Civil Religion Research Articles

“THE GORBACHEV PHENOMENON”: THE COLLAPSE OF THE USSR THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY

The tools of the new political economy are rarely used in the analysis of the problems of the Soviet economy. A homogeneous society without class contradictions, with a quota socialist electoral system, and the absolute dominance of one ruling party formally contradicts the basic premises of this toolkit. At present time most researchers agree, that Soviet society was heterogeneous (some scientists even attribute class contradictions to it), but do not go any further. This progress is contradicted by the idea of the USSR as an ideocratic state, based on the civil religion of Marxism-Leninism. But the latter explains the stability of the political regime, not its collapse. The new political economy makes it possible to notice that the USSR was a formal confederation, which became a reality when party influence was neutralized, as well as a corporate state, within which there was a sharp political struggle for resources. These relations were masked by the myth of public property, which was socialist state property. As it seemed to Soviet theoreticians, a single national economic complex was indivisible. The rupture of economic ties was not beneficial to both enterprises and national elites. Nevertheless, the Soviet conditions made the orientation towards obtaining the maximum of centralized investments with the subsequent withdrawal of the republic from the single economic space quite rational. Institutional conditions, within which the institutions that protect the state from disintegration are neutralized, are periodically encountered in situations of power transit. The «Gorbachev Phenomenon» is a situation in which there is a paralysis of power associated with sharp contradictions within the ruling coalition. In such a situation, the private interests of small groups become politically legitimate, and it is almost impossible to stop the collapse of the state.

Нарратив об Отцах-основателях в национальной памяти США

The article is devoted to the narrative-constructivist analysis of the historical memory of the Founding Fathers in the USA. To achieve this goal, specific research tasks were performed in the article. First, the nation was conceptualized as a ‘narrative community’ constructed by certain narratives about the people, their culture, past, present and future. Secondly, the differences between historical knowledge (knowledge obtained using the methods of historical research) and historical memory (a collective representation of the past that reflects the value-normative conventions in society) were identified. Thirdly, the place, content, and functions of the historical narrative of the Founding Fathers in the US national memory were determined. Specifically, this narrative reflects the universal, archetypal mythologem of the “golden generation”, which is present in a variety of national cultures. It performs the functions of legitimizing and relativizing the social order (by creating a connection with the glorified past and, at the same time, breaking with it), as well as the function of regulating the behavior of individuals (by creating a model of civic virtue). Fourth, a connection was found between the national style of social narration and the Protestant tradition, which is the basis of the US civil religion. The author defends the idea that this connection predetermined the “religious style” of the national narration in the United States. Fifthly, the national narrative of the Founding Fathers was considered in the context of historical revisionism, which today is called upon to restore historical justice through demythologization of the national past. The premises of this historical revisionism were also identified: the academic institutionalization of new disciplines in the 1960s (e.g. women’s history, black history, etc.). This helped determine the current dynamics and ideological orientation of narrative practices in American society.

Russian Church and Ukrainian War

The war in Ukraine that began in February 2014 and escalated in February 2022 to the extent unseen in Europe since the World War II, cannot be adequately comprehended without taking into consideration its religious dimension. This article explores the evolution of the “Russian world” ideology, which the leaders and speakers of the Russian Orthodox Church render in quasi-theological terms. It explains why the Russian patriarch Kirill decided to back it and turned it from an elitist to mass ideologeme. These explanations are given in the sociological framework of the public space, social contract, and civil religion. The main argument of the article is that the church wanted to regain for itself a central place in the Russian public square after the decades of exile from it under the Communist regime. In result of supporting the war, however, the church is endangered to be marginalised in this square again.

William Shakespeare's All Is True , Lord Chamberlain's "Truth," and Civil Religion

Abstract: The first title for Shakespeare's Henry VIII — All Is True —may reflect standard early modern usage signifying that all is an aspect of 'troth' or loyalty, all is common understanding, or all is received from a divine source. In the play, the Lord Chamberlain, Shakespeare's only character so named, serves the Henrician monarchy's "truth" by serving Henry's religious and monarchic goals as the Jacobean Lord Chamberlain similarly served James I's goals, assuring audiences of the integrity, truth, and legitimacy of the monarchy and its faith. The play shows the Lord Chamberlain working to strengthen the loyalty of Henry's realm to the putatively divinely sanctioned sovereignty flowing through the monarch. He does so to create a legitimate image of the Tudor regime pivotal to the Jacobean monarchy's need for support for its 1613 religious goals and the "troth" inherent in English civil religion.

