Publieke godsdienst in Nederland

Samenvatting

The term "civil religion" was coined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, referring to a general religion as the basis for societal integration. This idea is also found in the works of August Comte, Emile Durkheim, & modern functionalists. R. N. Bellah recently investigated the civil religion of the US & describes a specific type that points to a religious interpretation of US history in terms of biblical archetypes; E. L. Tuveson has shown that this has strong millennial connotations. Although Bellah maintains that every society has some sort of civil religion, it has generally been agreed that there is no civil religion in the Netherlands. This statement is investigated in two periods of Dutch history: the Eighty Years' War with Spain, & the nineteenth century. An analysis of the "beggar songs" of the former period reveals a biblical type of civil religion; in the latter period, essays of the Dutch Society for the Common Good contain a concept like that of Rousseau; but these findings require some qualifications. Modified HA.