In a 2006 article in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal , Frederick Mark Gedicks points out the impotence of civil religion in a pluralist society:
“The irony of civil religion is that it is supposed to provide a substitute for theestablished church, a means of morally instructing and spiritually unifying the peopleso as to bind them to republican government. Yet, in a radically plural society likethe United States, like most of the countries of Western Europe, there is no set ofreligious beliefs that is both sufficiently broad to command the assent of most citizensand, at the same time, sufficiently deep to contain serious theological content.” He is skeptical, as am I, that a pluralist society can have a civil religion with any meaningful content to it.
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