Letters to the Editor
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The Kingdoms Here Already
Thanks to Michelle Goldberg for her timely book on religious nationalism. I’ve had the book on order for a while and it was great to get a taste of its content since it won’t arrive till next week. It certainly goes a long way in explaining why some of us don’t get misty eyed over a judge being booted from the bench because he wouldn’t remove a Ten Commandments monument from his courthouse.
I seem to get a lot of forwarded emails these days from family and associates (most of which are probably authored by the agitprop arm of the Heritage Foundation or others of that ilk) lamenting the fact that God is supposedly not allowed in schools. Or attacking the so called ‘dirty, godless humanists’ for trying to take ‘In God We Trust’ and “One nation under God” from the dollar bills and the pledge of allegiance. I try to point out to them that that both of those bon motts are later interpolations (“One nation, under God’ was added in the 1950’s in response to the cold war) but secularism has been so demonized by the right that my words just smack of more godless, liberal drivel (as an aside, this is the topic of Ann Coulters latest yet to be released tome ‘Godless: The Church of Liberalism’. It seems that we liberals are not just elitists anymore; we’re godless elitists now-- and heaven knows that’s the worse kind!).
I also received a letter from a woman recently stating that the U.S. was founded on the Christian Faith- to which I replied with the words from the Treaty of Tripoli: "…As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…” It was written by John Adams and ratified by Congress in the late 1700’s: The treaty is no longer valid of course but it gives you some insight into the thinking of our founding fathers and their emphatic intentions to create a secular state. After all they were all well-read students of history and very aware of what happens when the reigns of civil power are held by the clergy or religious interests. It’s interesting to note that many of them were even opposed to putting the work ‘God’ in The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution at all! (Most of the support for adding ‘God’ was from the Southern delegates; the same group of white men whose worldview justified slavery, lynching and later the Civil War. Not a particularly august intellectual pedigree to lay claim to). It seems that many of our founding fathers were prescient enough to know what a loaded word ‘God’ can become in a world with so many religions and multiple Christian denominations (Besides, many of them were deists whose concept of ‘God’ was far from the omniscient, bearded, superhero many envision today).
I originally come from the State of Utah and find it particularly alarming than some L.D.S. people (Mormons) have jumped onto this anti-secular bandwagon and in some cases have even unwittingly allied themselves with the factions of the Christian nationalist movement. This does not bode well for Mormonism! Especially since most of these groups do not consider Mormons to be Christians and will therefore not include them in their ‘reindeer games’ in the future. It is also alarming since the early Mormon Church leaders were as emphatic about a separation of church and state as the founding fathers were. They too were students of history and realized that this separation was a well-warranted safeguard for their own survival as a church.
I think this goes to show just how powerful the propaganda arm of the Christian fundamentalist movement is. They have been effective in mobilizing other religious denominations and even other religions to back up legislation, which is not even remotely in those other religions or denominations interest in the long run. They have accomplished this by getting the so-called ‘God-fearing’ set to rally around universal yet ambiguous catchphrases as ‘family values’, and ‘God’ in hopes of winning support for a much more pernicious agenda.
Chad Bagley
P.S. While I’m at it let me put in a plug for Kevin Phillips new book, ‘American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century’. It’s well worth the read.
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Thank God for Creating the Internet
Sure, Christians always have and always will try to evangelize anybody and everybody they can, but, I gotta tell ya, the lure of internet porn will thwart a good portion of their current efforts. Thank God.
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Religious Nationalism
Interestingly, religion and nationalism have historically been at odds with each other. Nations are, to use perhaps the most common definition among academics, "an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign."1 National identity formation is essentially a sociological process - one identitifies with the nation because it satisfies psychological needs for self-affirmation and self-satisfaction. The greater group is able to perform tasks succeed in ways that the individual group member cannot - but the group member can take personal satisfaction for being part of these successes.
What differentiates national identity from other forms of identity is that it also involves a desire for sovereignty, or self-determination. Nations are imagined as discrete and independent political units. Thus being a member of a nation provides actual physical security and material benefit, in ways that other identity groups cannot. Being a member of a nation implies a willingness to defend the nation (and therefore other members of the nation). This puts the nation above and beyond other identity groups - and by implication, in opposition to identity groups that may challenge the nation for individual loyalty.
Thus we have typically seen conflict, rather than harmony, between nationalism and religion. French nationalism was (and still is) anti-clerical, so too was Nazism. When loyalty to the nation is put above all else, there is little room (or need) for religion to order and control social interaction. Indeed, religion challenges nationalism on other grounds as well - for religions are typically universalistic (i.e. anyone who believes automatically becomes a member of the faith) while nations are, by definition, limited and discrete.
In this context, the fusion of nationalism and religion which Ms. Goldberg points out is all the more troubling. Religion and national identity are two of the most fundamental sources of self-definition. An ideology which fuses the two will be firm, determined, and very self-assured in its own rightness. That said, one wonders if the fusion may also sow the seeds of the movements self-destruction. As stated earlier, nationalism is a bounded ideology - it is not universalistic. These religious nationalists seem to have a very clear idea of who are and can be good God Fearing Christians, and a equally clear idea of who isn't. The very strength of their identity (and thus their self-assured belief in the righteousness of their cause and their method) will make them all the less willing to engage in the sort of compromise and horse-trading that "gets things done" in the context of the American political system.
One can perhaps see this already, in the disillusionment and alienation that is evident in the Republican Party right now (as the bargain between the Business and Religious interests in the party slowly unravels). As Ms. Goldberg herself notes, we are not in any danger of quickly sliding into an American Theocracy - nonetheless, the movement bears watching. The biggest threat, perhaps, is that these groups will decide that they if they cannot work through the political process they will opt for the route of self-determination, leading to a modern day secessionist movement (not all that unrealistic, considering that their main strength is in the South, an area where secession and rebellion are still romanticized and are already a strong basis of identity formation).
1 I quote from Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities
For those interested in further reading on religion in America, I highly recommend Robert Wuthnow's The Restructuring of American Religion.