The Pervasiveness And Persuasiveness Of An Ever-Changing American Civil Religion: What do “People in the Pew” Believe When They Aren’t Sitting in the Pew?
Norma Cook Everist
A Public Lecture Presented at Wartburg Theological Seminary, Spring, 2008
Introduction
I had just finished leading an adult forum on “Ministry in Daily Life” after preaching at a congregation in a nearby state on the recent Super Bowl Sunday. As I frequently do, I had asked the l00 or so people gathered to think ‘Where were you last Tuesday morning? Last Thursday evening? What were you doing there? Really! And, what, do you think was God doing there?”
I asked them to share what they cared to share in pairs at their tables, after which we had a brief large group conversation. At the end of the forum I sat down to have a bowl of “Sooper Bowl Cares” soup. But I wasn’t alone for long. Jim came over to sit by me. He said, “Last Tuesday I was visiting a friend, someone I knew from grade school, who is dying. I know God was there; still I just couldn’t say “Good-bye.” Then Sue came over. She had shared in the larger group that every Tuesday she was enjoying her exercise group as they worked out and laughed together. We have a Creator God who enjoys the created ones. But now, speaking privately to me, she added, “But, Norma, when I challenged the women there about their derogatory comments about all those ‘Illegal aliens’ they changed the time of meeting without letting me know. But I needed to challenge them on their beliefs.”
Then Paul came by. He had come from India years before. He drove cab at first and later taught college. Now retired, he said, “Last Tuesday I was sitting in lounge chair reading a book and I pondered how the phrase, ‘In God we Trust’ has different meanings depending upon where in the world you are.” And Shannon, and Lou…one by one people came for an hour wanting to tell me about their daily lives, beliefs and challenges to their beliefs in their ministries in daily life.
What was Jim, in the face of the American civil religion creed, hearing in his head: “’Move on, move forward!’ How do you linger at a bedside?” And Paul was asking “What in the world does ‘In God we Trust’ mean when living in a country that trusts itself to be a god-like presence in the world?” And Sue was faced with, and suffered the consequences of, the societal creed of “Be good to yourself,” and “Be suspicious, ostracize ‘foreigners.’”
What kind of a God do we have? What do we corporately confess? We are justified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Literally, what in the world does that mean? How does a deeply rooted Law/Gospel view of God’s work, and ministry rooted in the forgiveness of sins make a difference in all of the arenas of our daily lives? It is not a matter of sacred and secular, but out of which belief systems we work, make decisions, witness and serve. It has to do with each person’s public theology, our creeds.
This topic is somewhat risky. How can we talk about these things? But, on the other hand, how can we not talk about people’s operative theologies? What in the world are people teaching? Speaking? We do have a divided nation, church body, divisions within congregations. And at least some of these divisions are rooted in the disparity in deepest belief systems. American civil religion is about more than just one issue or one political party. The challenges of the world call us to deal with the phenomenon. And This is about leadership: 1) Leadership of a faith community; 2) Leadership in the public world (what do we say as rostered leaders?); 3) Leadership in an ecumenical and interfaith context; and 4) Ministerial leadership of those in the pew who discern their callings all week long. Being “public” theologians means the first three; being a teacher and leader of those who live out their theologies after they leave the pew, means to do theology inductively, beginning with people in their daily lives.
My interest in American civil religion (ACR) relates to religious formation and ecclesiology. My thesis is that American civil religion continues to evolve as a complex systematic theology (in my view counter to a theology of the cross and resurrection), with its own creeds and mission statements, and with an exclusive ecclesiology for a nation professing to be an inclusive, democratic, just, peace-seeking nation. What is American civil religion? How did it come to be? How is it changing? Is there competition over the creeds of civil religion? With lack of clarity over how its story of origin has shaped our beliefs about ourselves as a nation, but with enormous power in the world, current battles over the mission of ACR have international consequences.
Civil religions, alongside beliefs of specific faith communities, shape attitudes and actions of individuals and of entire peoples. American civil religion, with its presumption of entitlement to global dominance, presents a particular problem. This lecture intends to examine the formative nature and role of American civil religion in our lives, the lives of those among whom we serve: Jim, Sue, Paul…..and many more.
I am hesitant to write specifically about American civil religion, because even the use of the word “American” symbolizes the problem, disregarding the many countries of North, South and Central America. My writing might seem to only further this myopic stance. My intent, however, is exactly the opposite: to examine American civil religion as a basis for this arrogant presumption, a bias which disregards, dominates, and is therefore a dangerous impediment to global justice and peace.
When working with groups, whether in the classroom, or beyond, I do not present a political stance, but use a methodology of discover which involves people opening their own eyes to the “other faith” which has and is shaping their creeds and missions in their daily lives. American Civil Religion is a living, ever-changing religion with diverse and sometimes contradictory dimensions.
American Civil Religion: A Brief History
Civil religion is a social phenomenon, a sacred citizenship.[1] Civil religion exists in many societies. The term appears in Jean Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract in the context of his larger interest in the legitimacy of the social bond. Rousseau proposed that social cohesion would be served by the establishment of acivil religion, centered on the existence of God.[2]
If Rousseau provided the term “civil religion” out of his concern for social cohesion, Alexis de Tocqueville empirically observed a form of civil religion that emerged precisely in the situation of church-state separation that Rousseau believed would undermine that cohesion.[3] Tocqueville is noted for his observation of the vigor of voluntary associations in the society; no less significant are his comments about the power of the “peculiar” religious force unchallenged behind the political philosophy.
Robert Bellah’s article in 1967 gave words to what others had long felt:
While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith, and others that church and synagogue celebrate only the generalized religion of “the American Way of Life,” few have realized that there actually exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-instituted civil religion in America…this religion—or perhaps better, this religious dimension—has its own seriousness and integrity and requires the same care in understanding that any other religion does.[4]
In his 1975 The Broken Covenant, Bellah outlined more fully the historical evidence of American civil religion, clearly describing both the “chosen” character of America’s myth of origin and two great flaws: the fact that the American dream from the beginning did not include the dreams of all, particularly African slaves and native Americans.[5]
Sidney Mead in The Lively Experiment (1963) saw the American story as a place where religious rivals from Europe learned to practice religious freedom.[6] Mead stressed that the people of the United States, more than creating religious liberty among diverse people, stumbled onto it. Each wanted freedom for themselves; the only way to insure it was to grant it to others as well. [7]
Some would simply see ACR as “manifest destiny,” a term popularized by journalist John O’Sullivan, who wrote in 1845, ‘The American claim is by right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us.’”[8] The westward movement beyond the Mississippi after the civil war, together with the huge influx of immigrants, had a religious dimension. Many Americans believed that God destined the United State to occupy all the land between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. This helped justify the Mexican-American War (1846-8) and innumerable wars that forced Native Americans onto reservations.
G. K. Chesterton coined the phrase “a nation with the soul of a church” in response to the question, “What is America?” Mead’s 1975 work by that name built on the concept that every nation is a spiritual entity. He renounced Winthrop Hudson’s view that the United States was once Protestant and became pluralist, [9] agreeing with Martin Marty’s assessment of an early nascent pluralism.[10]
Mead’s religion of the republic was not to be equated with crass American nationalism.[11] The theologians of the religion of the republic would not be the priests of the separate sectarian traditions but the laity in leadership, such as Madison, Lincoln and Eisenhower. While generally hopeful, Mead did not want this religion of the republic to become idolatrous.
Richard Niebuhr, publishing in 1937 his The Kingdom of God in America, wrote of a chosen people in the promised land. This was not so much God’s kingdom as an American kingdom of God, representing not the impact of the gospel upon the New World as the use and adaptation of the gospel by the new society for its own purposes.[12]
Conrad Cherry in God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (1971, revised and updated in 1998) described an “American exceptionalism,” the conviction that the American people are God’s New Israel, God’s newly chosen people. This election by God for a special destiny in the world has been the focus of American sacred ceremonies and presidential inaugural addresses[13]
Writing earlier than Mead, and less optimistically, was Will Herberg, who in his landmark work, Protestant-Catholic-Jew, (1955) described the unacknowledged religion of the American way of life, a set of convictions, not generally designated as religion but definitely operative as such in their lives. [14] Herberg found this American religion conformist, sentimental, individualistic and self-righteous. America was at the same time one of the most religious and most secular nations.