American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent by Jordan Carson

Reviewed by: American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent by Jordan Carson Christopher Douglas Jordan Carson. American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent. Ohio State UP, 2020. xxi + 222 pp. Jordan Carson's American Exceptionalism as Religion: Postmodern Discontent is an engaging new entry in contemporary literature and religion studies. Focusing on Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo—two postsecular standbys—in refreshing conversation with Ana Castillo and George Saunders, as well as with Marilynne Robinson, perhaps the greatest living American Christian writer, Carson aims to show how each "portrays American exceptionalism as a compelling but corrupted religion that comprises both an object of belief and a set of disciplines" (23). The book focuses on the ideology qua religion of American exceptionalism, which Carson defines as "the myth of election" (3), "America as a chosen nation" (4) of God's chosen [End Page 577] people on the promised land, distinguishing it from American civil religion. These contemporary writers "aim to divest 'America' of its claim to transcendence and reveal America for what it is: a place and a way of government, a set of nontranscendent but worthy ideals, a place of freedom but also of oppression, not wholly evil but also not a chosen nation" (23). Carson examines the "specific religious practices" depicted by these writers, both good and bad, and "how these practices shape individuals morally, spiritually, emotionally, and aesthetically." Thus, for Carson DeLillo's work is a study in "the damage wrought by misplaced faith" (26), in which characters yearn for transcendence and sometimes come close but only through the apophatic tradition, the attempt to imagine via language a transcendent that lies beyond language. His discussion of DeLillo's use of the apophatic tradition is illuminating and engages with previous discussions (notably John McLure's and Amy Hungerford's) on DeLillo and mystery, even if that mystery "does not offer a coherent theological or spiritual vision" (56). Placing Castillo within the larger frame of Chicano fiction and "liberation theology" (76), Carson's smart analysis of hybrid religion and trickster ethics is alert to nuance. Insofar as American exceptionalism is a form of religion, it ends up being an obstacle to pluralist, hybrid, and mestiza spirituality. Similarly, hybrid pluralism marks the kind of religious engagement Carson finds most evident in Pynchon's fiction, where "spiritual disciplines . . . those depicted unironically and in earnest—translate into greater investment in the world: works of compassion, care for the earth, and opposition to all forms of domination" (131). Spiritual pilgrims, in this sense, stand against the religion of American exceptionalism as "the myth of [American] election" (99). Carson's analysis of empathy and compassion in the fiction of Saunders, perhaps the least-studied among his five authors, is rewarding and smart. Carson shows how Saunders's work repeatedly questions a cluster of negative "spiritual disciplines" (131) associated with American exceptionalism: notions of self-improvement and self-sufficiency, economic gain as moral progress, and the power of positive thinking, which ignores the social world and other people. Carson's reading of Robinson, meanwhile, focuses on her non-fiction essays. In these, "Robinson castigates the resurgent Christian right for surrendering religion to ideology and confusing religious devotion with cultural identity" (171). His critique of Robinson's dismissal of the Christian Right as engaging in "ideology" rather than (true) religion is insightful and refreshing because he treats the ideology [End Page 578] with the same judicious expansion of the term "religion" that he's given to American exceptionalism. Noting that "the semantic slippage in Christian also makes Robinson's own views hard to pin down" (174), Carson persuasively concludes that "Robinson wants her two primary arguments—the essence of Christianity and the essence of democracy—to be heard by two audiences: a narrower Christian audience, and a larger audience of the general American populace." Thus, his interpretation of Robinson's democratic individualism as "a theopoetics that allows for pluralism and diversity to become a source of aesthetic fullness" (199) in Whitman's tradition is likewise convincing and well-articulated. Intriguingly, Carson expands his discussion of American exceptionalism to include related discourses such as the American dream. In DeLillo's and Castillo's works, the dream's ideology of success...

Robert Bellah as Modernization Theorist: Comments on Matteo Bortolini’s A Joyfully Serious Man

Bellah’s early Japan work was important to his thinking. Reflecting on Bellah’s Japan work offers an interesting window into some of the contributions and limitations of his broader ideas. Putting Bellah’s early work together with his later theories raises questions about the kind of social community that Bellah envisioned in his theories of civil religion and communitarianism.

Уроки війни для формування стратегії української східної політики: філософські міркування

The article analyzes the issues in political philosophy related to the attitude towards russians and everything russian in the context of a new phase of russian aggression against Ukraine. This attitude is polarized around two extremes – the total denial, deleting and canceling of everything associated with russia and the USSR, on the one hand, and the distinction and justification of russian culture or “ordinary people”, on the other. According to the classical polarization effect and the confirmation bias, social attitudes are polarized, centrist moderate at­titudes are deleted, and extreme attitudes prevail, which is detrimental to social stability and dialogue. If in Ukraine prevails the principle of total canceling of a russian, then outside Ukraine, especially in countries far from the war, the wrong approach of so-called prudence and moderation leads to the false contraposi­tion of the “Ukrainian” radical attitude of canceling and russian propaganda as two equal approaches, which is wrong from factual and logical side. Instead, the “moderate” position of distinction ignores some factual, historical, and political issues that relate to the genesis of russia’s ideology of war, the doctrine of “russian World.” These discussions are proof that Ukraine needs to develop a new clear strategy for russia and a russian, based on the rejection of the black-and-white approach, the provincial postcolonial complex, the attitude to russia not as “our one” but as “other one”, while Ukraine will considered as a center of thought and action, treating russia as a completely external factor. This strategy requires a dif­ferentiated approach to different strata of russian society, a critical attitude to russian civil religion, and must be based on the values of humanity and freedom, which in turn should be the leading narrative of russia’s transformation.

Politics as a Confession: Confronting the Enemy Within

ABSTRACT In this article, we claim, firstly, that the turn to an “ethical” politics focused on subjectivity and its transformation, announced by post-structuralist theorists in the 1970s, can be found today in forms of progressive politics, illustrated by struggles against racism and their articulation by consultants and educators. Secondly, this turn entails targeting the “enemy within,” whether it be the inner fascist (Guattari, Foucault) or white privilege (Di Angelo, Kendi). Rather than an extension of Lasch’s therapeutic “culture of narcissism,” it is a turn to practices reminiscent of public rituals of expiation of guilt and acts of purification (exomologesis) characterizing what Weber referred to as “sects.” Pace Foucault, the “main danger” lies not in the “subjectifying” practices of the human sciences descended from auricular confession and the Christian pastorate, but rather the displacement of formal politics and attendant “civil religion” (Bellah) by conflicts between charismatic sects claiming exemplary subjectivity and virtuosity.

Review: Civil Religion Today: Religion and the American Nation in Twenty-First Century, edited by Rhys H. Williams, Raymond Haberski Jr., and Philip Goff

Review: <i>Civil Religion Today: Religion and the American Nation in Twenty-First Century</i>, edited by Rhys H. Williams, Raymond Haberski Jr., and Philip Goff

The World disenchantment, re-enchantment, neo-tribalism and the Free Masonry

This contribution of mine, which addresses the themes of intellectualisation, rationalisation, disenchantment, death, civil religion, autonomy of styles, fourth secularisation and re-enchantment, seeks to outline the context in which to frame the current state of Italian Freemasonry.

Bangabandhu as the eternal sovereign: on the construction of a civil religion

ABSTRACT The omnipresence of his name and portrait in Bangladesh suggests that Father-of-the-nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – known as Bangabandhu – is more than just a national hero. He is subject of a secular deification that establishes him as the fountain of political authority and an embodiment of the sovereignty of the nation – the one without whom there can be no authority, no sovereignty, no nation. Historically he was the supreme leader of the national movement, the extraordinary individual who created the independent nation. In that founding moment a new political order was formed, an order consciously maintained by the political party he founded and by his daughter, the current prime minister. This paper addresses the secular deification of him and investigates its efficacy as fountain for national sovereignty and for the authority of the political order.

‘Tinder’ and the Rise of Hook-Up Culture: Mapping an Islamic Solution

The current understanding of sex has deviated from the normative values of Islam, where sexual activity outside of marriage has increased sharply. This is due to the emergence of a new sex culture called the 'hook-up culture', where a person engages in casual sex with the aim of fulfilling his own pleasure without any commitment. The development of the digital era has contributed to the growth of the hook-up culture and has become more real in modern human life. More specifically, after the presence of one of the most prominent dating applications, Tinder. This phenomenon shows the decline of human civilization. Whereas Islam as a religion of civilization describes sex as an element that forms human dignity and contributes to the formation of a quality civilization. This article tries to find a new conceptual framework in solving the problem of hook-up culture through an Islamic perspective. The research in this article explores the relationship between Tinder and hook-up culture and suggests Islam as a solution. The findings of this study indicate that the resolution that the ummah currently has in solving the problem of hook-up culture is still very specific in the discipline of Islamic studies, and needs further integration to overcome the problem of hook-up culture in society through exploring the key concepts of Islam and practical updates.

