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Thirty-five years ago the distinguished sociologist Robert Nisbet made the bleak assessment that the liberal era, much like any era, was certain to face its "twilight," namely, the weakening of conventional experiences of order and the ensuing moral vacuum in which community life was threatened. The concern that Nisbet raised then remains a salient topic within political theory today: the liberal era, much like any other epoch in Western Civilization is certain to face its twilight-or, in technical language, the waning of the "socially predominant experience of order and its symbolization." This paper will reexamine political representation in relation to the modern political-theological problem at a time when the very basis of the liberal order is under scrutiny. Moreover, it will argue that to the degree to which the state remains the dominant institution in liberal society-and at this point in time there is no indication that any other institution, be it the market, the Church, or others, can challenge the power and authority of the modern state-civil theology, that venerable concept of political thinking, will remain a key feature in Western political thought and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan as a civil theological contrivance written as a remedy for the social distress of his time and to compare Hobbes's construction with both Plato's Republic, a work rich in civil theological implications of its own. Moreover, the paper will examine recent trends in the United States that have seen civil theology become a significant factor in contemporary American political thought and practice. This factor can be viewed as an integral part of the conservative political agenda, particularly among a group of conservatives influenced by Leo Strauss, the neoconservatives. A critical question is thus posed: does this religious factor constitute a civil theology in the Hobbesian sense and, if so, to what degree? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the recent attempt by contemporary conservatives to arrest the decline in the moral character of American political society and thereby to maintain American standing in world affairs strategically, economically, and culturally by way of a contrived civil theology for American political society. In light of this attempt, it is possible to distinguish and classify civil theology in terms of the organic and contrived variety.The United States offers a convenient instance in which these two types of civil theology can be discerned and analyzed. The traditional American civil theology, which provided the myth structure for American society up until the 1960s, can be understood as essentially organic in structure. With the atrophy of this "traditional" civil theology have come efforts to ameliorate moral decline in the United States. Recent attempts to revive the traditional civil theology by American conservatives have, however, resulted in a contrivance that only appears to be a restoration of the traditional civil theology but, in reality, amounts to the establishment of an orthodoxy of a sectarian Protestant community drifting toward radical elements of Christian eschatology. In this way, the contrived civil theology risks the establishment of an American ideology, or "Americanism," in the words of Russell Kirk. This newly-institutionalized Protestant sectarianism, in turn, has been further radicalized around the notion of American exceptionalism and that the United States embodies a certain divinely-ordained "destiny." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]