Abstract
The United States is renowned for its commitment to the separation of church and state. However, that does not mean that God was absent during state formation or in contemporary America. Instead, a well-developed interdisciplinary field of study examines the role of Civil Religion as the mitigating sphere between politics and religion. This paper contributes to the study of ACR field by focusing on one aspect—the identity of Americans it created and reinforced through the symbols, rhetoric, and rituals of ACR. In an initially homogenous society, whiteness and Christianity were largely the shared reality and any contrary identities were marginalized or suppressed. Over time, as immigrants flooded the United States, the continuation of white/Christian American identity was institutionally constrained through legal practices of exclusion such as slavery, naturalization, and voting rights along with cultural exclusion such as the relocation of Native Americans to distant and isolated areas away from “real” Americans. In this paper, I argue that in the contemporary United States, the identity contained within Civil Religion is contested and challenged. On one side is a group who see “Real Americans” as the Whites and Christians who founded the nation-state, while another group argues “Real Americans” include the diverse ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious expressions of generations of citizens and immigrants, even though they have historically been pushed aside and ignored. These competing world views are not binary, but are largely black and white, and contribute directly to political polarization and culture wars in the United States.
Presenters
Gail ChoateStudent, MA, Political Science. PhD Student Comparative Studies, Florida Atlantic University, Florida, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Civil Religion, Civil Society, Identity, Religion, United States