Conspiracy narratives in Russia: A search for identity, religious worldviews, and Russian politics

AbstractConspiracy thinking plays an important role in Russian culture. Contemporary Russian conspiracism inherits elements of the Cold War rhetoric, French anti‐Freemasonic literature, ideas of conservative Russian Orthodox thinkers and North American Christian writers. In today's Russia we see two distinct, although interconnected, types of conspiracy narratives—official and popular. Official narratives, which can be seen as a component of the new Russian ideology and civil religion, promote a patriotic sentiment in order to consolidate the nation and solidify political hierarchy through a sharp distinction between “traditional values” and the “depraved West.” Popular conspiracy narratives share similar characteristics but lean towards a thorough disbelief in institutions. From this perspective, elites worldwide, including Russia, participate in the conspiracy of governments and corporations. Because of this attitude, popular conspiracy narratives often conflict with official rhetoric even if at times official and popular narratives seem aligned.

Re-envisioning Civil Religion in a Collaborative, Constructive Model

In this paper, I argue that the mainstream discussion of religion and politics and the dominant discourse of civil religion are both based on the narrow definition of politics, which premises power-dynamic and power-relation. However, growing worldwide interfaith engagement can contribute to reshaping our conversation particularly of civil religion. In the new political environment religion does not necessarily play the categorical role of the traditional power-dynamic. A variety of interfaith experiences have been creating and fostering a new consciousness, which is spiritual, moral, and political. It has been translated into social norms, law, policies, and invisible cultural pressure or force in various political communities. I argue that the new model, which I call interfaith civil religion, would not put religion in a position where its inherent qualities are given up as shown in the classic models and where the significant contributions that religious communities are currently making are overlooked. And this concept of interfaith civil religion would be my response to Robert Bellah’s diffident anticipation of a new level of civil religion coming out of a society larger than the state, which he expressed by saying “flickering flame of the United Nations.” There is no absolute trans-national sovereignty at present. However, my discussion will demonstrate a possible groundwork to conceptualize a trans-national symbolic system, which Bellah imagined as “the civil religion of the world.”

La religión de los romanos en la construcción de la religión civil de Maquiavelo

The object of this paper is to establish the meaning and relevance of recovering the contents of pagan religion practiced by ancient Roman Republic, as the basis of the civil lifestyle conceived by Machiavelli in his idea of a mixed republic, through Discourses on Livy, one of his most mature political works. Here we can determine that Machiavelli, while searching to establish a civil religion model, found that not all Roman tradition was equally useful to him. Thus, ruminations on Roman religious tradition by authors such as Cicero or Lucretius, enable him, on the one hand, to sharpen his critical thinking regarding to the role played by religious beliefs and practices as forms of domination achieved through manipulation of fear and superstition. On the other hand, through Roman history and tradition while following Titus Livy, he finds that such critical stances are the expression of the crisis of the Republic, lead towards a dead-end, weaken legitimate authority, cause turmoil, and culminate in tyranny. Consequently, within the narrative of the Paduan historian, Machiavelli finds the model he was seeking for, an instrumentum regni that brings together all levels of society, helps to recognize authority, legitimizes hierarchies, and educates both dominated people and dominators, civitas becoming the beginning and end of all things. By following the search undertaken by Machiavelli it is possible to understand his purpose, that is to say, to refine his criticism of the period’s dominant religion: Christianity. Therefore, far from seeking a reestablishment of paganism (something that would have been absurd at the time), his goal was not to destroy or replace Christianity, but to reform and adapt it to the conditions and needs of the new concept of a mixed republic.

From Political Islam to Civil Religion: The Possibilities of a Pluralistic Constitution and its Impact on Human Rights in Post-Revolutionary Iran

The two categories of political religion and civil (also civic) religion, and the ways a nation can nurture the latter, have been the concern of a number of philosophers since long time ago. Relevant to this is the ideals of democracy, the separation of religion and politics and the necessity of having a secular legal covenant, which represents the political philosophy of a modern republic. Theorists of civil religion, particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau, were concerned with the role of established religions, in modern political systems and that is why they put forward different, and at times even contrasting, theories about the compatibility of Christianity as well as the objectives of modern politics, at the center of which is the ideal of citizenship. The present paper will focus on the post-revolutionary constitution as well as the legal status of republicanism to investigate the possibilities, if any, of finding a solution to the long-lasting problematic of Islam and democracy in Iran. My hypothesis is that the current constitution is incapable of allowing for democracy, and due to its monistic nature, hinders reconciliation between Islam and democracy. Iran needs a better legal covenant, one in which the legacy of republicanism, as well as religious pluralism, is respected and endorsed.

