Does any of my FACEBOOK friends have any insight on civil religion?

It is one of the things that I love about social media, the rare opportunities to get into interesting discussions beyond the reposting of articles that people find interesting, intermingled with pictures of family life.

I’m not well versed in discussions of civil religion, but I read around a little bit. I am especially interested in the social contract, so I found the relationship interesting. I responded,

Random thoughts... According to Wikipedia civil religion was coined by Rousseau in The Social Contract as the glue that holds society together. I'm a big fan of the idea of the social contract and believe that we are at a point where we need to renegotiate the social contract. In this case, because of how the Internet is changing interactions between people. Yet it is these points of changing social contracts that bring about times of great awakenings. Civil religion and prophetic religion entwine.

Another topic I’ve been very interested in, and less versed in than I would like is great awakenings. It feels like we are at a point where a great awakening is needed.

So, I started thinking, is there a relationship between civil religion and great awakenings? My search led me to Civil Religious Revivals and Awakenings. It didn’t lead me in the direction of civil religion and great awakenings but it did give me a bunch important ideas.

The starting point is breaking apart ‘civil religion’ into different civil religions. Do we have different civil religions depending on whether we are living in blue states or red states, depending on further nuances of geography or political opinion? Are our civil religions determined by race and ethnicity?

Remillard’s article was full of interesting links. I was pleased to see that he is on Twitter and so I followed him there. This led to an article in the Washington Post, Like Pope Francis? You’ll love Jesus.

I’ve been fascinated by all my liberal friends getting all excited about Pope Francis. Elizabeth Tenety does a good job of exploring different reactions to the new Pope. It seems like the response of various American civil religions to a prophet religion.

Perhaps we are seeing an underlying battle between competing different civil religions and a manifestation of a prophetic religion. How will it play out in this age of increasing wealth disparities and climate change, amplified by changes in how we interact through electronic media?

I don’t know, but this is a great topic to be discussing on social media.