Public religion

The word Religion has changed its meaning over the centuries so it is often good to apply a modifier to determine what kind of religion you are talking about.

Public religion can refer to both a civic faith within a government control and to public expressions of that faith in cultures. Public religion, if we use the definition of Religion meaning how we care for the needy of society, is the same as public welfare. The early Christian Church was often persecuted because at that time Pure Religion was actually Private welfare. In fact the outlawing of Private welfare by Rome was at the center of the Christian conflict with the Benefactors of Rome. Christians were in the World of Rome but not of the World of Rome. They did not apply for the Free Bread of Rome nor were they members of the Imperial Cult of Rome because they knew that was a Covetous practice that would make them Merchandise, a surety for the debt of the welfare State of Rome and would curse their children with that debt.

Public religion is also related to Civil religion which is a concept that originated in French political thought and became a major topic for American sociologists in the 1950s.

Civil religion means the implicit religious values of a nation, as expressed through public rituals, symbols (such as the national flag) and ceremonies on sacred days and at sacred places (such as monuments, battlefields or national cemeteries). It stands outside the churches, although church officials and ceremonies are sometimes incorporated into the practice of civil religion.

The phrase "civil religion" as discussed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his 1762 treatise The Social Contract was defined as a group of universal religious beliefs. He believed governments had a responsibility to uphold and maintain the right of the individual belief in a deity, that virtue is rewarded and vice punished and belief in religious tolerance. Rousseau affirmed that individuals' religious opinions should be beyond the reach of governments.

To define Public religion it is important to define the term Religion because it changes from time to time in the history and mind of society. Religion may be defined as what you think about a God or gods but at other times religion is defined as your duty to your God and your fellowman. When personal conscience is dictating that duty we call that private religion but when the government dictates that duty we are talking about Public religion.

Where there is religious freedom the practice of religion and the performance of those duties to both God and your fellowman remain available as a private affair rather than a public affair and therefore would not subject to public policy unless private religious practice obstructs the free practice of religion by others.

Public affairs may included more than the original duties of government which are often limited to constitutions of the people who create them. The Constitution of United States limited the power of government from meddling in the free practice of religion as defined at the time of that Constitution's acceptance and implementation.

Public affairs may also include social benefits and the collection of the funds to provide those benefits. Rome moved from private religion funded by charity which took care of the needy to Public religion funded by taxes. The Romans used the same names and temples but altered the method of contribution and distribution. That meant records of members and who has paid in and what is paid out.

Members received entitlements in the form of gifts and gratuities but also had a civic obligation of support. Under the Public religion of Rome Augustus became the pontifex maximus (chief priest). From that point on the Emperor of Rome provided the social welfare run through the state system of temples in a form of Public religion, The Imperial cult of ancient Rome.

This practice increased the power of the state and the dependence of the people. Social welfare was managed through their temples like Ephesus, Temple of Saturn and the Parthenon. Saturn was the god of agriculture which housed the records needed by the government and beneficiaries of its systems of welfare including birth certificate.

The modern Tabularium, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. entry is by way of Constitution Ave.

The first building for maintaining public records in Rome, including the law, was erected under the protection of the temple of Saturn, as early as 509 B.C. but was possibly burned by the Gauls in 309 B.C. Other buildings were used until 78 B.C. when they built the great Tabularium, on Capitoline Hill, below the Temple of Jupiter, which was the symbol of the sovereignty and power of Rome. Civic faith includes an aspect of civic allegiance and depends upon Civil law to impose both. It includes both a civic duty and benefit. Private religion

The 2nd century A.D. text 'De Significatione Verborum' of Sextus Pompeius Festusgives distinguishes public and private religion. The former is carried out at public expense either on behalf of the populus as a whole or individual members of the populus who met certain criteria. Private individuals could contribute to the temples and festivals which at one time depended entirely upon donation by the people for the people.

The latter called private religion was almost always on the behalf of individuals, familiae and gentes. These Family groups gathered in a network of hearths in early Rome and were served by chosen individuals who connected these groups from a grass roots union of voluntary loyalty and honor in charity to their fellow man.

Later this practice of private religion through free will sharing according to what the individual believed that the gods or God wanted them to do began to become more controlled. First certain groups like collegiae, guilds and sodalities provided for their own but then temples became more enterprising and collective. Eventually with the centralization of power in government, first in the Senate and then in an Emperor and Principas Civitas, private religion became less essential in forming the bonds of society and Public religion through the civil authorities and registration of citizens began to dominate public services altering the very nature of society.