Similar in terminology, yet a contrasting concept, is Martin Marty’s “public church.”[15] Nevertheless, he takes civil religion seriously.[16] Marty says, “The intermingling of religion—understood as ultimate concern—and politics is inescapable.” “We contend that America needs public religion, which has much to contribute to the common good. But what do we mean by public religion?[17] Lauding the fact that America has become more pluralistic in its third century, he calls for the repositories of private faith in the consciousness and practice of millions of Americans to become “public” in its implications and influence on public, common life, and this is an invitation to all religious people, not just whoever is dominant at the time. Currently Catherine Berkus, at the University of Chicago Divinity School speaks of two forms of American civil religion, one expressing exceptionalism as the “city of a hill” example to the world, and the other a more militant form which believes it is America’s role to convince the world through domination.[18]
Catherine Albanese in her America: Religions and Religion was aware of the danger of telling the story of the civil religion from only the dominant denominational viewpoint. She believes it important “To face up to the implications of pluralism which means to recognize that it is problematic to recite, even if artfully and inclusively, one story before exploring the realities of the many stories.”[19]
Albanese’s main concern is with how the many encounter each other, ambivalence ranging from fearful hostility to conversion attempts. Some have been forced to assimilate. The public face of American religion has begun to look different in the strong and compelling presence of the many “others.”[20]
So, who was “other”? Although Roman Catholics had a longer history in the Americas than any other Christian group, civil religion had a distinctly Protestant tone. The myth of “chosen people” was an Old Testament image and the roots of American Civil Religion are often described as Judeo-Christian, but anti-Semitism continues. Although the U.S. after 9/ll had the opportunity/necessity to learn about Islam, that opportunity quickly eroded, being replaced by a fear-infested, self-interest stance of “war against terrorism” and “radical Islamists.” A just, peaceful full inclusion of those of “many” religions remains elusive.
On the West Coast, immigrants, particularly those coming from Asia (e.g. Chinese restrictions, Japanese internments in WW II) though coming in great number, were never considered part of the myth in the same way, particularly because they came across a different ocean than the Biblical Red Sea the Atlantic had represented. Because they were alien in looks and religion, they would remain strangers a longer time, their ancestry more noticed than their American Citizenship.[21]
I note here a quote from the speech of Senator Albert J. Beveridge, delivered on the floor of the United States Senate shortly after his return from a tour of the Philippines in January 1900. He referred to the importance of the wealth of those islands to the United States, justifying the war of subjugation the United States Army was waging against the Filipino independence movement:
God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No. He made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigned. He has given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the redemption of the world.[22]
Latinos have, of course, been in the southwestern part of what is now United States for centuries. The issue today: Hispanic immigrants, “illegal aliens” as some call them, relates directly to the myth of what being an “American” means and the question of what do to with the stranger. Who is coming to take “our” land?
Diana Eck clearly shows the religious diversity of this nation at the beginning of the 21st century in A New Religious America. She retains the “from many one” theme but writes that pluralism has “widened the sense of ‘we.’”[23] No longer can one legitimately speak only of Christian America, as she writes of “American Buddhists” and “American Muslims,” and more.
Albanese’s concern that the dominant have excluded the many is intensified in Charles Long’s critique of the civil religion. Consciously or unconsciously it served to “enhance, justify and render sacred the history of European immigrants in this land.”[24] An important distinction he saw is that Christianity as a revealed religion “offers salvation to all human beings regardless of circumstance, whereas in civil religion salvation is seen within the context of belonging to the American national community.”[25]
He would press Albanese’s point further in asking methodologically how to understand and deal with invisibility. African American people were not invisible to one another, but their history was ignored by the dominant white writes of history.[26] One cannot simply “add” them because that doesn’t take into account the relationship of the invisible ones in the historically developing civil religion. The concealment of the reality of “others” has shaped the story.
The inclusion of Native American religion is complex. About 550 different Indian societies and distinct languages have been identified in North America.[27] While these nations had the challenge of dealing with one another, their problems were compounded in the ambiguity of their identity in Columbus’ “discovery.”[28]
They were viewed ambiguously as both “innocent” placing them in the paradisic imagery of the land the Europeans wanted to own [29] and as “horrid savages” as part of the treacherous landscape to be conquered. It is clear which image prevailed; the pursuit of extermination of the Native American which ensured. They, so long excluded from the ecclesiology of ACR, existed only in the mythic “wild west” stories of white film writers Notable is the fact that only in 2004 did the National Museum of the American Indian open on the National Mall in Washington D.C.[30]
Vincent Harding, an African American theologian, ironically holds hope for the civil faith, claiming it on behalf of blacks and other oppressed peoples, believing that through their struggles the entire nation will benefit. [31] The question may indeed need to be defined not as a “problem” with race, but the problem of “white privilege” as a result of an exclusive ecclesiology of American civil religion.
We are now scattered over the length and breadth of the society more fully than ever before….We are entrenched in many parts of the public sector of the political, economic and cultural life. Nowhere can we ever be invisible again…We must finally ask ourselves what kind of human society we want here, in America…We must ask ourselves—not once, but continuously—how much we are prepared to pay for the creation of a new society in America. [32]
While many would like to delude themselves into thinking that the “race problem” has been solved in so far as many African Americans have achieved economic and social “success” in America, racism remains, made more complex by dominant Americans inability to acknowledge it. A sad reminder is in the burning of black churches, particularly the rash of fires in the mid l990’s[33]
Whites, included in the ecclesiology of the civil religion, failed to recognize the significance of the black church for those excluded. Whites tended to believe there was nothing racial about the fires. While one might see few daily signs of racial animosity, the attack on African-American churches was seen [by African-Americans] as an attack on the heart of the black community, its political, social, educational and spiritual center.[34]
In the development of the United States, biblical imagery was used profusely, particularly during two moments of crisis, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. The epic of the deliverance of the children of Israel [35] used to justify the Revolutionary War was lost in relationship to the slave issue, except by the oppressed themselves. Estranged in their servitude, as they were exposed to the Christian Bible, there was no part with which they were so familiar as the deliverance from Egypt, but Egypt to them was the nation’s institution of slavery.
Paul, whom I met at the church on that recent Sunday is grateful to this country, and, like Vincent Harding, holds it to its promises of being truly inclusive. Likewise Barack Obama, appeals to the fulfilling of “The American Dream” rather than renouncing it.[36]
In each viable social change movement in this country there was a faith thread.[37] Samuel Rogriguez, Jim Wallis, Jon Meacham and others all make this point. Hak Joon Lee asks, did not Martin Luther King Jr. use American Civil Religion imagery? “He worked for humanity as a whole, all of God’s children,”[38] said Hak Joon Lee, a South Korean. “We as a people” kept expanding said Lee. The “Beloved Community” concept was correlated with love, integration, interdependence of humanity and a “world-house.”[39] Racism means non-community, or, in my terms, a “non-inclusive ecclesiology.” Slavery meant a broken community, tragically broken.
“World house” was used later in his speaking out against the Viet Nam way. This is significantly different than an America-first-and-only concept. God cares for oppressed, even especially those we might be oppressing. King thought the Viet Nam was had destroyed the soul of this nation. [40]
Bellah had seen two great flaws. Was militarism a third great flaw, connected, for King, to slavery? Like Hebrew prophets King called for repentance and rebirth of the United States. King urged African Americans to go further than the achievement of a middle class dream, by challenging the nation’s vulgar capitalism and militarism.
