There are challenges to this. For example, in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Faith Community Hearings 1 it was interesting to see that some of the AICs, which have been accused of being apolitical, came into that meeting simply to announce that they had kept alive a deep tradition that had sustained people at the local level in a way that organised churches could not do. They were not really interested in speaking about what they had or had not done in the struggle against apartheid, except to make clear that their very modus operandi had achieved something no other churches had achieved. This introduces the question of whether the contested nature of faith traditions is part of the problem we face in dealing with transition. We do not have one society, but many different societies.
Society is a complex identity consisting of many cultures and traditions.
There is a two fold danger that religion will either withdraw into its own pious spiritual life or become too identified with society in general. Either the religious communities are silenced because they feel too much loyalty to government. Or they become ghettoised. Now, some would argue, we have a multi-society, rather than a single civil society. By way of example, it was suggested, there is no civil society in the USA that includes the ordinary lives of the Native American people.