사용자:Nemonemo/시민 종교

시민 종교의 의미는 종교 사회학자가 쓰는 경우와 정치 평론가가 쓰는 경우에 각기 다르다. 아래에서는 시민 종교라는 개념에 대한 간략한 역사와 함께 두 관점에 관해 다루도록 하겠다.

단어의 의미

장자크 루소는 사회 계약론의 4권 8장에서 저자 자신이 생각하는 현대 사회에 필요한 도덕적, 정신적 기반을 설명하기 위해 시민 종교라는 단어를 사용했다. 루소에게 시민 종교는 국가의 신성스런 권위와 함께 국가를 통합하기 위해 필요한 사회적 유대의 한 가지 형태를 의미한 것이었다. 루소는 그의 책에서 시민 종교를 위한 교리들에는 다음과 같은 것들이 있다고 말했다.

1. 신의 존재
2. 내세
3. 선인들의 행복과 악인들에 대한 벌
4. 종교적 비관용의 배제(the exclusion of religious intolerance)

종교 사회학

The Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. is often used for state funerals for political leaders.

In the sociology of religion, civil religion is the folk religion of a nation or a political culture.

Civil religion stands somewhat above folk religion in its social and political status, since by definition it suffuses an entire society, or at least a segment of a society; and is often practiced by leaders within that society. On the other hand, it is somewhat less than an establishment of religion, since established churches have official clergy and a relatively fixed and formal relationship with the government that establishes them. Civil religion is usually practiced by political leaders who are laypeople and whose leadership is not specifically spiritual.

Examples

Such civil religion encompasses such things as:

• the invocation of God in political speeches and public monuments;
• the quotation of religious texts on public occasions by political leaders;
• the veneration of past political leaders;
• the use of the lives of these leaders to teach moral ideals;
• the veneration of veterans and casualties of a nation's wars;
• religious gatherings called by political leaders;
• the use of religious symbols on public buildings;
• the use of public buildings for worship;
• founding myths and other national myths

and similar religious or quasi-religious practices.

Practical political philosophy

The Arc de Triomphe in Paris commemorates those who died in France's wars.

Professional commentators on political and social matters writing in newspapers and magazines sometimes use the term civil religion or civic religion to refer to ritual expressions of patriotism of a sort practiced in all countries, not always including religion in the conventional sense of the word.

Among such practices are the following:

Examples

• crowds singing the national anthem at certain public gatherings;
• parades or display of the national flag on certain patriotic holidays;
• oaths of allegiance, such as the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States;
• ceremonies concomitant to the inauguration of a president or the coronation of a king;
• retelling exaggerated, one-sided, and simplified mythologized tales of Founding Fathers and other great leaders or great events (e.g., battles, mass migrations) in the past (in this connection, see also romantic nationalism);
• monuments commemorating great leaders of the past or historic events;
• monuments to dead soldiers or annual ceremonies to remember them;
• expressions of reverence for the country or the Constitution or the King;
• public display of the coffin of a recently deceased political leader.

Relation between the two conceptions

These two conceptions (sociological and political) of civil religion substantially overlap. In Britain, where church and state are constitutionally joined, the monarch's coronation is an elaborate religious rite celebrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In France, secular ceremonies are separated from religious observances to a greater degree than in most countries. In the United States of America, a president being inaugurated is told by the Constitution to choose between saying "I do solemnly swear..." (customarily followed by "so help me God", although those words are not Constitutionally required) and saying "I do solemnly affirm..." (in which latter case no mention of God would be expected).

History

The Ara Pacis, dedicated to Peace as a goddess, embodied the civil religion of the Roman Empire.

The first state to have an attested civic religion was the Athenian polis. The Athenian religion was focused on the Olympian Gods and was celebrated in the civic festivals. Religion was a matter of state and the Athenian Ecclesia deliberated on matters of religion. Atheism and the introduction of foreign gods were forbidden in Athens and punishable by death. Socrates was charged, tried, found guilty and condemned to death by drinking hemlock by the Athenian ecclesia. The charge was that he worshipped gods other than those sanctioned by the polis.

Rome also had a civil religion, whose first Emperor Augustus officially attempted to revive the dutiful practice of Classical paganism. Greek and Roman religion were essentially local in character; the Roman Empire attempted to unite its disparate territories by inculcating an ideal of Roman piety, and by a syncretistic identifying of the gods of conquered territories with the Greek and Roman pantheon. In this campaign, Augustus erected monuments such as the Ara Pacis, the Altar of Peace, showing the Emperor and his family worshiping the gods. He also encouraged the publication of works such as Virgil's Æneid, which depicted "pious Æneas", the legendary ancestor of Rome, as a role model for Roman religiosity. Roman historians such as Livy told tales of early Romans as morally improving stories of military prowess and civic virtue. The Roman civil religion later became centered on the person of the Emperor through the imperial cult, the worship of the genius of the Emperor.

