Talk:Political religion/Archive 1

Things to be done

 * Add Cult of Personality to aspects
 * Add Nazi Germany to case studies
 * Add Soviet Communism to case studies

Hi! This is an interesting topic to write on, and as far as I can tell unique. Please help me with writing it, if you could, and also, please note any changes in the discussion. Thanks.--naryathegreat 22:12, Jul 7, 2004 (UTC)

Changes
I added the Cult of Personality section. Hope it is up to scratch. Anyway, feel free to do anything on the to-do list and add things to it too! (All pages should be this way, people make notes in a section on changes whenever they change something, and they should have a to-do list)

I thought "civic religion" was something other than what is described here.
I was surprised to read some of the things in this article: that it occurs only in dictatorships, that it disallows dissent, that in all cases it is atheistic, etc. I would have thought that the phrase refers to ritual expressions of patriotism of the sort practiced in all countries, such as singing the national anthem at public gatherings, displaying the flag on patriotic holidays, retelling exaggerated, one-sided, and oversimplified mythologized tales of great leaders or great battles in the past, and in the USA, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, presidential inauguration ceremonies, and the like. Since you use the term civic religion only to refer to dogmatic forms practiced only in dictatorships, what name would you use instead of civic religion to refer to the sort of thing I thought was meant? Michael Hardy 02:01, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

An awful lot of this article's content is at best, extremely POV, and at worst just plain wrong. Frankly, it reads like somebody's high school project. I'm not aware of the term "civic religion" having any generally accepted currency - aside possibly from the type of state religion practised within the Roman Empire.--Gene_poole 05:08, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)


 * What exactly would be that extreme POV? While it is true that definitions of that term dont seem to exist yet (see my post in Talk:Civic religion), the term itself exists and is used, and thus can and should be defined. In other words, this article seems to give an interesting explanation - and a name - for a situation that does exist in reality. We must therefore discuss and (hopefully)agree on two things:

--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 10:42, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * is the situation presented and explained in this article true - i.e. do such things really occur in reality?
 * is the term civic religion the right term for this?

True--civic religion might be a grey area, but if you know of another title, i would be delighted to hear it. I cannot really think of one right now. Merging with civil religion might be a possiblity, but that is plagued with problems, least of all the extreme anti-U.S. sentiment present there (have you read the last paragraph? YIKES!). Also, if you sit there and actually think about it, isn't it hard to show two extremes on one page? Right now there are links back and forth between the pages, so I feel that this is the solution I know best.--naryathegreat 15:58, Jul 17, 2004 (UTC)


 * I think this would solve our problems: a short (few words at best) definiotion for civic and civil religions, allowing us to compare them. After we agree on those short definitions we can expand the article with examples and illustrations and stuff, but first we must find a short definition that nobody can accuse of being POVed in any way. Another solution - following the discussion on civil, perhaps it can be merged with cult of personality? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:47, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Civil religion-intense patriotism, nationalism and/or chauvinism which, sometimes takes the place of religious allegiances in a person's life

Civic religion-intense patriotism, nationalism, and/or chauvinism combined with atheism which acts like a religion and takes precedence over all other allegiances (takes control of a person's life, so to speak)

How's this?--naryathegreat 19:12, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)


 * Looks good for me - is short and easy to understand. Let's see if others have anything to add though? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:16, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Redirect outdated.--naryathegreat 19:12, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

I cannot see any necessity for this article. The Civil religion article is a valid and much better written discussion of the phenomena of both formal state religions (as in ancient Rome)and surrogate state religions based on a mixture of secular and religious symbology (as in the present day United States), and in my online researches on the subject the terms "civil religion" and "civic religion" are used pretty much interchangeably. The claim that "civic religion" can be differentiated from "civil religion" due to the former's alleged atheist foundation is not supported by any source that I have encountered.--Gene_poole 06:21, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Ahhh! It's just a title! Get over it! Besides, a title with the word religion seems to be closer to this article than to civil religion. And as for being better written, it's POV about the U.S. and I don't agree with it.--naryathegreat 16:51, Jul 19, 2004 (UTC)

The fact that you "don't agree with" the article on Civil religion is not a justification for creating a new article. In any case you have not provided any evidence that the differentiation of "civil" vs "civic" religion has currency anywhere outside your own head, and as such you have provided no justification for the continued existence of this article. If it's not forthcoming soon, I intend listing it for deletion. --Gene_poole 01:57, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Titles of two articles
This is a good article, even if it needs a lot more work, but it still bugs me that two articles that are so different from each other have names so similar that people are likely to forget which is which. I think civil religion is a very fitting name for that article, so this one ought to be changed. This one seems to be about just one kind of civil religion. A crude suggestion would be to call this one extremist civil religion. But there must be a better word than "extremist". So my tentative position is: figure out what word that should be, and move this article there. Michael Hardy 02:12, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's certainly a good idea. I chose this title because that's how I personally have always referred to it. I was quite scared at first that I had wasted my time when I saw Civil religion, but then noticed that it wasn't really similar at all. As for a new title, would anyone like to suggest something (extremist civil religion will never do :-)--17:32, Jul 21, 2004 (UTC)

Some clarification please
I feel that the sentence about reading the case studies should be temporarily taken out. AT least until some case studies are actually submitted! I am not an expert on this topic so I have no idea what the Ideology paragraph is about at all. Thats a pretty good sign that someone who knows what they are talking about should clarify that paragraph. Also, isn't the US a country in which Christianity is prominant? If so, then is there, has there, or will there ever be a civic religion imposed upon us??? What do you mean when you say 'as used in this article'? If your use of the definition differes from all other sources then isn't that POV?? No hard feeling? Thanks! Jaberwocky6669 22:51, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)

Clarification required
Is somebody intending to provide a succinct definition of the term "civic religion" within this article? As it stands the article is currently little more than a list of facts about some aspects of totalitarian governments, with no central thesis. Also, I can't see the necessity for the numerous references to christianity.--Gene_poole 06:03, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Renaming Vote
There are some serious aspects of this article that need to be worked on, at least partly reflecting its originally overly Christian viewpoint, but it seems to me the first order of business is renaming. The current name is clearly an accident of misunderstanding, and there is no real difference between the words civil religion and civic religion as ordinarily defined. But there is a real difference between North Korean Juche and French Marianneism. I've made some searches through google and the academic literature, and can't find a standard terminology under which to explain the religious aspect of something like Juche. So, unless someone else can find an accepted term (and I hope that they can), we'll have to come up with something ourselves.

I've suggested Statist religion, just because it is simple and as unambigous as I could think of. Other suggestions were remaining at Civic religion or merging with Civil religion(my objections to these two stated above), Adoration of the state, Sovereignty cult, State cult, or Extremist civil religion. Other suggestions welcome.

Why don't we vote on naming and have it done with?

I'll start (subject to change on better suggestion or arguement):
 * Statist religion --Pharos 16:08, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Atheism or Fascism?
There is apparently some confusion between Fascism and Atheism in the current version of the article. Most civic religions aren't atheist at all. 19:11, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)