analyzed in parallel with Bentham’s “Panopticon” where prisoners are incarcerated in a building with only one observation tower. Although the Panopticon is a fear-based approach where “panoptical control is that people will obey the prevailing rules and norms when they know they are being watched” (Strub, 1989), the outcomes are somewhat similar.
Copyright Leonard Casiple 2023. All rights reserved.
About the author: Leo Casiple is a first-generation American who grew up in Southern Philippines under martial law. He spent much of his 21-year career in the US Army as a Green Beret.
Leo is currently a doctoral student at Northeastern University’s Doctor of Law and Policy program (2022–2025 Cohort). He earned his education from California Lutheran University (MPPA), ASU Thunderbird School of Global Management (MBA in Global Management), Excelsior University (BS in Liberal Arts, Ethnic and Area Studies), Academy of Competitive Intelligence (Master of Competitive Intelligence™), Defense Language Institute and Foreign Language Center (18-month Arabic Language Course), and the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School (Special Forces Qualification Course and Psychological Operations Specialist Course).
For more information about the author, click here: Leo’s LinkedIn Profile
References
Bellah, R. N. (2005). Civil Religion in America. Daedalus (Cambridge, Mass.), 134(4), 40–55. https://doi.org/10.1162/001152605774431464
Casiple, L. (2020). Public Administration Theory Discussion. MPPA. California Lutheran University.
Strub, H. (1989, January). The theory of Panoptical control: Bentham’s Panopticon and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/1520-6696%28198901%2925%3A1%3C40%3A%3AAID-JHBS2300250104%3E3.0.CO%3B2-W
