When Faith Demands Treason: Civil Religion and the Prophet Jeremiah

Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau described the principal components of civil religion as the following: Belief in the existence of God, in the life to come, in reward for virtue and punishment for vice, and in religious tolerance. Persons might hold other religious beliefs as well, but such beliefs were personal, lying outside the concerns of the state. On American soil, civil religion was balanced by the idea of separation of church and state, a theme that simply emphasizes the distinction between public, civil religion and private religions or religious beliefs. Ancient Judah likewise had something resembling “civil religion” in late pre-exilic period. The prophet Jeremiah attacked the temple, anticipating its destruction if people did not repent and reform, the king for not providing justice for the weak and defenseless people of Judah, the covenant as mediated and breakable, the gift of the land as conditional, and the religious leaders for currying the favor of people instead of preaching God's truth. The tension between civil religion and the more nuanced religion of Jeremiah led to serious confrontations between the prophet and his contemporaries, confrontations that nearly became deadly for the prophet at times. Jeremiah's thinking influenced post-exilic faith so that it is difficult to image what post-exilic faith in Judah would have looked like without him, but it appears that post-exilic faith developed into something more like the older civil religion than Jeremiah had envisioned.