Christianity and the Civil Religion

Abstract

Before turning to developments in modern European philosophy, let us recapitulate the structures of civil religion as exemplified by the Roman and American civil religions. We have divided civil religion into civil theology and public philosophy, and said that the first is primarily mythic, and serves to order the dynamic, temporal existence of the society, to give it meaning and destiny, to interpret its historical experience, and to locate that experience within the ongoing history of the world. The public philosophy, on the other hand, is primarily a body of philosophical principles and serves to found the order of the society in immutable divine or cosmic principles of stability. In effect, the principles of the public philosophy provide the form which allows a society to be, to appear in space, and not only to occupy space but to order it. Moreover, the public philosophy, by its very nature, integrates the society not only with the order, or form, that allows the cosmos to be, but also with every other society that perceives the cosmic order according to similar principles. It is, simply, the means by which the society interprets itself according to pre-existing, unchanging standards.