In last week’s post, I wrote about the philosophical foundation of civil religion through the recent study by political theorist Ronald Beiner. The upshot of this argument is that civil religion is the appropriation of religion for political ends.  If we accept this basic definition of what civil religion is, then we might ask, what are these ends and has there been a common thread running through examples of civil religion? When I look at how other scholars have understood and employed civil religion, I am most interested in how they characterize the development of those ends.  Of course, we Read more