Civil Society and Civil Religion as Mutually Dependent 349
First, the notion of “civil society” introduced earlier goes beyond religion to describe
a broad segment or layer of any society’s social structure. It refers to that assortment
of nonkin, nonwork, mediating institutions, voluntary associations, and social move-
ments separate from the state and government. While it excludes the private world
of the family and the working world of the wage earning economy, it includes neigh-
borhood associations, community organizations, trade unions, and religious groups.
While it excludes governmental agencies and assemblies, it includes political and so-
cial movements that grapple with matters such as the environment, health, sexuality,
gender, poverty, or faith itself – unless and until President George W. Bush’s “faith-based
initiatives” simultaneously make and break the law. Insofar as these initiatives involve
government support for faith, they would pose a clear violation of at least the most
common reading of the First Amendment that the one thing the government cannot
legitimately support is faith itself.
Meanwhile asecondmeaning of “civil society” is a cultural preference for a “civil-
ized” society characterized by civility and the civic virtues, variously defined but gen-
erally including such liberal staples as mutual trust, respect, and tolerance as part of a
package of good democratic citizenship.
Not surprisingly, these two meanings are often intertwined with each other and
with virtually tautological results. Thus, the presence of one seems to guarantee the
presence of another almost by definition. It is largely a semantic fluke that persuades
us that a civil society of the first sort is a necessary and sufficient condition for a civil
society of the second. But that is precisely what the new theory of civil society holds.
In both the United States and around the world, this has moved beyond a matter of
conjecture to become an article of faith in its own right (cf. Hall 1995).
It is here that I want to introduce some skepticism based on my recent comparative
study of religion and politics in some fourteen countries around the globe – including
almost all of those mentioned earlier. Without trying to explode the theory altogether,
I shall argue that the relationship between the two meanings of civil society is neither
necessary nor sufficient.
Civility as a Western Chestnut and Conceit
Few ideas combine longer pedigrees with fonder hopes than that of the civilized society.
It is hardly surprising that it should have great appeal among Americans at a time when
the United States is described as increasingly divided against itself and the battlefield
for a most uncivil “culture war” (e.g., Hunter 1991, 1994; Goggin 1993; Guinness 1993;
Gitlin 1995). Putative battles range from inner cities to wilderness fortresses over such
fundamental matters as racial discrimination and economic justice, abortion and family
values, and the scope of government overall.
This diagnosis has become both a source and a symptom of the illness, and in the
confusion it is little wonder that citizens are drawn to simpler nostrums from simpler
times. That often unholy alliance of scholarly pundits and media publicists has per-
suaded many that the country is in desperate need of regaining its moral bearings and
recapturing that precious sense of individual trust and institutional integrity on which
every successful society depends.
In a variant of the old bad cop/good cop routine, social science has provided both
the scare and the solution. In fact, there are problems with each. As for the scare,