Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
BILIMNAME, cilt.41, sa.1, ss.385-411, 2020 (ESCI)
In this study, the theories of civil religion and political religion, which have recently become one of the main topics of sociology and sociology of religion, are discussed. The concepts of both civil religion and political religion are generally used in the context of the nature of the relations between religion-society and religion-state. Today, studies dealing with the relations between politics and religion have expanded to such an extent that they can no longer be limited to a single academic field, but here, the subject has been tried to be approached from a sociological perspective. In the literature, in general terms, the concept of civil religion is more of a characteristic of democratic and liberal regimes since it refers to a natural state and a spontaneous social situation in religion-society or religion-state relations. On the contrary, political religion comes to the fore as an attribute of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because it refers to an imposition, a pre-conceived political agenda. However, it is known that there is no clarity between these two concepts and therefore the discussions on the subject continue. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to the elimination of the uncertainty between these two concepts. In this context, the study has tried to go down to the historical background of the concepts of civil religion and political religion and tried to determine the reasons of the uncertainty between them. In addition, the differences and similarities between the two concepts, as well as the criticisms and their reasons, have been tried to be revealed from a comparative perspective. In this respect, our study aims to contribute, in its own right, to the studies that aim to reveal the limits, the uses, the social situations they point to, and the similar and different aspects of these two concepts.