civil religion

civil religion, a public profession of faith that aims to inculcate political values and that prescribes dogma, rites, and rituals for citizens of a particular country.

This definition of civil religion remains consistent with its first sustained theoretical treatment, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1762). Rousseau dedicated a penultimate and relatively lengthy chapter of that work to a discussion of civil religion, laying out its central conceptual elements and emphasizing its normative importance for a healthy body politic. The object of civil religion for Rousseau is to foster sentiments of sociability and a love of public duties among citizens, extending those bonds throughout a citizenry and its membership. Civil religion identifies gods and tutelary benefactors to assist with that great aim, and its successful inculcation is supposed to help maintain stability, order, and prosperity for the country.

Rousseau proposed that the dogmas of civil religion ought to be simple: they should affirm the afterlife, a God with divine perfection, the notion that the just will be happy and the wicked punished, and the sanctity of the social contract and the polity’s laws. Civil religion should also condemn intolerance as a creedal matter, Rousseau contended, given that there can never again be an exclusive national religion. A civil profession of faith ought to tolerate all and only those religions that tolerate others, he suggested, at least insofar as the respective religious groups do not uphold beliefs that run contrary to citizens’ duties. More extremely, Rousseau averred that penalties may rightly be applied against those who do not observe the civil religion. Although government cannot obligate a person to believe its dogmas, one who fails to adopt them can rightly be banished from the state on grounds of unsociability. Additionally, a citizen who publicly acknowledges civil dogmas may be punished with death if, subsequently, that citizen behaves as if he does not believe them.

Civil religion is not identical to religious establishment. While established religions receive symbolic endorsement or financial aid from government, they may not reciprocate by supporting state institutions or citizens’ duties. An established religion might advocate meekness or withdrawal from public life or promote other values that run contrary to the purposes of citizenship. Established religions can prioritize otherworldly ends over life on earth, too, or identify a church leadership independent of political authorities. Rousseau saw the latter problem as both common and pernicious: “Wherever the clergy constitutes a body,” he wrote, “it is master and legislator in its domain.” Rousseau claimed that Thomas Hobbes was the only Christian writer brave enough to propose that Christianity and state be reunified but that Hobbes apparently misunderstood that Christianity is terrible for founding republics. Rousseau charged that Christianity teaches people to be excessively servile and dependent, leaving adherents unsuitable for military service and ready for slavery. Interestingly, Rousseau contrasted contemporary, institutionalized Christianity with the “religion of man,” distinguishing the latter as the religion of the gospel. He lauded the religion of man as “saintly, sublime, [and] true” but added that its weakness lies in the fact that it lacks a proper relation to the political whole and, as such, gives no external force to the fraternal unity that it envisions.

Rousseau maintained that civil religion has decided benefits. It unites divine love with the laws of one’s country, prompts people to pray for their homeland, and vivifies the body politic. But civil religion has distinct weaknesses. Because its dogmatic elements of sociability are constructed, and will vary across countries, it stands to reason that they could be devised poorly or incoherently. Furthermore, the theological postulates of the civil religion presumably may be false, a point that Rousseau seemed to recognize. Civil religion also runs the risk of fostering credulity, superstition, and intolerance in the body politic. In addition, moral or prudential problems may accompany efforts to foster or perpetuate civil religion in a pluralistic country.

Although Rousseau may have given civil religion its first elaboration in political theory, the phenomenon predates him by many centuries. The French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges identified forms of civil religion in the foundations of the ancient city-states of Greece and Rome. And the Greek historian Polybius, writing in the 2nd century bce, observed elements of civil religion in his study of the Roman constitution. Polybius remarked that superstition bound the Roman state together, adding—with admiration—that this made Rome decisively superior in the sphere of religion. The Romans’ public form of religion stimulated magistrates to be scrupulous and dutiful, Polybius proposed, while the fickle, lawless masses remained restrained by their fear of gods and punishment in the afterlife.

In the 1960s sociologist Robert Neelly Bellah proposed that civil religion exists in the United States, which is suffused with various rituals that unite its citizens, employing symbols that are drawn from specific religions but which operate independently of those origins. He reckoned that the United States has its own series of saints and martyrs (such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln) and that an examination of founding documents and important inaugural addresses shows how it operates on the idea that it is a nation chosen by God. However, while unifying symbols, founding myths, and public rituals may be found across a country, it is unclear whether civil religion is necessary for a country’s foundation or ultimate success.