Abstract Enduring civilizations have had a religious, moral architecture to guide leaders and evoke sacrificial commitments. The Judeo-Christian tradition offers two biblicalthemes that undergird the “principled pluralism” that presses society toward democracy: the recognition of sin and the possibility of covenant. A serious public theology will engage the great world religions to find comparable concepts and prospects for an emerging global civil society. A viable democracy depends on a division of powers not only within the government, but among the institutions outside state control in a viable civil society. And civil society is strongest where multiple religious institutions are well developed.