Components of American Civil Religion
Those raised within the culture of the United States of America experience the formative influence of American Civil Religion. That fact is not a judgment, but a description of the “other religion” that shapes people’s beliefs and actions, whether they know it or not. Because ACR is a living religion, the era in which one was raised and educated makes a difference. For example the ACR of the depression era or W.W. II is different from that of the l960’s, l990’s, or this new millennium. It continues to change, almost daily. Whereas ACR uses Biblical references, as time goes by, the belief systems of ACR also change—some would say, “enhance,” but others say “distort”—the biblical references. Once in place, American civil religion, dependent upon its own myth[41] and symbols, would become self-perpetuating. In such a process there is a propensity towards error and misjudgment, a possibility for an inadequate ecclesiology and an inappropriate creed:
Conrad Cherry wrote:
If a myth serves as a model of reality by interpreting experience and grounding it; in a broader and deeper context, it also serves as a model for reality. That is, a convincing myth aggressively makes a claim upon the hearer. It becomes a model for shaping its future life. The American myth operates in many explicit and implicit ways—schools, mass media, literature, music, dress—to lay claim upon the lives of Americans. It calls people to conform to its shape.[42]
I use a discovery method to help people “in the pew” in adult forums, as well as here at Wartburg uncover the tenets of American civil religion: Holy Days, Shrines, Holy Writ, Hymns, Symbols, Saints and Martyrs, Priests/Pastors, Prophets, Rituals, Gods, Creeds, Mission. These components come from the components of the Christian faith, which is not in keeping with the pluralistic nature of this country; however, because ACR is so closely associated with Christianity it seems fitting to use these as a way to contrast ACR and confessional Christianity.[43]
Central to the creed of American Civil Religion is the chosenness and (self) righteousness. Besides discovering what is present, one needs to ask what is not present. Sin is significantly missing, (therefore it is not among the 12 components listed below) and so is repentance. Although repentance is absent, renewal and rebirth are very prevalent.
America was not so much in need of a Redeemer, as to be a Redeemer nation to the world. Although Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural speaks directly to American slavery as an offense against God’s righteous judgments, redemption was more of an action in the white soul and emancipation in retrospect was more self-congratulation than repentance.[44] However, Lincoln’s address is singular among presidential inaugurals in speaking of the “almost chosen nation” in a call for repentance as well as healing and renewal.
Holy Days
Some are: The Fourth of July,[45] Memorial Day, Labor Day, Super Bowl Sunday, September 11. Some holy days have two different meanings, e.g. Christmas, Easter (bunnies or crosses). What others are there?
Sample from the News: “Sabbath” – C.B.S. Sunday Morning and Life Magazine “Great American Weekend Study”carried features on the “overscheduled weekend.[46] People are stressed out trying to complete lists of things to accomplish: soccer games for kids, chores, errands, 9-l0 hours of work brought home. “Sabbath” was referenced in the news feature as “a time for quiet and reflection,” but there was no mention of public worship, or religious education, or even God. I found it ironic that the ACR creed of “self-fulfillment” was the center of this holy day “Sabbath” understanding. The goal of recovering such a Sabbath was to find “down time,” and to restore the “bedrock of faith in the American family” (a creed of ACR), not religious observance or faith education.
Shrines
School children make pilgrimages to the monuments in Washington D.C. Families also make pilgrimages to Disneyland and Disneyworld which promise fun in fantasy land, and a very controlled atmosphere. They are “public” only if one has the expensive ticket to enter. In addition to these large shrines, self-fulfillment books recommend gathering favorite items from special life moments and making a home shrine to spend meditative time to relieve stress.
There are more common, everyday architectural sacred spaces, such as the shopping malls which spread across America. There people engage in the appointed mission of being a consumer. Seemingly open to the public, they are private spaces for acquiring private possessions in the “American domestic religion.”[47] Some are humble, even a bit run-down, others elegant gallerias. Some even have stained glass vaulted ceilings in the center (I understand this one in Ohio has now closed), while others promise leisure through living-room like lounge chairs.[48] All call the community to “spend” time in pursuit of the ultimate “meaningful” things of life.
Holy Writ
Holy Writ include the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and particularly, the Bill of Rights, and (more informally) The Readers Digest, the internet (unfiltered access to information). Various news sources are considered different “holy writ” for different constituencies, e.g. Fox news, The Daily Show.
Sample from the News: When the former executive director of Readers Digest, William Schulz,was made Commissioner for Public Broadcasting ombudsman, he and the chair made clear their intent to restrain PBS because of what they consider “leftist” viewpoints. Citizens contacted congressional representatives late June 2005 to try to restore budget cuts to PBS. This battle raises significant issues about what is public, and funding for public television in children’s commercial-free programming.
Hymns
“The Star Spangled Banner” is the national anthem of the United States. Since 9/11, however, “God Bless America” has become the more popular “hymn.” Whereas in the national anthem the courage and fortitude of the nation under fire is celebrated through the image of “the flag was still there,” “God Bless America” is now sung with a type of religious confidence (defiance?) that it is God who blesses America (over-against all others). Using an ACR ritual of “baseball,” one notes that in recent seasons, the national anthem is sung at the beginning of the game and “God Bless America” at the 7th inning stretch.[49]
A third ACR hymn, more folksy, has arisen, “God Bless the U.S.A.” by Lee Greenwood. It is set in the first person of a working class male, (“If….I had to start again with just my children and my wife.”) with a hint of anti-education (“cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land”). The pledge is to stand up and fight to defend the nation (“her”) against nebulous enemies (“cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can’t take that away”) with the symbols of “flag” and the word, “freedom.”
Symbols
The very words, “freedom” and “democracy” have become ACR symbols which can be used to raise patriotic emotions regardless of the context or content of actions taken under their banner. The American flag is the central liturgical symbol.[50] Pictures of the Twin Towers are seen in hallowed places in the homes of people across the country. “Yellow” is the liturgical color for grief. Red, white and blue are the omni-present liturgical colors for every season; since 9/11, these colors are combined with Christmas decorations.
But there are other symbols. The word “Columbine” stands for the proliferation of public school shootings. Commercially, the golden arches of McDonalds is a U.S. symbol globally. The “Arch” in St. Louis symbolizes Westward expansion. As one looks to the west through windows at the top one sees the old court house where the 150th anniversary of Dred Scott case was recently commemorated.
Sample from the News: The placement of religious symbols on public property continues as a controversial issue. The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a split decision June 27, 2005 In essence, the passing of one and defeat of the other rulings (both 5-4) ensure, not a clear directive, but that future rulings will be decided one by one. The reasoning centered on how and when the Ten Commandments were put in a public place in the first place: a monument among many other monuments that show the influence of religion(s) in America’s legal development, or as an expression of a specific religion. The debate puts before the public the questions of relation of church and state, the nation’s “neutrality” or “hostility” towards “religion.” A commentator on public television on June 28 mentioned briefly the role of civil religion in the “American experience,” but did not elaborate. This exemplifies some of the Church and State issues association American civil religion.
Saints and Martyrs
The saints are not leaders of various faith traditions, (the disestablishment clause) but laity. “Democracy” does produce a certain priesthood of all believers. One could count Billy Graham, not primarily associated with a specific church body.
U.S. Presidents, though not royalty, are spokespeople for ACR; the tracing of ACR beliefs is often done through the analysis of inaugural addresses. So it is not surprising the central martyrs of ACR are assassinated presidents, particularly Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. But in the same category is Elvis Presley—whom many think is still alive in some spiritual sense.
Sample from the news: The exclusion of African Americans from the ecclesiology of ACR and the lack of a creed of repentance makes significant Klansman (and preacher) Edgar Ray Killen, in his eighties, being found guilty of manslaughter in the 1964 deaths of civil rights workers (martyrs) James Chaney, (21) Andrew Goodman, (20) and Michael Schwerner (24). If “guilt” and “repentance” are absent from ACR, justice delayed would be a symptom. Another example of injustice would be the decades delayed public “apology” to Japanese Americans who suffered in internment campus in the United States during World War II.[51]
One could reflect on the extended coverage, almost three years later of “blond (white), honor student” Natalee Holloway, “missing in paradise” in Aruba (note the “exotic,” reference to the Caribbean island about which citizens of the United States are unknowing in their ACR vision of the world).[52]
Priests/pastors
And who are the priests of ACR? Presidents: Every single presidential address except George Washington’s second (only 135 words) had made some reference to divine blessing of a providential hand in America’s life.[53] Who leads the rituals, offer prayers, and celebrate the sacraments? (What are the sacraments?) Who leads the people in their prayers of penitence? And who proclaims the Word of God? Which gods do we worship? Who are the leaders in the American mission?
Sample from the News: Three former presidents attended the Billy Graham library dedication. He had been, they say, a pastor to them, praying for them.
If the U.S. does not have royalty (with our fascination, we borrow from the British), what is the president? Pastor? Priest? CEO? “Commander-in-Chief?” (Does that description betray the mission?) A guest on Bill Moyer’s program a few weeks ago said they should be “Chief Teacher” in their leadership. What particular role does/did each of the presidential candidates draw on from American civil religion?
