Abstract

REINHARDT, Bruno. Reenacting the covenant: America's civil religion and christian political theologies in an imperial age. Relig. soc. [online]. 2011, vol.31, n.2, pp. 29-54. ISSN 0100-8587.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0100-85872011000200003.

Forty years ago, amidst the Cold War, Robert Bellah concluded his famous article on civil religion in America with the following question: how to conceive the applicability of the core values that undergird United States' imagined community beyond the territorial limits of its nation-state? The current article intends to revisit this important question critically while referring it to recent global regulatory incursions performed by the USA on the field of religious freedom. First, I review the history of the relationship among secularism, national identity and Christianity in America. Secondly, I analyze the political and religious negotiations that give birth to the International Freedom of Religion Act (IRFA), in 1998. As a conclusion, I stress how this exercise might offer broader contributions to debates on the mutual orientation of religion, nationalism and secular power in contemporaneity, with an emphasis on the relationship between these and the principle of sovereignty.

Keywords : christianity; America's civil religion.