Western Philosophers on Civil Religion and Its Significance in Modern Age

Abstract

Faith is “a united system of beliefs, feelings and practices comparative to faithful things, which is to say the ideas are organized and prohibited–principles and performances which unite into a single moral community called a Church, and all the individuals who submit to them.” As per definition, faith is a system for building connotation in the world. Spiritual views in a sociological manner, then, are not solely accepted by the church, but, are further widely endorsed by social groups and collectively by society in totality, as society is the place where individual can reside, hold faith, rituals and other social patterns.” The viewpoint about founding views regarding an ideal as well as genuine world went on inspire Durkheim to ask: “In fact, what mandatory variance lies in an assembly occupied by the Christians who rejoice the life of holy Christ, or the Jewish community recalling their mass exodus from the land of Egypt and a reunion of citizens celebrating the proclamation of a new moral or legal system” His reply was driven from a socio-cultural perspective; as all were certainly extremely spiritual. Therefore, the civil religion is nothing but a collection of common symbols for initial self-understandings about a community: “To me, civil religion is a specific case of a spiritual figurative system, envisioned to achieve a varied task that is the chief element but not emerged from state or the church, but it is a collection of symbolic patterns, norms, rituals, and acts which develop relationship between man and the society.” Conclusion: In short, we can divide western philosophers into two categories: Some philosophers want to secularize traditional religions to support nationalism or democratic ideas like Tocqueville and Bellah. Some want to reject traditional religion and develop a concocted religion for the above purposes. Auguste Comte, Durkheim, and Dewey developed Religion of Humanity and Common Faith.