Prophets
Prophets arise to call this “religious people” back to its original task, its “errand in the wilderness.”[54] Who are the prophets today? “Whistle blowers” exposing corporate fraud? Leaders of minority groups, excluded from the ecclesiology of ACR? Spokespeople for new immigrants? Are they the late night television talk show comedians, such as Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show?” (Such shows are the main source of news of many young people. Does that make the comedians prophets, priests, or simply comedians?) Are there significant prophets today? Might religious leaders from the many faith communities play such a role?
During the Civil Rights movement of the l960’s and 1970’s, religious leaders played significant prophetic roles, most notable, of course, Martin Luther King Jr. His “I Have a Dream” speech resonated with the “American Dream” a central creed of ACR. He took a prophetic stance to call America to its dream and to make it a more inclusive one. During the American Civil War, religious leaders of both sides spoke of God’s will. Pete Seeger’s entire life has been one of being a prophetic voice through leading the people of the nation in song. Such “Hymns” as “If I Had a Hammer” as well as “We Shall Overcome” were central to both the Civil Rights Movement and the Viet Nam Anti-War Movement. Who are the prophets concerning the present war in Iraq?
Note that prophetic voices speak from the outside or the “underside,” particularly calling a people to justice. Is this not significantly different from those religious leaders today who call for their particular Christian interpretation of ACR to be the official religion of the nation?
Rituals
Not unlike ancient Greeks and Romans, the “arena” is a central gathering place. “As American as baseball and apple pie” is ACR folklore. In recent decades, football, a contact sport with its emphases on brute strength may have overtaken baseball in popularity, hence the Holy Day of Super Bowl Sunday, but the recent Congressional hearings on the steroid scandals in Baseball may attest to its centrality among American “religious” rituals. (Rituals shape formational ethics.) In very recent years, NASCAR is now being nationally broadcast, corresponding in part to the rise of the religious right, ideology. Every four years, the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies provide a global ritual. Note that Steven Spielberg recently pulled out of his role in the ceremonies of the upcoming summer games in Beijing. [55]
The shootings are Northern Illinois University brought memories of the Virginia Tech shootings only the spring before. Unfortunately we seem to do well at memorial rituals. Why has our violence led for the need to the need for them? At the Virginia Tech Convocation there was the Color guard, and the school cheer…which, somehow seemed appropriate in that context. But what I noticed was a beloved professors speaking, a poet who drew the group beyond their own grief, reminding them of the thousands of deaths from AIDS, of the danger in coal mines, and of poverty. She said “Draw close, but also connect globally.” There was a huge ovation. She could speak prophetically at such a ritual because she was already trusted and revered.
Sample from Personal Experience: After attending a conference in the Rocky Mountains two years ago, I decided to attend a July 4 fireworks display to be held at Coors (baseball) Field in Denver. I watched outside as hundreds of people gathered, not necessarily to see the game, but for fireworks after. The vast majority were young people in their 20’s, less interested in the tradition “as American as baseball…and” as the fireworks, and, of course, stepping outside to attract and be attractive, waiting on the roofs of bars, filling the streets. The show itself was delayed (the game went to the bottom of the 11th), but people waited for the liturgical celebration of lights in the sky.
Gods
So, then, who or what are the gods of ACR? Money? Material possessions? People? The American dream itself? Perhaps the nation itself? For a “people” to make themselves into a “chosen people” certainly makes them the preferred children of a God, with the temptation to the idolatry of making others over into their own image.
One answer to the question of, “In whom do we believe?” I read in the the satiric magazine, Wittenburg Door:
I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, who gave the world to me and other Americans along with the authority to possess and exploit it in order to increase our wealth and comfort, regardless of how we may destroy the earth or cheat others out of its benefits.
I believe in Jesus Christ who was born of a Virgin on Christmas Day in order to become the Reason for the Season. He was a really nice guy—strong, white, and gentle—and was the friend of sinners like me because he knew no one is perfect. He was crucified by Jews and other non-Christians but rose from the dead on Easter so that we can always have a spring-like hope. He went to heaven where He reigns with God in order to guarantee my rights. He will come again to pass judgment against those who are different from me and to condemn them to eternal damnation
I believe in keeping a pleasant Spirit toward men who agree with me, that going to church is an admirable practice, that there are good people around the world who support the American way, and that I, my family, and those like us will, together, enjoy life everlasting, which we richly deserve.[56]
Now, of course, belief in this God is not taught. Or is it?
The seriousness of the issue of the idolatry, not simply of “money,” but of unjust economic globalization cannot be underestimated.
This false ideology is grounded on the assumption that the market, built on private property, unrestrained competition and the centrality of contracts, is the absolute law governing human life, society, and the natural environment. This is idolatry and leads to the systematic exclusion of those who own no property, the destruction of cultural diversity, the dismantling of fragile democracies and the destruction of the earth.[57]
Creeds
The ACR creeds may be summarized in certain one word statements: We believe in “Freedom” “Democracy” (our kind and our definition). In addition, popular creeds of ACR often show up as bumper stickers or as internet quips or in advertisements. “You deserve a break today.” “Shop ‘til you Drop.” “Win at any cost.” Does the creed of contemporary popular ACR include a self worth of deserving to not have “bad things happen to us?” Or does our worth depend upon others seeing how busy we are? What does belief in “family values” mean? My family? Or yours, too? In times of grief (often related to our propensity for and fascination with violence), we believe, as the newscasters say only mere hours after a shooting, “The healing has begun”: fast-service grief and instantaneous healing. In times of sin without remorse, or repentance or reconciliation: “Move on.”
“In debt we trust.” The average American, has $9000 in credit card debt. Credit cards offers abound. Foreclosures rise. Stewardship makes no sense; greed does. The question is, if we are who we believe ourselves to be, “How much do we deserve?”[58]
In Part Three of American Theocracy “Borrowed Prosperity” we see American households with artificial purchasing power being told that shopping is a duty, e.g. the advise of President Bush after 9/11 to “help in our recovery.” Meanwhile there is an ever greater disparity between rich and poor.[59]
Sample of belief in the creed of the American Dream: C.B.S. “Sunday Morning,” June 19, 2005, ran a feature on Americans who are purchasing beach front land in Mexico, (“San Diego South” they called it) where they can “afford to live like Americans,” which they say they can no longer do in Southern California. A woman was quoted saying, “We can’t afford to live the American dream in America, but we leave the smog and enjoy paradise here. We slip across the border and no one notices.” Her creed was “Attain the Good Life Cheap,” because “taxes are laughable.” A man said, concerning border crossing, “I can jump to the front of the line and commute to work in half the time I did in the states.” (There was, of course, no mention by them of Mexican citizens who were simply part of the stage drop in their scenario of “paradise.”)
Christian Smith describes the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers in Soul Searching: “Therapeutic Individualism” “The Digital Communication Revolution” and “Residual Positivism and Empiricism.” He notes that therapeutic individualism defines the individual self as the source and standard of authentic moral knowledge and authority and individual self-fulfillment as the preoccupying purpose of life. The self is to be esteemed, actualized, affirmed and unfettered. Treated with therapy medications, self-help seminars, support groups, people need to get in touch with their honest feelings to find their true selves in order to realize a pleasurable life of happiness and positive self-esteem. This is based on what you feel. Therapeutic individualism’s ethos perfectly serves the needs and interests of the U.S.’ mass-consumer capitalist economy.[60] The problem is that actual human needs are somewhat limited and modest…we only need only so many goods and services. But for mass capitalism to grow consumer wants must grow.
My two central critiques of American civil religion are that it is an exclusive ecclesiology and an inadequate systematic theology….an erroneous theology, as least in so far as it is aligned with and often substituted for (an American) Christianity. I (we as a Leaders in Mission class) have been searching the Epistles for a compilation of images of God’s work of redemption in Jesus Christ, the “human predicament” and God’s grace, Law and Gospel.
