Civil Religion: Road to Redemption or American Heresy?

Civil religion has been described as a powerful, shared, but nondenominational belief in the United States as an exceptional nation, a city upon a hill that was great because it was good. But today civil religion is coming under scrutiny as some see the angry populism of the Trump era turning the cohesive force of patriotism into blood-and-soil nationalism.

Can a country in which the national anthem has become a dividing line still rally around civic sacraments and symbols?

Speakers

• Kathleen Flake, Richard Lyman Bushman Professor of Mormon Studies at University of Virginia
• John Carlson, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Arizona State University and Interim Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict
• Susan Wise Bauer, Essayist and Author of the History of the World Series for W. W. Norton
• Mark Silk, Director of the Leonard Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College

Moderated by David Gibson, Director of the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture