A Tale of Two Civil Religions: Ritual, Transcendence, and the Crisis of Meaning in American Politics

Abstract

This article does three things to advance the study of civil religion and American society. First, it identifies and examines a conceptual cleavage between the initial use of civil religion (deistic civil religion) and a later adaptation (Durkheimian civil religion), both of which offer distinct liberal-humanistic alternatives to how aspects of traditional religion might be used in contemporary, secular-modern political life. Second, it measures these two civil religions to assess the relative place of each in American public life. This reveals a puzzle: while the original, deistic conception of civil religion demonstrates a persistent presence in American public life, the later, the Durkheimian version of civil religion, is less vital and more polarized. The third portion of this article presents one explanation for this puzzle. This article argues that the story of the two civil religions demonstrates the ways in which modern political theories have fallen short in their goal of replicating the functions of traditional religion.