Civil Religion at the Hearth

Current Trends in American Civil Religion from the Perspective of Domestic Arrangment

Abstract

In this paper, I bring both functionalist and conflict perspectives onto an intimate stage where the interplay between civic and private religious life can be observed: the home. I will argue that American civil religion in its current state is the result of two competing visions of the relation between public policy and private religious experience. Further, that these incompatible visions derive from the archaic structure of the early Roman civilization that provided the origin of America’s civil religion, and the modern civic structure of the post-Enlightenment era through which America’s civil religion matured. Finally, I will show that the struggle between these visions is clearly illustrated in the effort to bring public policy and private religious experience to bear on an ideology of the family.