Anthony Squiers the Role of Civil Religion in Political Practice

Anthony Squiers The Politics of the Sacred in America The Role of Civil Religion in Political Practice The Politics of the Sacred in America Anthony Squiers The Politics of the Sacred in America The Role of Civil Religion in Political Practice Anthony Squiers Universita¨t Passau Passau, Germany Tarrant County College Fort Worth, TX, USA ISBN 978-3-319-68869-5 ISBN 978-3-319-68870-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68870-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957060 © Springer International Publishing AG 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To my lovely wife, Kana, and the Ikeda family of which I am honored to be a part. “When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass Acknowledgments This book is a revised version of my Habilitationsschrift which was submitted to and approved by the faculty at the Universita¨t Passau. I would like to first thank Prof. Dr. Karsten Fitz for being my mentor during the habilitation process and the chairman of my Fachmetorats. Without his generous invitation to Research at UP, this work would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Prof. Dr. Winand Gellner and Prof. Dr. Bernd Lenz for their service on my Fachmetorats as well as Dekan Prof. Dr. Dieter Anhuf, Prof. Dr. Michael Hochgeschwender, and Prof. Dr. Volker Depkat for helping to facil- itate the process. Thanks also goes to the following people for their consultations during various stages of the research process: Dr. Matt Arsenault, Dr. Eric Moeller, Dr. Jamie McCandless, and Thomas Stelzl. Finally, I need to recognize the hard work of all my research assistants for their contribution to the success of this project: Florian Lechner, Yunzuan Feng, Caleb Leininger, Hemn Farhad, Ahmed Ayad, Avan Soufy, Huda Sarhang, Jahan Issa, Didawan Mazin, Jason Martinez, and Francisco Lopez. Anthony Squiers ix Contents 1 The Political Dimensions of the American Civil Religion (ACR): An Introduction ....................................... 1 Research Question ...................................... 5 Definitions of Politics and the ACR .......................... 6 Defining Politics ...................................... 7 Defining the ACR ..................................... 7 What We Know About the Political Dimensions of the ACR . .... 10 The ACR and US Foreign Policy .......................... 11 The ACR in Political Sociology and Political Philosophy . 12 The ACR and Electoral Politics ........................... 14 The ACR and the Mediation of Social Tensions . 17 Filling in the Gaps: The Politics of the Sacred . 19 Overview . 20 2 A Theoretical Model for the Study of Civil Religious Signs ...... 25 Introduction ........................................... 25 The Absent Core Theory . 27 Functional Equivalence Theory . .......................... 28 The Weberian and Durkheimian Traditions and Empirical Assessment . 29 The Pluralistic Models ................................... 30 The Resource Model ..................................... 32 The Applicability of the Resource Model to Civil Religious Objects . ............................... 33 Conceptual Limitations of the Resource Model ................ 35 Discursive Systems Theories ............................... 36 Semiotics . 38 The Dialectics of Cognition ................................ 39 Orientating Signifieds .................................... 40 Priming and Framing .................................... 41 Intersubjectivity . ....................................... 42 xi xii Contents This Model Applied to Civil Religious Signs . 43 Civil Religious Signs as Orientating Signifieds in Public Political Discourse . 46 Summary ............................................. 48 3 The ACR in Public Political Discourse: 1960–2012 ............. 51 Introduction ........................................... 51 Verifying Fundamental Assumptions About the ACR . 51 Identifying Relevant Signs ............................... 53 Verifying a Fundamental Assumption of our Semiotic Model . .... 53 Data Selection ........................................ 54 Outline of Chapter ..................................... 55 Methodology . 55 Tenets and Symbols of the ACR . ......................... 57 Content Findings ....................................... 58 Belief in God . 59 Filial Piety ........................................... 60 Sacred Texts and Symbols ............................... 61 City on a Hill/Beacon of Hope ............................ 62 Higher Purpose ....................................... 62 Other Items .......................................... 63 Overall Articulation .................................... 65 Hypothesis Testing . .................................... 65 Ubiquitous Narrative Form . ............................ 66 Articulation Over Time . 66 Party Difference . ..................................... 67 Incumbents vs. Non-incumbents . .......................... 67 Vice-Presidential vs. Presidential Candidates . ................. 68 Victory vs. Concession . 68 Cohesive Narrative Form ................................ 69 Exclusivity . ....................................... 70 Discussion . .......................................... 70 4 The Apotheosis of the Founding Fathers and Signs of Filial Piety .... 75 Introduction ........................................... 75 The Advent of ‘The Founding Fathers’ ....................... 78 The ‘Glorious Exit’ of Jefferson and Adams .................... 80 History and Hagiography . 81 From Puritan to Revolutionary Fathers ........................ 83 The Founding Fathers and ‘The Founding Fathers’ in the ACR . 85 ‘The Founding Fathers’ in Public Political Discourse . .......... 86 Summary of Findings . 86 Contents xiii ‘The Founding Fathers’ and the Politics of the Sacred . 87 Signs of National Group Unity ............................ 91 Summation . ......................................... 92 Conclusion . ...................................... 93 5 Sacred Documents, Sacred Signs: The Constitution and Declaration of Independence .......................... 97 Introduction ........................................... 97 Constructing a Narrative . ............................... 98 The Constitution and Declaration of Independence in the ACR . 100 Summary of Findings . ................................. 104 Qualitative Examples . ................................. 105 Discussion . .......................................... 109 Essential Meaning . .................................... 110 Summary ............................................. 114 6 Contesting the Politics of the Sacred ........................ 115 Introduction ........................................... 115 The Politics of the Sacred and Discursive Resolution . .......... 118 Entrenchment in the Volksweltanschauung ................... 118 Resolution Through Force, Coercion and Violence .............. 119 Resolution Through Discursive Processes . 120 The Politics of the Sacred and Institutional Politics ............... 121 Electoral Politics . 123 The ACR and Differentiation . .......................... 124 Judicial Politics . .............................. 125 Conclusion . ...................................... 130 7 Conclusion: The Mediation of the Universal and Particular ...... 133 How the Universal Mediates the Particular . 134 Discursive Mediation ................................... 135 Institutional Mediation . ................................ 135 How the Particular Mediates the Universal . 137 Discussion . .......................................... 138 Appendixes ............................................... 141 Appendix A: Coding Definitions of Terms . 141 Appendix B: Breakdown of Filial Piety by Individual or Group Across Datasets . 143 Appendix C: Breakdown of Sacred Texts and Symbols by Item Across Datasets . 144 Appendix D: Correlation Matrix . 145 Appendix E: Filial Piety Signs and Contextualized Signifiers . 147 Appendix F: Sacred Text Signs and Contextualized Signifiers ......

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