ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is concerned with aspects of civil religion in the United States of America, in the United Kingdom and in Siena, and the five-fold characterization offered by R. Pierard and R. Linder is also, therefore, adopted as an analytical tool. It explores how far the concept of civil religion may be used to elucidate and interpret the significance of American and British rituals and traditions of remembrance and memorial. The book examines aspects of civil religion in two particular contexts, each of which is national, modern and predominantly, though by no means exclusively, both Anglo-Saxon and culturally Protestant by historical tradition. It examines the ways in which the experience of modern warfare caused two modern nation-states to invent traditions of memorial and remembrance and looks at how such 'invented traditions' subsequently evolved and changed and continue to do so.
