Lily on Civic Religion

Lily on Civic Religion

In response to Andrew's latest post, I just wanted to make the quick observation that whether God exists is a question that most religious creeds answer in the affirmative. This tends to suggest to me that the concept of God carries meaning that transcends any specific religious creed. What that meaning is, exactly, is of course a little fuzzy, and perhaps for these purposes ought to remain so, since almost any words one uses to articulate it could serve to exclude someone from the discussion. Just as we can all understand the concept of Truth, even if we don't know how we'd articulate it, or even, sometimes, how to find it. We are comfortable with doing this in other aspects of our culture; for example, in jury trials. Juries in the Western legal system have the job of figuring out the Truth from a presentation of evidence. We don't worry about having to explain to a jury that the truth exists somewhere out there; we assume they already know that, and just present them with what we know so far, and let them go from there. A person who doesn't believe in the metaphysical existence of objective truth can still serve competently as a juror. Similarly, even if a person doesn't believe that God exists, it doesn't mean that they can't conceive that the concept of God has any meaning to anybody. Does it mean that that person is entitled to keep the government from putting "In God We Trust" on the nation's money?

What I find more troubling is what the concept of a civic religion would mean to someone who had no religious creed at all, i.e. an atheist. This is the kind of person who would most obviously feel uncomfortable with "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, "In God We Trust" on our money, etc. Atheism, by definition, is a rejection of all religion, and, as a society that wishes to accommodate as many views on religion as possible, a rejection of all religion would naturally seem like something we need to accommodate, too. Can a civic religion do this? Should it do this?