There is no scholarly unanimity regarding what exactly constitutes a religion. Religion is not objective like a building or a cellphone may be. It could be described as a cultural system of selected behaviors, practices, world views, texts, and/or sacred places that relate humanity to the transcendental or some superior being. But a religious experience can arguably also be aroused by gazing at the Grand Canyon or even flying in an airplane. As defined by Clifford Geertz, “Religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.” In contemporary America, the president is viewed by many as the world’s most powerful political figure and leader of a global superpower. In this paper, I will examine the marvel of Presidency in America in terms of Clifford Geertz’s definition of religion. In doing so, I will analyze three features of this phenomenon: President as Sacred Person, Presidential Status as Theodicy, Election as Ritual.”
President as Sacred Person
Just as there are different followers of religions, the citizens of a nation follow political parties, which champion their respective Presidential candidates. A few dominant world religions are Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism; the dominant political parties in the U.S. are the Republican and Democratic parties. Followers of religion often place faith in their religious leader(s) and practices to enhance the quality of their existence on this Earth in some form. Likewise, citizens of a nation follow the President and trust that he will pass proper laws and make smart executive decisions to lead the country in a positive path and improve the overall wellbeing of the nation.
The characterization of a sacred person encompasses the experiences of hierophanies, or appearances of the Absolute, who may be founders or innovators behind religious movements. These sacred persons may include prophets and sages or mystics. The President of the U.S., particularly Barack Obama, can be considered a sacred person, particularly an exemplary prophet. An exemplary prophet teaches not by his or her words, rather by their conduct; not because they are ordered to, but because they see it as a natural example to obey due to its moral impact. Throughout his term as President, Obama guided his devoted followers and the entire nation to a better state than it previously was in. His benevolent actions spoke louder than his words, as he is remembered for his strong success with LGBTQ rights, world relations, accessible healthcare, air-pollutant regulation, and far more. Additionally, he served longer than any President in decades without a scandal. He led by example and promoted change for the better within all of his supporters.
Moreover, the sacredness of Obama can be carried over to a Christian justification in the sense that his presidency could equate to the account of Eden. The fall of man is a Christian term pertaining to the transition of the first man and woman from a state of innocent obedience to God to a state of guilty disobedience. Disputably, the fall of America came after the end of Obama’s second term, with the election of Donald Trump, whose controversial policies and viewpoints essentially reversed and arguably regressed any progress made in Obama’s eight years as the nation’s leader.
Additionally, Obama was worshipped on various other levels. Interestingly enough, he was given great importance in terms of education across the nation. As mentioned in Sherece Bennett’s article, lesson plans circulated on marketplaces for educators, portraying Obama as a “messiah”, a leader or savior of a particular group or cause. The lesson used biblical references to describe Obama. Kyle Olson described the lesson as a “mythical interpretation of Obama” and noted it calls “for students as young as third grade to read Grimes’ book, Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope, and do a number of activities, including making a collage of Obama.
Presidential Status as Theodicy
In a broad sense, Theodicy is trying to explain suffering in terms of divine justice; any effort to explain how the apparent injustices of human suffering occur, and why the world is not as flawless as it should be. The notion essentially poses that if God were all-powerful, he could destroy evil, and if God were all-good, he would destroy evil. But evil has not been destroyed. Therefore, God does not exist, or He is limited. But there is evidence that God exists so therefore, He must not be all-powerful. Having monotheistic beliefs Jews and Christians are especially susceptible to the problem of theodicy, as there is no one else to blame for evil. In a world created by a good God, from where would evil originate? Evil manifests itself in nature and in human behavior.
In terms of comparing the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, with theodicy, God (The President) is all-powerful but not all-good. There is ample suffering and evil in America, and the President himself can be held directly responsible for its existence with his social and fiscal policies. Donald Trump also seems to be all-powerful, in the sense that his presidential status gives him immunity against much evil and suffering he has caused others. Case in point, he has an ever-growing list of scandals, from mocking a disabled reporter to spewing explicitly racial slurs to boasting about sexually assaulting women. Despite knowledge of such behaviors, however, his base of supporters holds him on a high, all-powerful pedestal. 86% of people who voted Trump in 2016 still approve of the job that he’s doing (The New York Times, “Unwavering Loyalty to Trump, Come What May”). Given these numbers, it appears that, in the eyes of his supporters, Trump can do no wrong. Trump’s supporters believe that he will energize the economy, create millions of well-paying jobs, improve the self-esteem and quality of life of Americans and simply: “Make America Great Again.” Trump’s supporters, blinded by their faith in him, believe he will accomplish this by restricting immigration, criticizing the mainstream media’s “fake news,” and repressing political correctness.
Election as Ritual
Any kind of formal, regularized behavior that is performed in accordance with specific occasions or conditions, is classified as ritual. A ritual is a way of acting out a symbol. Ritual is also supposed to show that the community can experience this “ultimately true” reality in its group behavior. To instill and reinforce such belief, every society develops rituals. As Geertz puts it, in ritual “the world as lived, and the world as imagined turn out to be the same world.” Seasonal rituals are celebrations and rituals that mark the seasons and important events within the cycle of the year. Seasonal ritual is always pointed towards securing the well-being of both the community and the individual.
Elections for the President of the United States occur on a four-year cycle and are held on Election Day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. During the general election, Americans go to their assigned polling centers to cast their vote for President. Voting in the presidential election that occurs “seasonally” every four years is in essence a ritual that the people of a nation must fulfill to maintain standing as good citizens. In Catholicism, The Forty Days of Lent that follow Ash Wednesday can be understood as a seasonal ritual. This time is allotted for fasting, self-denial, and repentance to rid oneself and the community of sin and guilt. Similarly, elections provide citizens of a nation a chance at a new beginning, to start fresh and elect a new leader to rid the community of “sin and guilt” from the past president’s term. When Obama was re-elected in 2012, it was almost like a second coming. The Second Coming is a Christian and Islamic belief regarding the future return of Jesus Christ after his incarnation and ascension to heaven roughly 2000 years ago.
As examined throughout the paper, Geertz’s definition provides a starting point for comprehending religion in a social-scientific way. It proposes that every individual or group may have a religion, regardless of their (non-)beliefs in conventional symbols of a religion. Every group has some overarching basis that all of its members share, to make sense out of life and guide behavior; in this instance, the group being a nation of citizens, believing in a President as its “God”, to make sense out of the social and economic happenings in a country. Religious symbols do not take struggle or pain away, but they do help to make circumstances endurable as they affirm that there are answers, even if they may be difficult to understand. Similarly, citizens use a President’s poor or smart executive decisions to justify various aspects regarding the current status and wellbeing of a country. Ultimately, the debatably religious features of a Presidency in contemporary America are an apt depiction of Geertz’s contemporary definition relating religion to the cultural beliefs of a society.