There is death: life; guilt: forgiveness; bondage: freedom; brokenness, wholeness; alienation/separation: reconciliation, and more… Rather than the depths of those, do we not hear the verse primarily quoted: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom.8:28)? Is not this verse the epitome of a chosen “American people” who have been called to God’s purpose of spreading this American “freedom”? And whatever happens to us (we are not the cause), all will be instantaneously ok, good, in the end (near future), for us!
Mission:
If one “god” of ACR is money (and “comfort” that goes with money), a mission would be “to acquire.” Some would say the central mission in an “overdeveloped” capitalistic system is to consume.[61] There is a new book out just this month simply called Consumed.[62] On the other hand, if one creed of ACR is to be a “generous people,” then compassion is a mission, but because it is more of a self-description than a deeply rooted commitment, the object of ACR communal compassion changes as quickly as the news cameras leave (the direction of the news cameras themselves determined by consumer-driven TV ratings).[63] The missions become complex and contradictory.
Sample from the media: The mission of acquisition has its own problems, characterized by two popular cable television shows, “I Want That” and “Mission Organization.” The first helps people justify acquisition; the latter helps people deal with their stuffed-full houses.
In order to fulfill the mission of living the American Dream, people now commute further. Car pooling is out of the question. Whereas people used to live in suburbs and go into the city, now people work in other suburbs. It has been reported that one half of all people now work in suburbs. Now many live l00 miles away, commutes 4 hours total a day. A New York woman, kept going out further and further to find her “American dream” home her family could afford and ended up in Pennsylvania.[64]
Congregations have “mission statements.” So do corporations. Doing a comparative study might reveal they sound very much alike, as well as contrastingly different. What are our missions as the baptized people of God living in this culture and in a global community? What are our individual mission statements? Our Family mission statements? Our Congregational and church-wide (real) missions?
Recent Writings
So, where are we today? My sabbatical reading was /is unending, with new books coming out every week. But were the topics I had been researching for 30 years now (since the nation’s by-centennial in 1976) still relevant? Is American civil religion still a significant lens through which to view the cultural creeds which shape me, and perhaps you? By the end of my sabbatical I determined yes. One measure was that that quote from Senator Beverage in 1900, and the issue surrounding it, kept reappearing:
Newsweek May 7, 2007, referred to President William McKinley figuring out what to do about the Philippines people captured by U.S. troops in 1898 “There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.” Never mind that they were already Roman Catholic and did not want to be occupied. The brutal insurgency went on for three years. Four hundred Americans and half a million Filipinos died. Newsweek authors Evan Thomas and Andrew Romano wanted to make the point that Bush was not the first to pray and ask for the Almighty’s wisdom. We struggle with just-war theory. We need to understand that faith in “American exceptionalism” has inspired leaders to wage wars the benefits of which might be seen as anything but just.
Is ACR recurring because of the rise of the religious right and, one might phrase it, their intent to take over the civil religion? Yes—I think that has been the catalyst for many books—but it is not that simple. Nor, I believe, will the phenomenon of ACR go away if and when the religions right’s influence is lessened.
Jim Wallis in his newest book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, has declared the end of the dominance of the religious right in conservative politics. Appearing on the Daily Show earlier this year he enthusiastically made that pronouncement, citing the movement among many evangelicals toward issues of poverty and social justice and care for the earth. “Change is definitely in the air. Dramatic new developments in the churches, and in the larger religious community, especially among evangelicals, could be setting the stage for the kind of revival…”[65] He has moved somewhat beyond previous book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It [66] He was graduation speaker at Wartburg last May. Privately, preceding a conversation with the faculty that evening I asked him his view on American civil religion. It thought it was helpful in moving Christians into the public world. The negative, he said, is the idea of American exceptionalism and presumption of the Christian Right running the country. But, he noted, liberals also call for American exceptionalism. [Where, are Lutherans, as a church body, and as individual lay people and clergy in this?]
Last spring Wallis sponsored a June 4 CNN television public forum on “God and Politics” with Obama, Clinton and Edwards. Each were asked about their personal faith and how it shaped their public service and political views. That question, a reaction to Republicans’ seeming corner on the market on religion, seems to have faded from view in the past few months. Notable, however, would be the forum on faith, sponsored by Obama’s campaign, held right here at Wartburg seminary last fall. But still, in this quickly changing American civil religion, are questions about the religious right taking over the civil religion gone? Would that make all of the books in the last couple of years warning about, American imperialism and exceptionalism, mute? I don’t think so. If we take ACR as the religious phenomenon that it is, we need to continue to look for its formative …pervasive and persuasive influences, although in ever different ways. I find our belief in ACR, again, some positive and some negative, continuing to under girding our present presidential campaign and certainly our private and collective views concerning our mission in the world.
Kevin Phillips in his large volume published in 2006, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, writes,“American foreign policy has its own corollary to the end-times worldview: the preemptive righteousness of a biblical nation became a high-technology, gospel-spreading superpower”[67] None of these “perils” has gone away in the past six months.
Phillips, a former republican strategist, is concerned about what he called the transformation of the GOP into the first religious party in US history.[68] He described of George W. Bush as an elected leader who believes he is speaking for God and domestic and international political agendas that seem to have been driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews. The mantra of the democratic party this election year is joy in the fact that Bush will not be on the ballot in November. But will the worldviews and belief systems disappear in January 2009? What about U.S. pre-occupation with Middle East, holy lands, Muslim world, as a battleground for Christian destiny?
Phillips notes America concerning exceptionalism: “No other contemporary Western nation shares this religions intensity and its concomitant proclamation that Americans are God’s chosen people and nation”[69] He, as so many others today, are again quoting de Tocqueville. He also quotes Conrad Cherry (1998 edition) “The belief that America has been elected by God for a special destiny in the world has been…so pervasive a motif in the national life, that the word ‘belief’ does not really capture the dynamic role that it has played for the American people, for it passed into the ‘realm of motivational mythos.’”[70]
This American theology is built not only around the creation of the country and the Revolutionary War. During the War Between the States, God kept faith with a South that had “kept the faith.” The South, paralleling Jesus, had risen from the dead of Reconstruction to the living Redemption”[71]
“According to tenets of lost cause theology, God’s chosen people(white southerners) had been baptized in the blood of suffering and thus had been chastened and purified.”[72] Congregations (three major protestant denominations, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, that divided during the Civil War) played significant roles. Years ago while studying with Sydney Ahlstrom, I was able to use the extensive Yale Divinity School library holdings to read original sermons of pastors on both sides of the Civil War. Not only did they, having opposite views of God’s intent, both draw on Scripture, but spoke persuasively publicly in ways that shaped two views for this nation to hold of itself.
“A new Gospel was being compiled.”[73] Another southern historian, Charles Reagan Wilson, has detailed the foundations of “the lost cause” southern civic religion—and architecture of Christian and Confederate symbols held together by the clergy’s postwar theology that reconciled defeat with the will of God and Confederate righteousness.[74]
The North, having not experienced a defeat in their minds, had trouble dealing with the Viet Nam war. Losing did not fit their version of American civil religion creeds.[75] One cannot, of course, miss the present debate on if and how and when to leave Iraq and what that would mean about being “defeated.”
Jon Meacham in his equally large work, American Gospel, would have a less perilous, more positive view. “The great good news about American, the American gospel, if you will—is that religion shapes the life of the nation….” Belief in God is central to the country’s experience, yet for the broad center, faith is a matter of choice, not coercion, and that legacy of the Founding is that the sensible center holds.”[76] “The God who is spoken of and called on and prayed to in the public sphere is an essential character in the American drama.”[77]
His point is to explore the role faith played in the Republic and to illustrate how the founding fathers left us with a tradition in which we could talk and think about God and politics without descending into discord and division. He doesn’t tackle church and state issues. He refers to Bellah but does not quote Bellah’s “broken” part of the covenant. Meacham says we are inclined toward good no matter how many rebukes and reminders it takes to make us see and do the right thing [Lutheran’s have a stronger view of systemic sin than just needing a reminder to do good] Meacham says that America has created the most inclusive, freest nation on earth. The task is:“Not easy.”[78] He says that the destruction of Native American cultures and ravages of slavery horrors of Civil War “attest” to the fact that not an easy task. [I would use stronger word than “not easy.] It for him is a matter of how much religion. He says, “A tolerant, pluralistic democracy in which religion and secular forces continually contend against one another may not be ideal, but has proved to be the most practical and enduring arrangement”[79] [He can afford to speak as a white male from the privilege of being included in ACR] He talks about slavery but neglects to include the voices of African American themselves; rather he just reminds us that slaveholder were far from godless.
