Sentences with phrase «on civil religion»

My initial essay on civil religion in America opened a debate that has continued to this day.1 Much of that debate has been rather sterile, focusing more on form than content, definition than substance.

But he scored in 1967 with a well - timed and now classic essay on civil religion in America.

Roger Williams, for example, for all his insistence on the separation of church and state, believed that such general religion was essential for what he called «government and order in families, towns, etc.» Such general religion is, he believed, «written in the hearts of all mankind, yea, even in pagans,» and consists in belief in God, in the afterlife, and in divine punishments.2 Benjamin Franklin for all his differences from Roger Williams believed essentially the same thing, as indicated in the quotation from his autobiography in my original article on civil religion.

My original article on civil religion was written in 1965 and published in 1967 in an issue of Daedalus on «Religion in America.»

Not exact matches

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers the subject of discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, religion, sex or creed

A company that even printed out a contract like that would be liable under the Civil Rights Act, because it is illegal to discriminate in employment decisions on the basis of religion.

To participate effectively in a constitutive dialogue carried on in the venue of the courts, one must be a member of the priestly class of our civil religion: a lawyer or someone with a large measure of legal knowledge.

«Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time.»

Religion News Service: Obama extols a biblical vision of equality for all in second inaugural A presidential inauguration is by tradition the grandest ritual of America's civil religion, but President Obama took the oath of office on Monday (Jan. 21) in a ceremony that was explicit in joining theology to the nation's destiny and setting out a biblical vision of equality that includes race, gender, class, and, most controversially, sexual orientation.

The Jewish organization alleges religious discrimination and unfair business competition, on the basis of several California statutes, including the state's civil rights act, which prohibits the refusal to engage in a business transaction on the basis of race, creed, religion, color, national origin or sex.

Madison's implicit assumption, and that of the entire tradition of religious toleration until the last few decades, however, was that religious diversity and conflict would involve competing sects that differ on some important questions of doctrine and practice but nonetheless share in common a basic Judeo - Christian orientation that is also, in very broad terms, our society's implicit civil religion.

It's an imposition of a civil religion (democratic process) on a religious leadership selection issue.

But when the subject of civil religion became a minor academic industry, I became increasingly concerned, as conferences, panels and symposia on the subject proliferated, that the whole issue was bogging down into arguments over definition and that substance was being overlooked.

Homebrew laws have failed to materialize for the past five years, with religion and morality arguments narrowly beating out the estimated 5,000 underground homebrewers in the state who say their civil liberties are on the line.

The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination, shall forever hereafter be guaranteed; and no person shall be denied any civil or political right, privilege or capacity, on account of his opinions concerning religion; but the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be construed to dispense with oaths or affirmations, excuse acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent with the good order, peace or safety of the state.

As an expression of the biblical archetype that stands behind the civil religion let me turn to that great initial sermon of John Winthrop, «A Model of Christian Charity,» delivered on board ship before the landing in Massachusetts in 1630.

We should not assume, however, that all Americans from the seventeenth century on have been quite so inclusive with respect to general civil religion.

Butler shows how in the early national period, as the line of distinction between religion and the civil authorities («separation of church and state») developed and the citizenry relied ever less on the government for things spiritual or ecclesiastical, church life prospered.

God is not on America's side; Christians who think so are seriously mistaken, for they confuse civil religion with true Christianity.

John Whitehead is founder of the Rutherford Institute, a Virginia - based civil liberties organization that is tirelessly in the trenches fighting on behalf of ordinary folk who are told that they are constitutionally required to keep their religion to themselves.

No man [should] be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor [should he] be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor... otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief... All men [should] be free to profess and by argument to maintain their opinions in matters of religion, and... the same [should] in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

The liberal version of American civil religion draws on a different set of religious values and portrays the nation in a very different light.

He finds current expressions of both to be internally divisive as well as at odds with each other, usually based on a conservative / liberal split that weakens the effectiveness of both «civil religions,» and leaves the way open for secular ideologies including material success, radical individual freedom, and an amoral pragmatism.

As Bellah noted in his initial essay on the subject, civil religion in America seems to function best when it apprehends «transcendent religious reality... as revealed through the experience of the American people»; yet the growing interdependence of America with the world order appears to «necessitate the incorporation of vital international symbolism into our civil religion» (Beyond Belief [Harper & Row, 1970], pp. 179, 186).

If you don't yet see it, go read up on the English Civil Wars where the powerful vied for control based on religion: the Protestants tortured the Catholics (and vice versa) for generations...

The mere fact that this law is applicable also to Jams, Buddhists and Sikhs clearly shows that from the beginning it should have been called Civil Code rather than Hindu Code» He adds, that it is not based on any Hindu Scriptures but on «modern concepts and progressive values and is applicable to all citizens irrespective of religion».

religions to preach spirituality and morals are dying down based on scriptures, but are maintained by civil law and orders.

