Civil Religion and the Enlightenment
This event has ended.
Contact
Add to calendar
In western societies, we tend to think that modernisation implies secularism: that religion should be separate from politics, church from state, and our private beliefs from public life. Historians, social theorists, and political philosophers point to the Enlightenment as the dawn of secular modernity, especially the American Federal Constitution (1787) and the French Revolution.
However, leading Enlightenment philosophers and so many of the revolutionaries who drove events in America and France believed that religion was inseparable from politics and that, even if there should not be an established church, the state and public life must be infused with shared Christian and religious ritual. As this talk will argue, they instituted civil religions - attempts to regulate religion through state legislation - that shape western politics to the present day.
We will send out a Zoom link for the event to all those who have registered. This will arrive on the day when the talk is being held. Please note that the Zoom link will arrive via email from Dr Paul Webster. If you have not received a Zoom link by midday on 20th March, email Paul (websterp@cardiff.ac.uk) and he will send it on.