In his Social Contract, Rousseau spells out an obligatory commitment to a civil religion which he believed would turn believers into virtuous citizens who would willingly sacrifice themselves for the sake of their political community.
55 German soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan, 35 of them are remembered as fallen soldiers. The term is meant to symbolically honor these deaths by separating their active sacrifices from the other passive victims. The term is instituted as part of an official mourning ritual which assembles military and political representatives in a church. Following a common religious service, the Secretary of Defense speaks from the altar, trying to give an answer to the pivotal question for what cause these soldiers fell.
These rituals serve as examples for a symbolic politics that intentionally refers to the civil religious principles of the political community in order to legitimize those deaths- civil religious politics.