Madeleine Albright in The Mighty and the Almighty, [I heard her lecture at YDS few years ago, a lecture that became part of her book]: “We will never unite the world in support of the idea that Americans share a unique relationship with God or a better understanding of God’s will than worshippers from others culture or lands.” [80] She is dedicated to those of every nation and faith who defend liberty, build peace, dispel ignorance, fight poverty and seek justice. In saying presidents refer to the divine she also quotes Pres William McKinley “The truth is I didn’t want the Philippines, and then they [Filipinos] dropped into our laps, I didn’t know what to do with them…. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance…. And one night late it came to me…There was nothing left to do but to take them and Christianize them”[81] [St. Louis World’s Fair brought some of them to the United States to put on to exhibit.] She quotes Pres Chaney’s Christmas card from the previous year “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probably that an empire can rise without His aid?” She is wary when God is invoked as teammate in a clash of one nation against another.
Albright says that it true that faith contributes inspiration and healing: South Africa’s ArchbishopTuto, Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. And atheism, she believes, was Communism’s Achilles’ heel. She says we need to build bridges of understanding and tolerance before mutual ignorance and insecurity harden into unbridgeable chasm of hate. She believes we need to erode the legitimacy of dictators and tyrants who claim virtual divinity for themselves. Then, she says, we may fully earn the right to ask, though never demand or assume, that God Bless America
Politicians in both parties have written on this phenomenon, using various terminology. John Danforth, republican, former senator and Episcopal priests, wrote Faith and Politics: How the Moral Values Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together. He was a strong supporter of weekly prayer breakfasts in Washington. He said that religion can draw people together, but it is also a powerful force that drives people apart. He was concerned about the takeover of the Republican Party by the Christian right. He said, an “indispensable requirement of ministry is reconciliation.”[82] He believes in a larger transcendent God who cannot be shrunken by people who try to stuff God into their own agendas.
Jimmy Carter, democrat, and former U. S. president, wrote Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis” As Danforth had concern for his political party, Carter had concern for his Baptist church. After much prayer he and his wife, left their personal affiliation with Southern Baptism convention but he teaches at Emory and teaches Sunday School in his local congregation. He is concerned about political actions orchestrated by those who believe in using the nation’s tremendous power and influence to create a dominant American empire throughout the world. Core for him is humility, working for peace, human rights and global community.[83]
We do need to see the issues from many perspectives. J. David Kuo in Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, went to Washington wanting to use his Christian faith to end abortion, strengthen marriage and help the poor. Inthe Bush administration through the “Faith Based Initiatives” emphases, he reached the heights of political power. But after three years of being second in command in the President’s Office of Faith Based And Community Initiatives he found himself helping to manipulate religious faith for political gain.[84]
There has been a shift in the religious right. The prediction that Christian fundamentalists were taking over the civil religion and gaining irrefutable political power may have been pre-mature. But this movement has not gone away, either; we must realize that it is not just a matter of a shift in politics, but a battle for the nature of the civil religion.
Southern Baptist professor David Gushee, in his 2008 book, The Future of Faith in American Politics, makes an argument for recognizing an “evangelical center” which is broader than the so-called religious right moral-agenda and yet not the anti-poverty anti-war stance of the evangelical left.[85] D. Michael Lindsay, sociology professor at Rice, identifies two streams in evangelicalism: those who are characterized by James Dobson and those by Rick Warren.[86] This divide, and more, is being played out in the current Republican Party debates over candidates and platform.
Bill Moyers interviewed Rev. Samuel Rodriquez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference on P.B.S. February 8, 2008. Hispanics are not only the fastest-growing part of the population but the fastest growing group of evangelical Christians. While not referring directly to American civil religion, Rodrigez noted xenophobia, under the guise of border protection.[87] He said that he favored religious pluralism over the concept that America is a Christian nation. “America is a nation that enables us to really serve God, worship God, and exercise our religious belief with freedom. It’s religious pluralism that makes us strong…America really needs to present religious pluralism as a viable alternative [to religious totalitarianism] not exceptionalism”[88]
Rodreguez talked about whites benefiting from the black/brown divide, adding, “If the African-Americans and the Latino population would ever come together and work in our cities, in our urban areas, we would really bring about a transformational messiology, we would transform our cities. We would transform our nation.”[89] In contrast to white evangelicals who, he believes, have “placed Americans” on the altar of worship, right beside the cross, sometimes “superseding the power of the cross,” he believes it is important to contribute to the American culture, “the heart of Christ”: compassion, mercy and justice.[90]
Hak Joon Lee, whom I quoted earlier, says that in a global society which is increasingly pluralistic and more interdependent, we have a toxicity of absolutist and fundamentalist spirituality.[91] He defines theocracy as a religious polity and belief system that aims to establish a particular religion as the sole foundation for the political and cultural life of a nation.[92] A jingoistic form of civil religious spirituality is pervasive in this cultural milieu of patriotism and nationalism. We are regarded, even by our own allies, as a rogue superpower. We cannot win the war on terror by terrorizing others, and further terrorizing ourselves with fear.[93] It is self-contradictory to believe one can implant freedom and democracy by military invasion. [Everist comment, Spring, 2008: Is the folly of this strategy now more evident than a year ago, or, Iraq aside, do we sill believe in this mission or military invasion?]
Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence in their Captain Americaand the Crusade Against Evil(completed just after 9/11 but before the war on Iraq) write that one of the puzzles of American civil religion is that biblical images of peacemaking through holy way reappear during times of crisis, a form of peacemaking that stands in tension with a constitutional system that envisions conflict resolutions through voting booths and in courtrooms. They, too, refer to Manifest Destiny and American Imperialism and see the steady theme of “redeeming the world,” the “union of religious and secular terminology to convey the sense of mission that continues to surface long after many people have lost tough with their religious roots.”[94]
Mark Lewis Taylor in his Religion, Politics and the Christian Right, argues that 9/11 gave opportunity for a new interplay of powers that has enabled militant Christian faith a vigorous entrée to power, increased the nation’s assumption of an imperial role in the world, brought about a rebirth of American exceptionalism, and leaves us today with an almost perpetual “war or terror” [95] [as heard in constant airport announcements].
There are so many books being written about the concept of empire this right now. Of course it is an historic reality and question. I see it as another lens with touch points to American civil religion.
Robert Kaplan of Atlantic Monthly says America is an empire, economically, culturally and militarily. We have 700 military bases around the world. He is positive about this approach, posing isolationism. He sees no dangers and openly likens it to Rome. He summarily see the United Nations as a “nice idea” but dismisses it as ineffective.
Joerg Rieger in his Christ and Empire, explores the history of empire from St. Paul to Post Colonial Times. He writes that one cannot afford for long to practice atrocities and tyrannies overseas without the evil done seeping back to contaminate the homeland.The question “Why do they hate us so” has to be pressed, for our own self-understanding and for the sake of those where the crushing weight of empire is felt even more immediately in people’s lives.[96]
Transnational corporations often amass greater wealth than entire nations and enjoy a great deal of freedom from the control of even the most powerful national governments. [If one mission of the current administration is to strengthen corporate global power while lessening the power of the people in a democratic society, ought not American civil religion be called in the near future “American corporate religion?]The concept of empire enjoys widespread theological support that goes beyond (and before) the most obvious conservative Christian positions that support Bush. He asks the Christological question: Jesus Christ’s peculiar refusal to acquiesce to empire. Rieger believes we must start with the poor, where it hurts.[97] Those of us who benefit from U.S. governmental and corporate imperialism may be to close to it to see where resistance is necessary. He said our sense of Empire has not been acquired absentmindedly, but rather that we are in a state of denial.[98] That state of denial, I believe, is connected with our American civil religion belief system.
