Talk:American civil religion

message: The first sentence does not quite make sense in its present form because of the word essays:
American civil religion is a term coined by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967, since becoming one of the most debated and controversial essays in United States sociology.
Basically the sentence says the term became one of the most debated and controversial essays. I don't know anything about this topic, but from a grammatical poit of view, I would suggest soemthing like:
American civil religion is a term coined by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967. It sparked one of the most debated and controversial debates in United States sociology.
or
American civil religion is a term coined by sociologist Robert Bellah in 1967 in the essay titled XXX, which since became one of the most debated and controversial essays in United States sociology.
Someone who knows about this topic please fix this first sentence! Thanks JenLouise 06:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the great suggestion. Travb (talk) 01:27, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  First sentence 

message: You have an entire section with evidence supporting Bellah but nothing about controversy or criticisms - I'm sitting here in religious studies class and my teacher is talking about how his stuff has  come under criticism lately, but I get here and all I see are an explanation of the ideas and then support for them. How can you have support and not criticism? Kuronue | Talk 16:14, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:BB add the criticism section with sourced and cited information.  I am not aware of the criticism section, I look forward to you adding it and learning from you. Travb (talk) 23:56, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: :United States Constitution as a civic religion is a newly created spin-off from U.S. Constitution. Similarly to the experience here, the "concept" was immediately attacked as "contrived". I made a defense there. Can the spin-off be merged with this article as a section? 
:I'm not sure how this works at WP. I'm an oldie-newbie. Help. circle the wagons!  Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country, etc., etc., the book burners are upon us. I was introduced to the "concept" of civil religion by Herberg in assigned reading of "Protestant, Catholic, Jew" in a sociology class, later wrote a paper in philosophy using him to explicate Rousseau's "civic religion" in the Social Contract. 
:I get it that one was descriptive and one prescriptive. But, can't we just all get along? Any port in a storm, etc., etc. Can "United States Constitution as a civil religion" be merged into American civil religion as a section? 
:Or do editors here see the two as stand-alone articles? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:56, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: My sense is somebody worked hard to create the United States Constitution as a civic religion piece and that we should keep it, and my sense is that merging the article with this one -- American civil religion -- seems sensible as a way to keep material. What do you think?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:48, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The section added is a chunk from the unwieldy United States Constitution article which had grown to 250K and was incredibly slow to load. At present due to the pioneering work of Jim Henderson the USC article is under 200K, and the effort to spin off this subsection is designed to trim it further. So I copied this article from the US Const article -- subsection entitled "Civic Religion", and I only added one line -- the first one -- but I have not edited it.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:09, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Correct about slow loading - if you have a slow connection. (Technology and faster modems, etc. will solve that problem.) But does the title of this article comply with WP:UCN? I think not. --S. Rich (talk) 03:41, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree -- title needs fixing. Any ideas?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:07, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: How about this -- merging this article with American civil religion? What do you think?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 13:30, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes. Same thing happened five years ago when a wise split of the overlarge Bicycle article led to the unwise creation of Bicycle uses which was soon merged into an older but hitherto neglected article. Jim.henderson (talk) 13:44, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Copied the above here to this page now. --Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:33, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

text: Thanks. The "slow loading" issue has to take priority in every discussion of article length to reach the goal of expanding southern hemisphere readership and authorship. Which is not to say I do not have pride of authorship . . .  all I want for Christmas is for everyone to read the WP article on Rousseau's The Social Contract, which fyi I have not contributed to. Thanks again. More to do. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:38, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Merge" idea without proposal 

message: - "American civil religion" can be expanded to address a larger scope. The concept is broadly understood and widely used in philosophy, history, political science, sociology and religion. Note that WP style already renders "civic religion" to "civil religion". A search redirects to "civil religion". So, it is found at Civil religion and American civil religion. 
- The descriptive concept as developed in sociology is found in Bellah and Herberg. The prescriptive "Civic religion" is from the ancient Roman republic and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract. See the general concepts of tolerance, republicanism, civic virtue, democracy and equality. Additional writers include Erasmus, Locke, Montesquieu, Kant. 
- Attacked elsewhere as "contrived", the concept is that there can be group identity and several levels of social cohesion and concerted action in a large aggregate of population where there is a common ethos. Of course, all sense of human connectedness and commonality is "contrived" in the meaning developed by Sartre and the existentialists. On the other hand, it seems that nation-states may be with us for now, and the U.S. is among them. If people act like a "nation", there is such a thing as a "nation" and they are one. A rose by any other name, etc., etc. "Civic religion", likewise. Can the article here be usefully expanded for encyclopedic purposes, including merging "US Constitution as civic religion" into it as a section or as a sub-section of the prescriptive part? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expand rationale, continued. 

