In Civil Religion and the Renewal of American Politics, political scientists Amy E. Black and Douglas L. Koopman argue that a functioning American democracy depends upon what they call a “dynamic civil religion” (p. 8). The emphasis on “dynamic” is central to their project, as it describes a civic tradition rooted in the core values of American democracy yet capable of continually rearticulating those values within an increasingly diverse social landscape.
Black and Koopman open the book with a diagnosis of the present moment, which also previews the book’s closing argument. They begin with recent polling data showing a significant development in American religious life, marked by sharp declines in the share of Americans reporting membership in a religious congregation, alongside the rapid growth of the religiously unaffiliated. At the same time, the authors emphasize that Americans remain comparatively religious, especially in belief and self-identification, when measured against Western Europe. Within the still-religious US population, however, they identify the rise of Christian nationalism, a perspective that equates American identity with a particular and exclusionary form of Christian theology. For Black and Koopman, these developments pull in opposite directions but produce a similar problem: both strict secularism and Christian nationalism narrow the public square. In response, the authors propose American civil religion as a mediating tradition, one capable of welcoming multiple viewpoints while sustaining the shared civic commitments that hold a diverse society together.
After introducing the book’s core insight, Black and Koopman turn to history. They contend that religion and political culture in the United States have always been intertwined. The First Amendment’s protection of free exercise alongside disestablishment created the conditions for religion to be foundational without being officially established. Rather than removing religion from public life, this arrangement fostered a vibrant religious marketplace and a Protestant-inflected national identity. Colonial institutions, universities, and public life reinforced this orientation, as awakenings and revivals spread a form of Protestantism that favored personal religious choice, moral formation, and political engagement. The Civil War exposed the limits of this supposedly shared religious language, as the Protestant consensus fractured over slavery. Still, the resulting civil religious framework remained rhetorically powerful in the coming decades.
After surveying the Protestant stamp on American civil religion, the book examines different religious communities in the United States. Catholicism illustrates the dynamics of exclusion and incorporation, as a group once distrusted and marginalized eventually entered American political culture at every level. The authors then turn to minority religions like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, and others to show how each found a place, however contested, within American public life. Black and Koopman explain how the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 added further layers of complexity, as more religious communities from outside the Christian tradition entered the mix. As these groups transformed American demographics, they also found inroads into US political culture. The treatment of these religious communities, while brief, collectively illustrates a trend in America’s civic tradition to adapt to new populations, albeit with considerable challenges and disruption.
The religiously unaffiliated have brought to this conversation a new challenge, as they do not fit traditional categories of belief, belonging, and religious behavior. In particular, atheism once carried a strong stigma, especially during the Cold War when religious language was tied to patriotism. As that stigma declined, the question became whether civic participation requires religious commitment at all. Here, Black and Koopman invoke Will Herberg’s notion of “operative religion,” by which he means a shared moral orientation connected less to doctrinal belief than to a common public ethic—a commitment to the “American way of life.” Such a conception, they suggest, allows nonreligious citizens to participate in civic life without affirming theological claims.
Later chapters shift from historical development to contemporary conditions. Drawing on sociological research, the authors argue that declining trust in institutions and social fragmentation now threaten civic cohesion. Americans increasingly form strong in-group communities while avoiding engagement across differences. Religious communities can reinforce this insularity, but secular communities often mirror the same pattern. Politics becomes expressive and centered on group identity rather than on shared interests or collective problem-solving. Yet Black and Koopman also point to instances of cooperation—interfaith responses to violence, collaborative legislation, and local civic initiatives—as evidence that cross-group engagement remains possible.
The final chapters return to, and more fully develop, the book’s central claim by first contrasting three competing accounts of national identity: Christian nationalism, strict secularism, and civil religion. Christian nationalism merges political authority with theology, while strict secularism seeks to remove religion from public life altogether. Civil religion, by contrast, is presented as a shared moral language capable of being inhabited by multiple traditions. In articulating this position, Black and Koopman enter into conversation with recent scholarship. They draw on John D. Wilsey’s American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion (IVP Academic, 2015), which distinguishes between “closed” exceptionalism, which treats the nation defensively and self-justifyingly, and “open” exceptionalism, which understands national ideals as obligations to be lived out. This distinction is reflected in the authors’ rejection of the exclusionary claims associated with Christian nationalism. Their argument also closely parallels Philip S. Gorski’s American Covenant (Princeton University Press, 2017), where civil religion occupies a “vital center” between religious nationalism and radical secularism. Black and Koopman develop their proposal along similar lines, presenting a dynamic civil religion as a way to sustain shared civic commitments while including both religious and nonreligious participants in public life.
Overall, Black and Koopman assemble historical, sociological, and political material into a clear introduction to American civil religion. The book is particularly useful for courses on American civil religion, religion in the United States, or religion and politics. Its value lies in its synthesis of many insights, offering a structured account of how American civic identity has developed and why the authors believe a shared moral language remains necessary for a divided society to live and flourish together.
