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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Damned Neighbors Problem Rousseau’S Civil Religion Revisited, Micah Watson
The Damned Neighbors Problem Rousseau’S Civil Religion Revisited, Micah Watson
University Faculty Publications and Creative Works
Near the conclusion of The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau starkly proclaims that no state has been founded without a religious basis, and thus if he is right, every political community must grapple with the tension between the conflicting claims of the divine and the mundane. Because Christianity cannot solve this tension, Rousseau calls for a new religion, a civil religion. Whereas most of the academic treatment of civil religion follows various paths beginning with Robert Bellah’s original 1967 article, this essay explores more deeply the contours of Rousseau’s original articulation of the problem to which civil religion is his proposed …
Why The Covenant Worked: On The Institutional Foundations Of The American Civil Religion, John W. Compton
Why The Covenant Worked: On The Institutional Foundations Of The American Civil Religion, John W. Compton
Political Science Faculty Articles and Research
Scholars of American civil religion (ACR) have paid insufficient attention to the micro-level processes through which civil religious ideas have historically influenced beliefs and behavior. We know little about what makes such appeals meaningful to average Americans (assuming they are meaningful); nor do we know much about the mechanisms through which abstract religious themes and imagery come to be associated with specific policy aims, or what Robert Bellah called “national goals.” This article argues that a renewed focus on the relationship between civil religion and organized religion can help fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, I draw attention …