message: Just a note to say that the section being dropped was contributed by another user and took time to write, and decisions to move it here were based on a long length of United States Constitution as part of a project to slim the main article back down. If the chopped section does not belong in this article, maybe it should have its own article or be included elsewhere? Or else it could be edited or trimmed in a way so that it fits in with this article? My concern is that Wikipedia needs to keep good contributors like the person or persons who wrote this section, and that chopping an entire section risks alienating them.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: this article is and always has been about American Civil Religion. Other topics don't belong here--especially if they were written for an entirely different purpose and spliced in here. I moved the section on the physical document back to the History article where it belongs.Rjensen (talk) 17:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Take a look at the very short Charters of Freedom. I've just now C&Pd the chopped material. That article now needs expansion to cover the other Charter documents. --S. Rich (talk) 17:48, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Good thinking. I put the Charters of Freedom article on my oversee list and will take a look at it in the future. Thanks.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:22, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section being chopped 

message: Savidan edits without discussion to suppress an item in "further reading". Since this article is not entirely "constitutionalized", no wiki-reader should have link access from this page to an article on the United States Constitution. 
:I hope that I have misunderstood. There is a view among some sociologists that there is no objective reality to be found by inspecting anything concrete, such as the Constitution, for instance. The only scope of discussion is that impression of the Constitution held by surveyed subjects chosen in rigorously defined stratified random samples taken from a scholarly, conventional and peer-reviewed universe, aggregated and illustrated with appropriate normative bell curves and footnoted with significance tables of t-test statistics expressing their application to the hypotheses certainties and/or uncertainties for publication in professional journals. Serious scholars undertake profound investigations in rigorous fields of study. There is nothing "soft" about these social sciences. Some of my best friends hold PhDs. I get it.
:On the other hand, in an article for a general readership encyclopedia, there could be an editorial policy to include multi-disciplinary sources and resources relating to the human condition. This topic in particular should admit contributions from multiple fields of study, history and political science, sociology and religion, social psychology and psychology. All of these fields of study have scholarly aspects which bear on "American civil religion". If nothing else, it is useful to refer to the document as written and adjudicated, practiced and understood, to see how the four diverge among different jurisdictions, populations and over time. Some readers may want to pursue just such a comparative line of thinking. further reading should enable multidisciplinary inquiry.
:Editors should read text. Some Wiki-editors write that the Tenth Amendment says that powers not expressly given to the U.S. belong to the states. But on inspection, the text says powers not given to the U.S. nor prohibited by it to the States, belong to the States or to the people. These same editors frequently refer to the "sovereign states" to the exclusion of the "sovereign people", and notably use editor names relating to the American South. Some further reading into the text brings larger understanding of the topic, regardless of earlier editorial contributions.
:The "further reading" item "United States Constitution" should be restored. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Constitutionalized" article 

message: According to the first sentence, "American civil religion is a sociological theory that there exists a nonsectarian religious faith in the United States with sacred symbols drawn from national history."
So far, so good.  But throughout the article I'm overwhelmed by the many references to the simple mixing of religious and political activity-- basically either politicians making references to God, or religious leaders making references to events in American history.  If these examples elucidate American civil religion, someone should explain how.  Otherwise, someone should remove them.  As I understand it, the pledge of allegiance (especially *without* the "under God" clause) seems like one of the best examples of American civil religion. 208.68.128.90 (talk) 20:03, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: the article covers the examples used by the scholars and specialists on the topic. The very heavy emphasis on nondenominational religious themes is quite distinctively American.  Rjensen (talk) 20:16, 30 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maybe start over? 

message: I thought because of this Abraham Lincoln cultural depictions  is somewhat of Cult of personality. The weirdest example is even as a Vampire Hunter. I found him here, so need for further additions.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.168.42.20 (talk) 12:57, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  At last I found Lincoln here. 

message: It would be nice to have a Native American viewpoint, though I can't supply one. Allmedia (talk) 22:33, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Native American view 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I restored a much earlier version of this article intro. 
Over the years, So much unnecessary scientific jargon was added to a fairly straightforward and easy to understand concept. Infinitepeace (talk) 05:06, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: I restored a much earlier version of this article intro 

message: I haven't seen anything written about this so it's not possible to put it into the wiki page. But my sense of Trump is that one of the things he managed to do is take some of the American civil religion around himself and putting himself in it as a figure trying to protect that religion. In some ways others would thusly view him as an antichrist of the religion which would inspire virulent hatred against him or passionate following for him him depending on their viewpoint. Ergzay (talk) 06:15, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trump as a priest/prophet (or antichrist) of the American Civil Religion