She now owes Wisconsin's Civil Rights Bureau $ 8,000, having been found guilty of discriminating on the basis of sex («handyman») and religion («Christian»).

As and atheist, I am concerned with the influence religion has on the general public, specifically when it comes to women's rights, civil rights, gay rights, and the like.

On the basis of the foregoing analysis of Mexico and the United States, perhaps this explanation can be offered: Civil religion depends for its existence upon circumstances allowing persons and institutions to be «religious» and «political» at the same time.

reveals no instance where the Court ruled on the merits of a civil, criminal, or administrative action involving government favoritism or discrimination against a particular religion.

Rousseau seems to suggest the most fully developed civil religion relies exclusively on neither the church nor the state but to a significant degree at least counts on independent vehicles for its support.

Biased in favor of one or another ecclesiastic outlook at times, this civil religion can also at times be biased on behalf of the political status quo.

What Andrew Manis calls the South's second «civil religion» has been equally influential on the national stage.

So it is that «growing numbers of people are abandoning religion in practice; on every side they influence literature, the arts, the interpretation of the humanities and of history and civil laws themselves.

The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Const.itution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its «unhallowed perversion» by a civil magistrate.»

Reston's God, like the one Bellah described, is typical of the God of civil religion, is on the vague and austere side, «much more related to order, law, and right than to salvation and love.»

I find civil religion motifs in Reston's focus on «the American Dream,» in his belief that the precepts of the Republic's founding documents were political affirmations of certain religious concepts, in his belief in America's unique moral role in world affairs — and in his concern for injecting morality into public - policy discussions.

Robert D. Linder on President Clinton's civil religion, Journal of Church and State, Autumn 1996.

It is in this connection that I must again point out the absence of any reference to God, and thus of any civil religion, in the Constitution of the United States, Belief in the tenets of the civil religion are legally incumbent on no one and there are no official interpreters of civil theology.

Christianity was never our state religion, nor did we have in Rousseau's strict sense a civil religion, a simple set of religious dogmas to which every citizen must subscribe on pain of exile.

In describing and accounting for the lives of the Religious Right, which we define simply as religious conservatives with a considerable involvement in political activity, the book and the series tell the story primarily by focusing on leading episodes in the movement's history, including, but not limited to, the groundwork laid by Billy Graham in his relationships with presidents and other prominent political leaders; the resistance of evangelical and other Protestants to the candidacy of the Roman Catholic John F. Kennedy; the rise of what has been called the New Right out of the ashes of Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964; a battle over sex education in Anaheim, California, in the mid-1960's; a prolonged cultural war over textbooks in West Virginia in the early 1970's — and that is a battle that has been fought less violently in community after community all over the country; the thrill conservative Christians felt over the election of a «born - again» Christian to the Presidency in 1976 and the subsequent disappointment they experienced when they found out that Jimmy Carter was, of all things, a Democrat; the rise of the Moral Majority and its infatuation with Ronald Reagan; the difficulty the Religious Right has had in dealing with abortion, homosexuality and AIDS; Pat Robertson's bid for the presidency and his subsequent launching of the Christian Coalition; efforts by Dr. James Dobson and Gary Bauer to win a «civil war of values» by changing the culture at a deeper level than is represented by winning elections; and, finally, by addressing crucial questions about the appropriate relationship between religion and politics or, as we usually put it, between church and state.

«It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points.

I can't speak for the artist but American non-believers focus more of their attention on Christianity because it is Christians who are continually imposing their religion on US civil politics, laws, and society.

Wanda, The religious right want to mix religion with politics to further their agenda — creationism taught as science, public displays of their religious symbols on civil buildings, civil law based upon their interpretation of the bible, etc. etc..

James Wolfe has developed a typology of civil religions linked to my typology of the stages of religious evolution.3 This chapter builds on these previous efforts to develop a comparative perspective.

Those influenced by Rousseau often begin with a bias against civil religion on the grounds that it is or easily can be an idolatrous fraud perpetrated on naive believers.

On the other hand, Italian liberalism and socialism, especially since World War II, have tended to give up their totalistic claims and opt for a civility and a tolerance of difference that Hammond sees as essential in a modern civil religion.

Granted, the outcome may not be a sharply defined «civil religion» — one that could be universally recognized as such — but at the least it can be anticipated that some kind of «political religion» will be more likely to emerge in societies where legal structures take on meaning - bestowal qualities.6 Obviously such political religion can emerge in «totalitarian» as well as «democratic» societies, but in either setting it will be the law and not mere coercion that facilitates social development.

Durkheim's followers, on the other hand, give little thought to the question of how a civil religion comes to be.