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Catch-All/Student Discussion Questions

Saving Private Ryan-Civil Religion

When I was in grade school, around seventh and eighth grade, my history teacher would always show the beginning scene to this film. It was in reference to our conversation about D-Day, she wanted to give us a visualization of how tragic this day was to the soldiers and America as a whole. Therefore while watching the film, I kept thinking about my grade school days and the lessons I learned. However as the film continued I began to pick up on events that were in reference to our conversation this past week. We mainly talked about civil religion, which was prominent within the film.

When the soldiers headed into fight for America, each of them pray to their own God but also to their nation. This one scene stood out to me the most: the soldier, made it to the beach and began to fire back towards the enemies. Before he took one shot, he said a quick prayer. A prayer for God to give him strength. At the end of his prayer, his words went something like this, “give me strength for America and my nation.” Through this one scene, I was able to completely understand what civil religion is. It is the patriotism and nationalism within each America, it brings each American together under one common theme. The theme being America. In the end, this film was very powerful and related civil religion a great amount.

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