The new book, edited by Karen Bloomquist, Being the Church in the Midst of Empire: Trinitarian Reflections, published essays from a conference of U.S. and international speakers just last summer in St Paul. The Lutheran World Federation is growing in awareness of the implications of being a communion of churches, united through Word and Sacrament, transformed into one another through the Eucharist. Empire, epitomized in the U.S., is global in its interlocking scope and influence. “How it is perceived, experienced and resisted is different, depending on where each one of us stands.” Bloomquist writes that Lutheran theology has not been the predominant religious influence shaping the American ethos [I would say “civil religion…and I don’t think she would disagree, as we have talked about these matter], even though Lutherans have admittedly been complicit with it. She also notes Lutherans and Lutheran churches more hesitant to participate more forthrightly in public life.[99] [That brings us again to the issues of leadership and our teaching at Wartburg, as well as to the issues of Church and State.][100]
There are so many other books: Leroy Rouner, To Be at Home: Christianity, Civil Religion and World Community (Boston: Beacon, 1991),[101] Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today,[102] David Domke and Kevin Coe’s The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America[103] and more.
There are so many other books. I have an extended bibliography available.
And the conversation goes on, because American civil religion is a living, ever-changing religion. In the class, “Leaders in Mission: A Theological Task Connecting Faith, Culture and Daily Life,” students are reading from that bibliography. I chose three books to read in common book for our three-pronged approach, centered around Leadership: Ministry in Daily Life, American civil religion, and Church and State.
From these many books I settled on one particular book for the ACR emphases, an outsider’s perspective: Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz’s America’s Battle for God: A European looks at Civil Religion. He writes, “When a president of the United States closes an address with the words, ‘God bless America,’ many observers in secularized Europe share their heads in disbelief.”[104] He says, “In its full sense, ‘America’ is a huge country with a great mission, a historical entity endowed with an exceptional promise.”[105] He quotes Bellah. He notes how indigenous people, “heathen” people, were first to be converted and incorporated, “but as they stood, as it were in God’s way, it was thus unavoidable they were to be put out of the way.[106] Muller-Fahenholz, as with others, myself included, says we need not only to understand America’s myths but the stories of those who have suffered from them. He explores “End-Time Religion in America,” “The Clash of Fundamentalisms,” “The Battle for God in America,” and asks if in America the “Winner Takes too Much”? He wonders why Americans don’t understand why “They Hate Us so Much.” He calls for reinventing America and a reconciliation politics, and wonders if, rather than hubris, the arrogance of power, humility, a virtue which keeps us close to the earth, is possible.[107]
Where are the people who sit in the pews where you are? Sue and Jim and Paul? Where are you? Where am I? How do these issues profoundly impact how I teach educational ministry, and “faith formation”? And ecclesial leadership in a pluralistic world? Donald W. Shriver, president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary in New York, who wrote the preface of America’s Battle for God, quotes an unnamed man, a survivor of Auschwitz, who at a gathering at a Manhattan church in 2004, in response to a question, “Are we at a Bonhoeffer moment?” Said, “I do not think we are at a Bonhoeffer moment, I think we are in 1932.”[108] Is that true, and/or is there something else stirring, that was stirring not even a year ago when I was doing this sabbatical study, that has surprised even me?
American civil religion is pervasive and persuasive. I, in the midst of my call to baptismal vocation and leadership as a teaching theologian in the church, have been shaped and formed also by ACR. We who live in this culture, each one personally, and as members of faith communities, need to understand it. And I (we) particularly need the voices among us who can bring the perspective from outside the United States. Together, I firmly believe, we are called to “help created and maintain “trustworthy places for us to be different together.”
I invite those who care can to remain in this room for conversation. The faculty will respond to this lecture at their faculty enrichment time two weeks from now. If some want a copy of this lecture, in its slightly longer form and the rather lengthy bibliography…leave your e-mail address with Suzanne at the door.
[1] Bellah and Hammond. Varieties of Civil Religion (San Francisco: Harper&Row, 1980), 41. [2] Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 19l3), 121. [3] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Vol. 1 (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), 6. [4] Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” Daedalus 96 (Winter, 1967), 1. [5] Bellah, The Broken Covenant, 142. [6] Sidney E. Mead, The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 2. He regrets the “tragedy” of the Indian who had “no time” to adapt (p. 5). Mead writes during the early 1960’s, corresponding to America’s fascination with its new astronauts’ early exploration of space, paralleling the excitement of America’s earlier territorial exploration. See Charles H. Long, Significantions (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 144. Long notes Mead’s poignancy – but deepens the problem, saying it is from concealment that the innocence and naiveté of the American emerges. [7] Mead, The Lively Experiment 38. Of the two movements of the eighteenth century, rationalism and pietism, there was a gathering momentum to sweep in religious freedom and separation of church and state rather than traditional orthodoxy. Only later did pietism discover its latent incompatibility with rationalism and marry again traditional orthodoxy. [8] John O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17 (1845): 5-l0, in Nancy Koester, Fortress Introduction to The History of Christianity n the United States (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 108. [9] See Winthrop Hudson, American Protestantism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961). [10] Martin Marty, The New Shape of American Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), 68. [11] John F. Wilson, “A Historian’s Approach to Civil Religion,” in RussellRichey and Donald Jones, American Civil Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 118-119. [12] H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (Chicago: Willett, Clark & Co., 1937). [13] Conrad Cherry, God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), 129. [14] Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1955), 87. [15] Martin E. Marty, A Nation of Behavers (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), 181-182. [16] Martin E. Marty, “Two Kinds of Civil Religion” in Richey and Jones, American Civil Religion, 144-145. Marty identified two styles of civil religion, priestly and prophetic, as well as two theological affirmations, “divine transcendence” and “national self-transcendence.” The former understands the nation as under and responsible to God; in the latter the nation assumes transcendence. This stance was confirmed in a conversation I had with Marty June 11, 2005, Des Moines, Iowa. [17] Martin E. Marty with Jonathan Moore, Politics, Religion and the Common Good. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 11, 14. [18] Catherine Brekus, Associate Professor of History of Christianity interview on “Prayer in America” DVD (Iowa Public Television: A Duncan Group Production, 2007). [19] Catherine L. Albanese, America: Religions and Religion (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1981), xix. Albanese proceeds with her history beginning with the “manyness” of the Native American tribes. [20] Ibid.,345-373. [21] Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 191. Measures were taken to limit accessibility and assimilation, such as the 1913 and 1920 Anti-Alien Land Laws, the 1922 Supreme Court decision that Japanese immigrants were prohibited from becoming naturalized, and the 1924 Oriental Exclusion Act. The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a travesty of justice for which an apology was decades delayed. [22] Cherry, God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, 116. [23] Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America. (San Francisco: Harper, 2001), 65. [24] Charles Long, “Civil Rights—Civil Religion: Visible People and Invisible Religion,” in Russell L Richey and Donald G. Jones, American Civil Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 212. [25] Ibid., 212. [26] Charles Long, “A New Look at American Religion, ” Anglican Theological Review Supplementary Series No.1, (July, 1973): 122. Long emphasizes that black churches being the locus of the civil rights struggle was not incidental, “for the civil rights battle represented the black confrontation with an American myth that dehumanized his being” (122). [27] Albanese, America: Religions and Religion, 20. [28] See Edmundo O’Gorman’s work in Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion,, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 87-88. O’Gorman seeks to dispel the
notion that Columbus “discovered” America, reasoning the exploration, conquest and colonization of America was based on a European concept which was absurd; as though America was a ready-made thing waiting to be unveiled to an awe-struck world. He argues Amerigo Vespucci in 1501-1502 discerned he had found a “new world” which opened the possibility of explaining the “other” in its own terms in a way contradictory to the accepted picture of the world.
