Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

China’s constitution explicitly refers to its sovereign domain as “sacred territory.” Why does an avowedly secular state make such a claim, and what does this suggest about the relations between religion and the nation-state? Focusing primarily on China, Stating the Sacred offers a novel approach to nation-state formation, arguing that its most critical element is how the state sacralizes the nation.Michael J. Walsh explores the religious and political dimensions of Chinese state ideology, making the case that the sacred is a constitutive part of modern China. He examines the structural connection among texts (constitutions, legal codes, national histories), ostensibly universal and normative categories (race, religion, citizenship, freedom, human rights), and territoriality (the integrity of sovereignty and control over resources and people), showing how they are bound together by the sacred. Considering a variety of what he refers to as theopolitical techniques, Walsh argues that nation-states undertake sacralization in order to legitimate the violence of establishing and expanding their sovereignty. Ultimately, territorialization is a form of sacralization, and the foundational role of the sacred makes all nation-states religious states. Stating the Sacred offers new ways of understanding China’s approach to legality, control of the populace, religious freedom, human rights, and the structuring of international relations, and it raises existential questions about the fundamental nature of the nation-state.

Civil religion --- Religion and state

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Americans have long considered their country to be good—a nation "under God" with a profound role to play in the world. Yet nothing tests that proposition like war. Raymond Haberski argues that since 1945 the common moral assumptions expressed in an American civil religion have become increasingly defined by the nation's experience with war. God and War traces how three great postwar “trials”—the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the War on Terror—have revealed the promise and perils of an American civil religion. Throughout the Cold War, Americans combined faith in God and faith in the nation to struggle against not only communism but their own internal demons. The Vietnam War tested whether America remained a nation "under God," inspiring, somewhat ironically, an awakening among a group of religious, intellectual and political leaders to save the nation's soul. With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 behind us and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down, Americans might now explore whether civil religion can exist apart from the power of war to affirm the value of the nation to its people and the world.

Civil religion --- United States --- History, Military --- Religious aspects. --- Religion

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Employs Robert Bellah's notion of civil religion to explore East Asia's Confucian revival.

Confucianism --- Civil religion --- Religion, Civil --- Chauvinism and jingoism --- Nationalism --- Religion and culture --- Religion and state --- Religions --- Religious aspects

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The essays in this collection engage and build upon the exciting new scholarship in the histories of Christian nationalism within the United States. They cover topics ranging from the Native American preacher William Appess, Federalist party leaders, Manifest Destiny, and West Point, to Donald Trump, the evangelical thinker Richard Mouw, the ecumenical movement, evangelical internationalism, and religious pluralism. Taken together, the contributors discard the old question of whether or not America was ever a Christian nation. Instead, they are concerned with how and why certain persons and groups throughout American history have either embraced or rejected the myth of a religious founding as a political project.

Manifest Destiny --- Richard Mouw --- Federalists --- Donald Trump --- Civil Religion --- Evangelicals --- Ecumenical Movement --- American Religion --- Religion in the US --- Human Rights --- West Point --- Christian nationalism

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"In recent years a series of highly publicized controversies has focused attention on what are arguably the sixteen most important words in the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The ongoing court battles over the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, the now annual cultural quarrel over "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays," and the political promotion of "faith-based initiatives" to address social problems--all reflect competing views of the meaning of the religious liberty clauses of the First Amendment. Such disputes, as Bruce T. Murray shows, are nothing new. For more than two hundred years Americans have disagreed about the proper role of religion in public life and where to draw the line between church and state. In this book, he reexamines these debates and distills the volumes of commentary and case law they have generated. He analyzes not only the changing contours of religious freedom but also the phenomenon of American civil religion, grounded in the notion that the nation's purpose is sanctified by a higher authority--an idea that can be traced back to the earliest New England colonists and remains deeply ingrained in the American psyche. Throughout the book, Murray connects past and present, tracing the historical roots of contemporary controversies. He considers why it is that a country founded on the separation of church and state remains singularly religious among nations, and concludes by showing how the Supreme Court's thinking about the religious liberty clauses has evolved since the late eighteenth century."--From publisher description.

Civil religion --- Church and state --- Freedom of religion --- Religion, Civil --- Chauvinism and jingoism --- Nationalism --- Religion and culture --- Religion and state --- History. --- Religious aspects --- United States --- History