The modern concept of civil religion manifests its fundamental purpose through inculcating nationalism and diminishing loyalty to other local communities in the name of church/state separation. This article wishes to explore the roots of the modern concept in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robespierre, and the French Revolution and their attempt to replace the church with the state. It proceeds to exemplify the new etatism or loyalty to the state through examining the Inaugural Addresses of US Presidents and displaying the many facets of the civil religion in America that promote its national identity. Some scholars fail to appreciate the intimate relation between the civil religion and nationalism and try to make this form of religion an ideal calling for the people, often centered upon their own political agenda. These scholars fail to recognize that its strict view of church/state separation loses the possibility of providing a prophetic witness outside the state or holding it accountable to a higher court. This article rejects the strict separation of the civil religion and finds true religion developing from below within the affections of the people, not from above in some civic establishment. It is these religious affections that hold the state accountable and must find expression in public.
The purpose of this article is to provide a critical exploration of the civil religion in America. It starts with an examination of two leading scholars, who are associated with the concept and noted for advancing a certain version of it as representing the “better angels of our nature.” The objectivity of their analysis is subject to criticism as the study looks at the development of the concept in eighteenth-century France and its etatism. Here the study finds the civil religion rooted in an intense form of nationalism and considers its genealogy a means of criticizing the later manifestations of it, following the famous method of Michel Foucault, who criticizes present ideas or institutions based on their roots. In fact, the study proceeds to examine all the Inaugural Addresses of US Presidents as an efficient means of revealing its nature and discovers the same nationalism or patriotism in the American version corresponding to its roots. The historical analysis finds the most indelible characteristic of the civil religion in the willingness of the state to promote its power at the expense of the church or any prophetic witness outside of it that might question its authority. In this way, the study questions those who think of the civil religion as a positive good or a means of promoting their agenda. It questions the strict view of church/state separation in the civil religion and believes a genuine prophetic voice must come outside any established form of religion in the state. It prefers to find the voice within the religious existential life of the local community—a voice that must find expression in public to hold the state accountable and should no longer be condemned to silence. At the end, the study tries to illustrate the concern in the realm of sports, where the virtues of the state serve as an alternative to private religious values in the culture at large.