Civil Religion

American presidents often mention God in their presidential addresses and often also talk about the USA as having a special mission in the world. On Memorial Day, Americans unite in honouring the nation's fallen soldiers, and each school day begins with a common prayer where the students pledge their allegiance to "one nation under God". Americans strongly support these national events, both in terms of institutions such as the presidency and traditions such as Thanksgiving.
Such beliefs and rituals are called “civil religion.” It was the American sociologist of religion, Robert Bellah, who first observed (or claimed) that in the United States there is a specific national religion alongside all the other religions that Americans practiced. This 'civil religion' is fairly abstract exactly so that anyone can participate, whether they are in favor of a particular religion or not; at the same time it is sufficiently specific in its relation to the American nation that it actually can function as something common  to Americans in their relation to the nation.

Like all other religions, civil religion has a number of unique characteristics:

• It is expressed in speeches, rituals and monuments.
• It claims a covenant between the nation and God.
• It involves the idea of ​​a God who rewards and punishes the nation according to the way it complies with the covenant.
• It is separated from both church and state.
• It is worshipped by the whole nation alongside the religions that people otherwise profess to.

It is important to understand that civil religion is an analytical abstraction. Only religious scholars speak of civil religion. No one will call himself or herself “civil religious” or say that their nation has a civil religion. The concept is best suited to describe the relationship between nation and religion in the face of religious freedom and religious pluralism, as we find it in the United States. In countries with one religion, such as Russia, it would be more natural to talk about religious nationalism. It uses a specific religion to legitimize the nation, and those who are not Orthodox are not considered as quite as authentic members of the nation as the Orthodox Russians.

The texts are all a rewrite of an English draft version of an introduction to Horisont - a textbook for the Danish upper-secondary school RE, edited by Associate Professors Annika Hvithamar and Tim Jensen, and Upper-Secondary School teachers Allan Ahle and Lene Niebuhr, published by Gyldendal, Copenhagen 2013. The original introduction was written by Annika Hvithamar and Tim Jensen based on a contribution by Peter Lüchau.