Civil Religion

?The idea of civil religion serves to disguise the self-interests of a nation-state.? Discuss.

In order to discuss to what extent does ?The idea of civil religion serves to disguise the self-interests of nation-state?, we must examine in detail what civil religion is. According to Ballah (1967), civil religion is a belief system that attaches sacred qualities to society itself. This means that civil religion act as a social bonding and connects different ideas and believes into one set of social norms and values. . Thus civil religion in this sense can be seen as ?mixing sand with water?; with the water being the ?civil religion? and the ?sand? as individual, mixing the water with the sand unify them together as one set thing. Similarly,

According to Belleh, the first form of civil religion is ?liberal?, which focus on justice and liberty; and will judge political issues base on civil right. The other forms of civil religion is ?conservative? which essentially celebrate and affirm American belief such as American is the best develop nation and therefore have the right to act upon other country. Moreover, according to Belleh ?s bookThe Broken Covenant(1992), American civil religion had been tested for three trail. With the first trail as being the Revolution and establish Independence for American; second, in the civil war and third trail referring to the responsible action in revolutionary world. Belleh argued that in American?s case, civil religion survives its first two trails but fail the last. To break his claim apart, Belleh refer the first trail as American?s susses in the attempt to establish their Independence of their country and in defeating the threat of British Colonialism. The Second trail of civil religion was during American?s civil war on slavery and democracy in which Belleh argue civil religion had achieve and survived well. The third trail refers to current, in the top-to-bottom moral breakdown and loss of virtue. Belleh argued that civil religion in American had fail to uptake their responsibility for their military action in revolutionary world and civil religion had shifted from Liberal form to

Although according to Belleh?s notion of the civil religion, civil religion had drifted away from its liberalaim. However, personal I would argue that civil religion has always been a form of ideology which aim to deal with the?current?struggle of the society. For example, civil religion acted as an ideology on its first trail to reinforce American identity, inwhichthe ideology was succeeded andbroughtdifferent groups of people into awhole nation. Similarly, the second trail also needed a set of successful process of ideology in order todeal with civil right movement. In simple words, without a set ofideology that can be accepted andshared by the public, American might not be able survive and compete with other countries as they have one of the most diversesocial model.Therefore, summary from the above essay would agree that civil religion are always severing in the interest of the nation-state, whether if it is an excuses for its political action or not, it is still serving in the manner of the best alternative outcome for its nations. Taking the third trail of civil religion for example, although some might argue that civil religion helps to justify violent action, nevertheless, it is still serving in the interest of the nation-state to maintain and increase American political