If, as Verba Says, the State Functions as a Religion, What Are We to Do Then to Save our Souls
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3762435 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lewis Lipsitz, Lewis A Lipsitz (0000-0003-2344-1274, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1968 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 527-535 |
| Publication date | 1968-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1952946 |
| OpenAlex | W2334885965 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 16 |
Sidney Verba has argued that the state in modern societies may function as a religion. He is certainly not the only one to adopt such a point of view. But his work is especially notable in that he has strengthened the argument by welding together a theoretical perspective that seems to be derived from structural-functional analysis and a good deal of varied and interesting, though not crystal-clear data. Verba's discussion of the functions of the state is most explicit in his article on the Kennedy assassination-in which he seeks to interpret the many studies of public reaction to the President's death. In this article, appropriately titled "The Kennedy Assassination and the Nature of Political Commitment," Verba attempts to go to essentials. He speaks of the deeper levels of political involvement made evident by the psychological crisis of the assassination. Repeatedly he employs the term "primordial" to describe the character of the underlying political commitment to the nation-state and its symbols in modern societies-the foremost of these symbols in America being the President. But let Verba speak for himself since he is explicit about these matters: first, on the nature of public reactions and the larger meaning of those reactions:The Kennedy assassination ... illustrates the close meshing of the sacred and the secular in the top institutions of a political system. In a society in which the formal ideology is officially secular ... the close linkage of religious institutions to the events of the crisis weekend is particularly striking ... a larger proportion of the American population responded to the assassination with prayer or attendance at special church services and religious ceremony and imagery abounded in the events of the weekend
Argument (complex analysis · Character (mathematics · Epistemology · Ideology · Law and economics · Meaning (existential · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Anti-Administration
Why hostility among subcultures? An explanatory model and some applications to the european community
Civil and conventional religion in secular authoritarian regimes
Law and Social Revolution
Civil Religion and Political Witch Hunts
Political Status and Norms of Decision-Making
Rites of Rulers
The Missing Leader
Political Ritual and Social Integration
The trap of intellectual success
The symbolic uses of politics
The Child's Political World
Philosophy Politics and Society
Political oppositions in western democracies
The social construction of reality
Political Culture and Political Development
Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion
Monarchs and Sociologists
The Kennedy assassination and the American Public
Man and the Sacred
The Meaning of the Coronation
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,18 |
| Citation span | 1971 - 2012 (42) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |