If the purpose of the civil-religion project is to domesticate religion in the light of political requirements, then the liberal tradition as a whole is in some sense closely allied with that project. If the project of domesticating religion per se is what defined civil religion, then one would even be justified in saying that the liberal tradition is coterminous with the civil-religion project. However, in order for the domestication of religion to count as specifically a civil-religion project, it must be animated by the idea of using religion itself to domesticate religion. Somewhat surprisingly, as we have seen in earlier chapters of Part II, there are some liberal political philosophers who cross into civil-religion theorizing in this sense. Reading John Stuart Mill's proposal for a Religion of Humanity in his essay “Utility of Religion,” one is at first tempted to add him to this list of “civil-religion liberals.” On closer examination, though, it becomes clear that his Religion of Humanity is not a civil religion as we have just defined it. Mill wants to give believers something that they can embrace in place of the “old religions” that he is urging them to relinquish, and calling this something a religion should, he thinks, ease the transition to this new more radically humanist dispensation. Whatever existential needs were satisfied by the old religions – for consolation in the face of loss and death, for a sense of absolute foundation for human purposes, for giving support to our intuitions that there is grandeur and meaning to human doings rather than unrelieved insignificance – can therefore continue to be met when those old religions fall into eclipse. Ultimately, though, what he means by a Religion of Humanity is an ungrounded faith in the meaning of human purposes – that is, a faith ungrounded in anything beyond itself – and a “religion” that could achieve this, rather than being in meaningful continuity with the history of religions throughout human experience, would break this continuity and show that human beings had safely arrived at a stage of their development where they could deal with their world without religion.