[29] Bellah, The Broken Covenant, 6-7. [30] National Museum of the American Indian, Fourth and Independence Ave. S.W., Washington D.C. www.nmai.si.edu [31] See also Toulouse, Mark, God in Public: Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life Relate. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 57. [32] Vincent Harding, The Other American Revolution (Los Angeles: Center for Afro-American Studies, Universityof California; and Atlanta: Institute of Black World,1980), 204, 205, 210. In an unpublished paper, “So Much History, So Much Future: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Second Coming of America” based on a lecture presented at the University of Mississippi, October 3, 1978, Harding looks for a “second coming of America” since the old has been “cracked, wedged open, and cannot be the same again.” Blacks cannot make a separate peace with America because their needs are the needs of millions of Americans. What is needed is revolutionary transformation for an America with justice, compassion and humanity. “I dare to believe we can make America a new society for all” (56-60). [33] See also Toulouse, p. 155. [34] Norma Cook Everist, “The Burning of Black Churches,” Currents in Theology and Mission 24 (August, 1997), 337-338. [35] Vincent Harding, There Is a River (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), 7-8. Harding notes that Africans became the “chosen people”… for American slavery. [36] Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006), “There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian American—there’s the United States of America.” His chapter on “Race” details “we are one people is not to suggest that race no longer matters—that the fight for equality has been won, or that the problems that minorities face in this country today are largely self-inflicted…. To think clearly about race requires us to….acknowledge the sins of our pat and the challenges of the present without becoming trapped in a cynicism or despair.” 231 233. [37] Samuel Rodriguez, Interview with Bill Moyers, “Bill Moyers’ Journal,” PBS, February 8, 2008. [38] Hak Joon Lee, We Will Get to the Promised Land: Martin Lutheran King Jr.’s Communal-Political Spirituality (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press), ix. [39] Ibid., pp. xii, xiii, 8. [40] Ibid., 134. [41] Intermingled with and supporting the civil religion were the Scriptures, but just as the story of thenation itself replaced that narrative, the Scriptures, continuing in the particularities of the private sphere, were replaced publicly except for some imagery, by the documents of the new nation. They became its holy writ. In the 1970’s, when under trial during the Watergate hearings, the nation seemed held together only by the belief in these sacred writings. [42] Robert Benne and Phillip Hefner, Defining America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), 7. [43] Mark Toulouse in God in Public: Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life Relate (Louisville: WJK 2006) uses six dimensions: ritual, myth, doctrine, ethics, social institutions or communities and experience, p.52ff. [44] Bellah, The Broken Covenant, 55. “For fifty years after the Civil War [the] picture was more self-congratulatory than it had ever been before, its self-satisfaction reinforced by the image of Lincoln freeing the slaves, a gesture magnanimously shared with black Americans by the practice of naming public schools in black ghettos after the Great Emancipator.” [45] Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant, 3-5. “Unlike most historic peoples, America as a nation began on a definite date, July Fourth, 1776. Thus, in analyzing America’s myth of origin, close attention must be paid to the mythic significance of the Declaration of Independence, which is considerable” (3). [46] CBS Sunday Morning June 19, 2005, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050521 . [47] See Jon Pahl, Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Spaces (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003). [48] See “All Kinds of Steeples” and “Centers of Meaning” in Norma Cook Everist, Open the Doors and See all the People (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2004), chapters 3 and 4. [49] See Christopher H. Evans and William R. Herzog II, The Faith of Fifty Mission: Baseball, Religion, and American Culture. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002). This fascinating book traces the search for the American Dream, describing “saints and sinners” in its description of baseball and American religion and the “theological quest” for a national religion. [50] From time to time groups of citizens and some legislators promote bills to make desecration of the American flag a felony. [51] Other nations also have difficulty with “repentance.” The new prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, in February, 2008 publicly said “Sorry” to Aborigines for mistreatment. It took decades of work for the government to say this one significant word. [52] See a film by Stephanie Black, Life and Debt, a New Yorker Film release, a DVD which vividly shows the discrepancy between tourists’ view of Jamaica and the real situation in Jamaica since economic globalization. [53] Mark Toulouse, God in Public: Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life Relate.(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006), 54.
[54] Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant, 2. [55] The announcement of London acquiring the 2012 Olympics came one day before four bombs on Undergrounds and a bus killed and wounded many people there July 7, 2005. The timing which corresponded with the G8 conference meeting in Great Britain raises the global challenge of working together for peace and justice. [56] Norman A. Bert, “The Apostles Creed, Seeker’s Version” The Wittenburg Door 199 (May/June 2005), 42. The magazine refers to itself as “The world’s pretty much only religious satire magazine.” [57] “For the Healing of the World,” Official Report, LWF Tenth Assembly, Winnipeg, Canada, 21-31 July 2003 (Geneva: The Lutheran World Federation, 2004), 61. [58] See Richard S. Gilbert, How Much Do we Deserve: An Inquiry into Distributive Justice, 2nd edition (Boston: Sinner House, 2001) [59]Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Mondy in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006), 268, 283. [60] From Christian Smith, South Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (NY: Oxford U Press, 2005) Chapter 5, “American Adolescent Religion in Social Context,” 172 ff. [61] See Thomas Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (New York: Doubleday, 2000). [62] Benjamin Barber, Consumed (London: Norton, 2008) Barber assets that the Protestant work ethic of self-restraint, preparing for the future, and other characteristics of adulthood are being replaced by the being seduced into an “infantilist” ethic of consumption. [63] An Oprah show, “The Big Give” (March 2008) has as its premise people being given money to give away to needy recipients. But the show becomes a contest (In ACR competition is important) where a person wins a million dollars for this “generosity.” [64] CBS Sunday Morning, May 27, 2007. [65] Jim Wallis, The Great Awaking: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (New York: Collins, 2008), 1. [66] Wallis, Jim. God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (New York: HarperCollins, 2005). [67] Phillips, American Theocracy, 103. [68] Ibid., vii. [69] Ibid., 100. [70] Phillips on page 129 of American Theocracy is quoting the1998 edition of Conrad Cherry’s God’s New Israel, (p. 19) who in turn has taken the term “realm of motivational myths” from Sidney Mead’s The Lively Experiment, (p. 75). [71] David Goldfield, Still Fighting the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 22 in Phillips, American Theocracy, 130. [72] Philip Goff and Paul Harvey, ed, Themes in Religion and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 54 [73] Phillips, American Theocracy, 145. [74] Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause 1868-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980) [75] See Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz, America’s Battle for God: A European Looks at Civil Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), pp.49-71 for an entire chapter on winners and losers as a belief system. [76] Jon Meacham, American Gospel (New York: Random House, 2006),5. [77] Ibid., 14. [78] Ibid., 31 [79] Ibid., 33. [80] Madeleine K. Albright, “The Mighty and the Almighty: United Stats Foreign Policy and God” in Reflections, New Haven, Ct, (Fall, 2004), 8. [81] Madeleine Albright, The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 23. [82] John Danforth, Faith and Politics: How the Moral Values Debate Divides American an How to Move Forward Together (New York: Viking, 2006), 70. [83] Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005) [84] J. David Kuo, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (New York: Simon and Shuster, 2006). [85] David Pl Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics (Waco, Tx: Baylor University Press, 2008). [86] D.Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) [87] See Norma Cook Everist, The Paradox of Pluralism: A Sociological, Ethical and Ecclesiological Perspective of the Church’s Vocation in the Public World (Dubuque: Unpublished doctoral dissertation, 1988) The dissertation looks specifically at xenophobia and the dilemma of dealing with diversity. In regard to the exclusivity of American civil religion, the test of inclusivity is the ability to welcome and incorporate the stranger, without “strangers” needing to lose their distinctiveness. This becomes the challenge for the church’s vocation in the public world. [88] Bill Moyer’s Interview with Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, Public Broadcasting System, February 8, 2008. Transcript, downloaded Bill Moyers Journal website, p.3. [89] Ibid., 9. [90] Ibid., 6. [91] Hak Joon Lee, We Will Get to the Promised Land: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Communal-Political Spirituality, 158. [92] Ibid., 159. [93] Ibid., 173. [94] Robert Jewell and John Shelton Lawrence, Captain America and the Crusade Against Evil: the Dilemma of Zealous Nationalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 3. [95] See Mark Lewis Taylor, Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005). [96] Joerg Reiger, Empire: From Paul to Post Colonial Times (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 2. [97] Ibid., 4-6. [98] Ibid., 271-274. [99] Karen L. Bloomquist, ed., Being Church in the Midst of Empire: Trinitarian Reflections (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2007), 13-22. [100] See John R. Stumme and Robert W. Tuttle, Church and State: Lutheran Perspectives (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003). [101] Leroy Rouner, To Be at Home: Christianity, Civil Religion and World Community (Boston: Beacon, 1991) [102] Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today (New York: Basic Books, 2005) [103] David Domke and Kevin Coe’s The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) [104] Muller-Farhenholz, America’s Battle for God: A European Christian Looks at Civil Religion, 1. [105] Ibid., 2. [106] Ibid., 3. [107] Ibid., 169, 173, 181. [108] Ibid., xiii.