Scholars of Indian Subcontinent holding Equal Grasp over Traditional as well as Rational Sciences: A Descriptive and Inductive Study

One of the characteristics of Islamic civilization is that it fulfilled the requirements of spirit and substance including the requirements of faith and knowledge and balanced them in an equitable manner. This feature gave rise to the fact that many Islamic scholars have emerged in various countries of the Islamic world throughout the ages, enjoying expertise over traditional as well rational sciences equally. They had devoted their potentials to, and became experts in various disciplines such as medicine, engineering, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and physics. It can be corroborated by the information available in the books of biography. So doing, they proved for the entire world that Islam is the religion of civilization, knowledge, revival, development, and prosperity and not the religion of backwardness and extremism as asserted by many peoples. A great number of Hadith experts have emerged in Indian subcontinent enjoying equal grasp over traditional and rational sciences and they occupied highest places by contributing distinguished services in form of books/articles writing and teaching to a great number of disciples. This article sheds lights on the lives of such scholars highlighting their academic works with reference to their eminent contributions in rational and traditional sciences. The author adopted hybrid methodology; namely the inductive method and the descriptive one. The inductive method is employed for tracing and gathering information concerning the Hadith scholars in the biographical and history books while descriptive method has been adopted for unfolding their distinctive works in the fields of rational as well as traditional sciences. The article ends with concluding remarks.

East Slavic Peoples of Poland: Religion and Nationality (intersection trajectories in the historical context)

The traditional view is that religion is one of the most important elements in the acquisition and preservation of identity by different nations. In the modern world, this pairing is changing connection with the formation of a civilized nation and a civil religion. Recently appears a concept according to which both religion and nationality are ideologies, which also causes their interaction and interpenetration, but on a different level. The question of whether religion is a defining, distinctive feature of a nation worries not only theorists. It finds its refraction in the practical plane and in the life of different nations and especially people who live in an alien confessional environment. It is also important to understand the influence of nationality on the choice and preservation of religious affiliation. Will examine these questions of the issue of religious-national mutual influence on the example of the East Slavic peoples (Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians) who lived and live on the territory of Poland. We will try to understand whether it is possible to put an equal sign between the concepts of "Orthodox" and "Russian" in the studied historical contexts, and to call the Orthodox faith and the Church in these territories "Russian". The article examines the ethnoreligious dimension of the political context, in particular, the influence of state acts on the Orthodox Church and believers who lived in Poland in various historical periods. An attempt is made to identify the features of the relationship between the Orthodox religion and the Church as an institution with the process of preserving and modernizing the national identity of the East Slavic (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians) peoples of Poland. The analysis of its evolution during the XV-XXI centuries is carried out in changing geopolitical conditions (including the changes of borders).

Memories, piety and formation of civil religions: Do revolutionary youth sing along with the memory machine in Iran?

Memories of wars and constantly living with them become the measure of citizenhood, revolutionary commitments and piety remembering, where an incessant state-sponsored memory machine frames memory as a civil religion. This article argues that memories, remembering and mnemonic acts become the forces that hold a civil religion together, and then explains how mnemonic subjects/remembering individuals contribute to a civil religion through consumption of memories. I ground my argument in anthropological explorations of how the Iranian state choreographs a memory machine that collects, publishes and circulates memories of the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988). The memory machine tries to inspire postwar generations with an Islamic model of piety, invent a militarized civil religion and inculcate the revolutionary youth into it. However, the Iranian revolutionary youth use memories of the war as ‘wiggle rooms’ to reshape the state-choreographed civil religion without expressing either dissent or absolute compliance. Ethnographically, I highlight that the revolutionary youth’s compliance may seem blind obedience but on the contrary, their compliance is an agentive attempt to resist subtly, find individuated sovereignty and craft mnemonic subjectivities under authoritarian conditions.

From Festive Sacred to Festive Secular? Indigenous Religious Presence in Two Nigerian Festivals

Abstract This article explores the modern-day festival as a timely site for analyzing the politics of indigenous cultural and religious presence in postcolonial and neoliberal Africa. Focusing on the ancient Osun Osogbo Festival and the newer Calabar Carnival and Festival in Nigeria, it raises broader questions of how indigenous religion gets reframed as culture, heritage, and tourist commodity for local, national, and international audiences. Attention is paid to the multiple debates over festival content and representation in the context of local political, economic, and religious interests. The article ultimately makes the case for more comparative research on what may be termed the “festivalization of religion” and how this development relates to questions of “public religion” and “civil religion” in the contemporary African context.