Tag Archives: civil religion

Interview with sociologist Robert Bellah about faith, evolution, and religion

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Here is an interesting conversation with sociologist of religion Robert Bellah in advance of a new book.

A few little tidbits:

  • On his popular work regarding civil religion in America:

I wrote an article on religious evolution which was published in 1964, but I got hijacked by America. That was the problem with my “Civil Religion in America” essay—it got such an enormous response at a time when things were pretty critical, towards the end of the Vietnam War. I never intended to work on America but then I got hauled into America for decades…

  • On play and how this plays out in his own experiences:

Play is a very elusive idea because it comes in so many forms. It’s hard entirely to put them all under one category. Johan Huizinga’s work was a great help to me, because he makes a strong argument that ritual emerges out of play. I’m a practicing Episcopalian and they call Sunday School “holy play,” which seems to me a little bit cuckoo but there’s some sense to it; in a sense what we’re doing in the liturgy is a kind of play, a profound play.

  • On his philosophical approach:

I respect Nietzsche—he’s a genius—but the last thing in the world I am is a Nietzschean. If you want to place me philosophically I would be in the tradition of Kant and Hegel and perhaps in contemporary life, the two first blurbs on the back of my book: Jurgen Habermas is a Kantian and Charles Taylor was a Hegelian. That would be where I stand.

  • On looking to the future:

If you look at the conclusion you’ll know I end on a fairly somber note, the “sixth great extinction,” and so on. I think our cultural change has sped up to the point where it really is surpassing our evolutionary capacities for dealing with it. We need to be aware of where we came from, because that tells us who we are. And there are things that don’t change, there are things we need to hold on to. We think, criticize, reapply, but we can’t imagine that the latest technological development is going to solve everything. We need to understand the past out of which we came and in particular the great Axial traditions which are still alive to us. Good philosophers read Plato not as historical texts of the past but as words that speak to them and have something to say to them. Aristotle’s ethics are taken seriously as one of the great alternatives to philosophical ethics today. So these Axial figures are still around and may help us. We certainly need help, as we don’t seem to be doing very well. So this book is again a plea for rooting ourselves in an understanding of the deep past.

Based on this short conversation, this new book sounds like Bellah is taking the chance to take a broad overview of religion and step up an analytical level from the earlier work he has done.

A sociologist assesses the Canadian religious landscape

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A Canadian sociologist discusses whether Canadian religion has gone down the path of European secularization or has charted a different course:

For years, almost everyone has assumed that religion in Canada has been in a participation free fall. In the mid-1940s, our national weekly attendance level of 60 per cent was higher than that of the United States. When it dipped to 25 per cent in the mid-1980s, many felt it was en route to European-like levels of under 10 per cent.

Actually, that active core of 20 per cent to 25 per cent has not changed very much. The participation losses of mainline Protestants and Quebec Catholics have been offset by the gains of Catholics elsewhere, evangelical Protestants, and other groups, led by Muslims…

These mixed findings about the stability and decline of religion are best summed up as polarization rather than relentless secularization. Simultaneously, the percentage of Canadians who value religion remains sizable and stable, while growing numbers are living life without the gods…

Religion is important for many but, as we all know, large numbers of Canadians are spiritual but not religious.

The research does suggest, however, that growing polarization will produce two casualties. First, while people obviously can be “good without God,” belief in God helps. Religion typically tries to instill interpersonal values such as compassion, honesty, civility and forgiveness. In its absence, we will need to find some effective functional options. Second, religion frequently provides people with a unique sense of hope as they confront death. To the extent Canadians say goodbye to the gods, most will say goodbye to such hope – an admirable decision if the gods are an illusion, an unnecessary and costly choice if the reverse is true.

I must admit that I don’t know much about religion north of the US border. But in some sense, these conclusions don’t sound too different from recent thoughts from Mark Chaves about American religion: some religious decline over time but still a sizable amount of people practicing religion or spirituality.

While both of the possible consequences of religious polarization are at the individual level, it would be interesting to hear about the changing role of religion in Canadian public life. It is suggested in the first paragraph that religion is barely playing a role in a national election. If more individual Canadians are not religious or spiritual, what does this mean for public discourse or values? Is there a Canadian civil religion similar to American civil religion?

Patriotism at the Super Bowl

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If you want to see what Americans think about their country, sporting events are good places to find out, particularly the Super Bowl, the sporting event of the year.

This year, the pregame featured a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Football players, surrounded by military personnel, read the main parts though we didn’t hear all the grievances regarding the tyranny of the English king. Colin Powell and Roger Goodell finished off the reading.

The two patriotic songs, God Bless America and the Star-Spangled Banner, seemed overwrought. God Bless America had an interesting arrangement at the end while Christiana Aguilera tried her own take on the National Anthem.

Some of this is standard fare at American sporting events. But I’m still trying to figure out how the Declaration of Independence fits with football. It did offer an opportunity to support our military, a cause that often is invoked in big sporting events. But is the idea that because we have freedom and strive for equality as a nation that we therefore should sit together for the next four hours and watch football? Perhaps a little more text could have been added: “We are not red or blue states, Republicans or Democrats: we are united together on this day like no other in our desire to watch football and many commercials.”

This mix of patriotism plus the military plus explicit values plus football seems to have been done in a uniquely American way. The next step sociologically is to discuss this as American civil religion.

The Glenn Beck rally and civil religion

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In a Washington Post blog, Amarnath Amarasingam offers some thoughts about how Glenn Beck’s rally is connected to the concept of civil religion, developed first by Robert Bellah and debated by sociologists of religion since. While invoking religious terminology and genres in common in political rhetoric, Amarasingam suggests it can be used for good or ill:

Robert Bellah noted long ago that American civil religion was capable of holding the United States to a higher moral standard. He also warned that it has often been used “as a cloak for petty interests and ugly passions.” In other words, civil religion could be a powerful tool to rally the masses and forge a new path, or it could drive the country into a narcissistic and idolatrous worship of itself. The choice must be made by America’s newly self-appointed high priest.

Of course, Beck’s words were much more specific than many cases of civil religion where leaders make bland and non-specific references.