Civic faith more recently was expressed by men like Benjamin Franklin who in 1749 proposed an educational academy in Philadelphia. He believed that the study of history would "afford frequent Opportunities of showing the Necessity of a Publick Religion ," arguing "from its Usefulness to the Publick; the Advantages of a Religious Character among private Persons." But undoubtedly Ben was including the moral charcter required in the performance of religion and that it should be incorporated in public affairs.

Religion was at that time chiefly the performance of your duty to God and your fellowman and not merely your opinion of who God is.

Civil Religion is mentioned in the Social Contract^[1] by Jean-Jacques Rousseau who switched from protestant to Catholic and back again depending on which women he was in love with at the time. He suggested that a Christian Republic was paradoxical imagining that Christianity taught submission. He knew that it did not promote participation in public religion.

In Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, he praised “the union and discipline of the Christian republic.” He also pointed out that “it gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire.”Rousseau and Revolution, Will et Ariel Durant p.801. fn 83 Heiseler, 85.

The bloody conflict between the religions (in the sense of an opinion about God) of the fifteenth through the seventeenth century focused the attention and imagination of men on the ideology of religion and opinions about God leaving off the weightier matter of the performance of your duty to your fellowman with righteous intent. The idea of a theocracy still strikes fear in the hearts of men.

These conflicts were the result of the people giving to much power and wealth to their clerics and the encroachment of superstitions rather than duty as the primary focus of religion.

Émile Durkheim^[2], a collaborator with Karl Marx and Max Weber, redefined religion again:

"A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, i.e., things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them." ^[3]

His ideas struck many as representing a kind of "top-down" governmental development and control of religion and making the State the god of religion as we see him avoiding the supernatural or even God all together in his definition.

Of course Émile, as a sociologist, was in his head a lot about things like religion imagining that they were what you think rather than your performance of a duty. He was not only a French sociologist, social psychologist and philosopher but is considered to be the architect of modern social science and father of sociology and friendly with the ideologies of Karl Marx and Max Weber.

While there is always an element of what you think in religion being a doer of the word is clearly the emphasis of Christ and his followers until this modern era. This is not to say that doing was the matter of a tally sheet of good deeds that earned you the blessings of God but that your private faith compelled your actions to seek righteous deeds at every turn and opportunity.

The early Christian ekklesia or called out Church was a republic that was recognized by Rome through the proclamation nailed to the cross by order of the Proconsul of Rome, Pontius Pilate. When Jesus rose from the dead to stand again upon the earth, so did His Kingdom. His kingdom now lives in the hearts of those who follow His way.

Men like John Wilson of Princeton see "public religion" as alternate form to the weaker "civil religion" but were both top down. Benjamin Franklin's view of public religion was "from-the-bottom-up" having been heavily influenced by the rugged individualism of the frontier and the natural distaste for exercising authority that comes with a practice of personal responsibility which we see with men like David Crocket and Mr. Bunce.

Franklin many other founders more moral in their lives were simply advocating a need for public morality and virtue knowing full well that without theme the U.S. Constitution would be ineffective for republican life it was to protect. They new that despite the denominational and sectarian form their religious philosophies and eschatology took that there was common good and moral character to their teachings. But more important was their endeavor to aid one another in charitable service performed public religion by voluntary acts of citizens rather than the top down authority of civil controls.

Public religion,

first has the aspect of the performance of duty to man according to a righteous spirit of the divine dwelling of God within the individual and only relies of government to assist in protecting that right from intrusion, and

secondly, refers to expressions of religious faith by that behavior generated by private individuals through free assemblies within communities.

There is almost always a voluntary sector having direct bearings on public order, union and discipline.

The Church, as one form of government, provides public service as Benefactors without exercising authority over the people while both political and civil practices of religion involve compelled offerings directed by the states and extracted from the people from the top down.

As such, the terms Public or Civil religion serves to refer to one side while Private religion through the Church or other charitable institutions form the familiar private-public dichotomy.

Public religion centralizes power in the hands of the state an debilitates the fibrous nature of a virtuous society.

See Christians_conflict#Public_and_Private_Religion

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Footnotes

↑ Social Contract, chapter 8, book 4
↑ Commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology
↑ The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Book 1, Ch. 1. Émile Durkheim

[1] Social Contract, chapter 8, book 4

[2] Commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology

[3] The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Book 1, Ch. 1. Émile Durkheim

[1]

[2]

[3]

Public religion

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