The phrase "civil religion" was first discussed extensively by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract. Rousseau defined "civil religion" as a group of religious beliefs he believed to be universal, and which he believed governments had a right to uphold and maintain: belief in a deity, belief in an afterlife in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished; and belief in religious tolerance. Beyond that, Rousseau affirmed that individuals' religious opinions should be beyond the reach of governments.

In the 1960s and 1970s, scholars such as Robert N. Bellah and Martin E. Marty studied civil religion as a cultural phenomenon, attempting to identify the actual tenets of civil religion in the United States of America, or to study civil religion as a phenomenon of cultural anthropology. Within this U.S. context, Marty wrote that Americans approved of "religion in general" without being particularly concerned about the content of that faith, and attempted to distinguish "priestly" and "prophetic" roles within the practice of American civil religion, which he preferred to call the public theology. In "Civil Religion in America," a 1967 essay, Bellah wrote that civil religion in its priestly sense is "an institutionalized collection of sacred beliefs about the American nation." Bellah describes the prophetic role of civil religion as challenging "national self-worship" and calling for "the subordination of the nation to ethical principles that transcend it in terms of which it should be judged." Bellah identified the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement as three decisive historical events that impacted the content and imagery of civil religion in the United States.

Issues

The Christian flag displayed alongside the flag of the USA next to the pulpit in a church in California. Note the eagle and cross finials on the flag poles.

Within the contexts of the monotheistic, prophetic, revealed faiths, civil religion can be problematic from a theological perspective. Being identified with a political culture and a leadership hierarchy of an existing society, civil religion's priestly role, can interfere with the prophetic mission of a religious faith. This has been the challenge religion faces upon entering the public square throughout all ages and cultures. At times of national crisis civil religion commonly renews itself by becoming a platform for rebuking the sins of a people or its institutions, and by calling on citizens to be true to the nation's deeper values.

The United States of America, while a group of British colonies, was settled in part by religious dissenters from the established Church of England, who desired a civil society founded on a different religious vision. Consequently, there has never been a National Church in the United States and individual state churches have not existed in the United States since the early nineteenth century. Religious denominations compete with one another for allegiance in the public square. These facts have made public displays of religious piety by political leaders important to a large sector of the population; lacking an established church, they need public assurance of those leaders' religious beliefs.

This assertive civil religion of the United States is an occasional cause of political friction between the U.S. and its allies in Europe, where (the literally religious form of) civil religion is less extreme. In the United States, civil religion is often invoked under the name of "Judeo-Christian tradition", a phrase originally intended to be maximally inclusive of the several monotheisms practiced in the United States, assuming that these faiths all worship the same God and share the same values. This assumption tends to dilute the essence of both Judaism and Christianity; recognition of this fact, and the increasing religious diversity of the United States, make this phrase less heard now than it once was, though it is far from extinct. Some scholars have argued that the American flag can be seen as a main totem of a national cult. Arguing against mob violence and lynching, Abraham Lincoln declared in his 1838 Lyceum speech that the Constitution and the laws of the United States ought to become the ‘political religion’ of each American.

함께 보기

• 미국 시민 종교
• 주체사상 — 북한의 공식 이데올로기
• 마리안 — 프랑스의 국가 엠블렘

바깥고리

• Initiative on Religion in International Affairs at Harvard
• “Civil Religion in America”. 《www.robertbellah.com》. 2006년 7월 4일에 확인함.  by Robert N. Bellah
• “Civil religion”. 《Encyclopedia of Religion and Society》. 2006년 7월 4일에 확인함. 
• Two examples of prayers at American civil ceremonies (National Civic Commemoration of Holocaust Days of Remembrance, and dedication of the United States Vietnam Veterans Memorial)
• Article on prayer at civic ceremonies
• Ronald Reagan presidential speech on appropriate role of military chaplains in United States military (Based on experiences at 1983 Beirut barracks bombing), Text version; Video version

참조 자료

• Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in a Time of Trial (1992), Robert E. Bellah, University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-04199-9
• A Nation of Behavers, Martin E. Marty (1976), U. Chicago, ISBN 0-226-50892-7