Civil Religion as Communication Environment: Conceptual Analysis

Abstract

The article presents a conceptual analysis of civil religion as a special form of combining the sacred and the political. Having stated the need for social researchers to address the religious side of society in general and its political implications in particular, the author tries not only to reconstruct the genealogy of the term “civil religion”, but also to trace the differences between civil and political religion. Based on the analysis of the origins of the concept of civil religion, the author shows that its components — “civil” and “religious” — were introduced from two sources that are completely different in their spirit: the social philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the sociological project of Emile Durkheim. Robert Bellah managed to combine the heuristics of both sources and offer a specific language for describing externally secular, but internally religious societies. Having thoroughly analyzed the three features of civil religion identified by Bellah, the author focuses on its functioning as a communication environment — a specific set of values that taboo or stimulate the articulation of certain political issues. The communication environment not only ensures the satisfaction of the needs of the state, within which a civil-religious cult is established, but also maintains a consensus on basic values, the undermining of which is fraught with the complete disintegration of society. According to the author’s conclusion, in order to talk about the presence of a civil religion in a polity, this polity must meet several criteria, including unambiguous consensus about sacred values, political decision-making justified via theology and values, as well as the “topological” nature of the development of a political cult. This is the main reason why this form of political life is relatively rare.