The Relevance of Bellah’s “Civil Religion” Thesis to a Theory of Secularization

Abstract

A nation is minimally constituted by a population which shares two experiences, that of occupation of the same territory and of exposure to the exercise of a central state authority. Some societies are more self-sufficient in their economies and cultures than others; some societies surrender more or less political autonomy to a larger body than the nation. Nations, however, are generally the whole of which other bodies are the parts; the nation, in turn, is not usually part of another, larger whole. Edward Shils argues that the state creates conditions which are conducive to a national culture. By giving a population a “common focus of attention,” a common experience of the state’s exercise of its authority among those who share the same territory, and a belief in the legitimacy of the state’s power, conditions are generated which lead, often if not always, to a central culture which defines and expresses the history of the nation, the meaning of membership in the nation, and its basic commitments. Such a national belief-system is the “civil” or “civic” religion which a variety of historians and sociologists have located in American schools, national ceremonies, the regalia of office, and in political rhetoric. It is this culture which provides a non-theoretical answer to the question of what makes a nation “more than” the interaction of organizations and groups coordinated and controlled by a central state. But it is also this culture which becomes the source of new ambiguities concerning the grounds and limits of political authority.