1
12
SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
central characteristics:
(1)
The nation is the primary agent of God's meaningful activity inhistory; (2) The nation is the primary society in which the individual American discoverspersonal and group identity;
(3)
The nation also assumes a churchly feature as thecommunity of' righteousness.'"Today,"ho\ve\.er, "the American civil religion is an ernpty and broken shell" (Bellah,1975: 142).
A
sense of collective identity as a unitary "people" seem to be declining whilepolitical cynicism and apathy are increasing. Szynianski
(1
973) reports that electoral parti-cipation is significantly down since 1960, while arm) desertion rates were substarltiallyhigher in the Vietnamese war than in the Korean war. A Crallup opinion index for .%pril1972 reports that younger citizens
(32%
between 18-20) are morr likely than older citizens
to
express a wish to move to another countrl-.
In
summarizing this evidence, Szymanski(1974: 11) comments, "On the political, cultural, f'amilial, economic, legal and personallevels, virtually all indicators point to the
i,acrea.ting alienation
of
thr Amrrican peoplefrom'4merican ;ialue,s and institutions
ant1 to the general decay of the moral fabric of -4rnericansociety" (our emphasis).,L\nalysts have focused upon Vietnam, Watergate and detente in accounting for thisdeterioration in civil religiosity. Moreover, longer range trends underlie this decline.Proponents ofthe "end of ideology" thesis argue that increasing structural differentiationand the growth of cultural pluralism have made a consensual civil religion supplyingcultural integration for the total society both impossible and unnecessary (Bell, 1960; Fenn,1972). 4s a result. "There is no dominant set of interests, values or meanings in our societytoday" (Douglas, 1974:95). The related tendency toward "privatization" of religion (Luck-rnann, 1966; Fenn, 1972) has also been seen as undermining civil religion and entailing apermanent withdrawal of supernaturalist sanctions from political institutions.The sec~tlarizingactors which have undermined symbolic integration have also createda
cri.sic
of
commltnity
associated with the onset of "mass society" (Kornliauser, 1959). Eri-hanced structural differentiation has resulted in the extreme isolation of the nuclearfamily-,which can no longer meet the expressive ancl com~nunal eeds of its members. Thebureaucratization in work and educztional milieux, the increase ir, geographical mobility,and other trends have diminished the communal viability of "secontlary groups" which areno longer capable of linking the individual to the total society.
A
need has arisen for newkinds of collectivities intermediate between atomized irldivicluals or primary groups andthe total society. S~rchollectivities would provide contexts for diffi~se onimunal intimac)-and would restx-ialize the individual away from exclusive dependence on the nuclear familyand orient him toward broader societal and universal
\.slues.
.I'l~e urrent comm~tnalbreakdo~vn aturally impinges most heavily on young persons who have left their family oforigin but have not yet created their own families and are therefore most susceptible tocommunal deprivation and anomie. Groups catering to the resulting conimunal depri\-a-tion, then, will recruit tnost heavily from young people..And yet t\vo different resolutions are possible. One can en\-ision a t-eco~~stit~ttionfpl~tralisn~hrough nev. groups and comnlunities. The erriergence of
new
"social inven-tions" such as communes or encouriter groups has recently been interpreted in these terms
(J.S.
Coleman, 1070; Marx and Ellison,
1975).
Religions of the youth culture may also be
'According to Bellah, the American Civil religion has traditionally involved conceptions of
Amer-
icans as the "chosen people" who are fulfilling a providential purpose in history. Bellah sometimeswrites as if the civil religion has been
explicit
in American culture. One does not, however, write anarticle to establish the existence of Catholicism or Presbyterianism. In general, assumptions of .4mer-ica-as-an-instrument-of-divine-Providence have been
implirit
in American political consciousness andhave not been routinely articulated in the twentieth century to legitimate particular national policiesand institutions.
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