Abstract
What is the point in combining the concept of fundamentals with that of civil religiosity? I think that religiosity in general, and also civil religiosity, gives us the opportunity to see that fundamentals not only give a foundation to our rules and meanings in a metaphysical sense, but also in an emotional way. I will try to demonstrate this in the present contribution, in which the civil religiosity of my own country, the Netherlands, will serve as an example.
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Notes
I refer here to Nisbet’s definition of community: “By community I refer to much more than what is denoted by mere local community. I use the word […] in its oldest and lasting sense of relationships among individuals that are characterised by a high degree of personal intimicay, of social cohesion or moral commitment, and of continuity in time” (Nisbet, 1974: 1).
Here I am combining Durkheim with notions from both the symbolicinteractionist and the existentialist tradition. What I call anxiety is meant to be a translation of the German ‘Angst’. This word is often translated as ’dread’. I have chosen ’anxiety’ because this seems to have less heavy and dramatic connotation.
What I have in mind is the normal Weberian idea of charisma, but here it is combined with the ideas of anomie, anxiety and reality maintenance. It would go too far in this context to elaborate the theoretical problems involved in this eclectic combination.
We see this kind of alternation quite often in different forms with a changing charismatic charge. We see this in the US, for instance in the discussions on the merits of various presidents, especially Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. And in the American mind, the USSR turned from an evil empire into the country where the peacemaker Gorby came from.
The idea that charisma is a good criterium of what religion is is completely in tune with Weber (1972: 245). The reasoning I put forward here is elaborated (in Dutch) in Ter Borg (1991).
The concept of religiosity developed here is not far from Geertz’s well-known definitions and purposes. Geertz’s definition is as follows: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic (Geertz, 1973: 90).
Thus Durkheim’s famous defmition would be applicable: A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them (Durkheim, 1915: 47). The mixture of emotions that I describe here is in line with the way in which Rudolf Otto defined the sacred (Otto, 1922; Eliade, 1959: 8).
Unfortunately, these ideas have not received much influence outside the sociology of religion (Mathisen, 1989).
This is what the genius behind the Christian pillars, Abraham Kuyper, called “the antithesis”.
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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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ter Borg, M. (1995). Fundamentals and Civil Religiosity. In: van Vucht Tijssen, L., Berting, J., Lechner, F. (eds) The Search for Fundamentals. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8500-2_7
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