Religious Conflict and Cultural Wars in America
Introduction
The variety of religious beliefs in the United States surpasses the nation’s multitude of ethnicities, nationalities, and races, making religion another source of diversity rather than a unifying force. This is true even though the vast majority of Americans—83 percent—identify themselves as Christian. One-third of these self-identified Christians are unaffiliated with any church. Moreover, practicing Christians belong to a wide variety of churches that differ on theology, organization, programs, and policies. The largest number of Christians in the United States belongs to one of the many Protestant denominations—groups that vary widely in their beliefs and practices. Roman Catholics constitute the next largest group of American Christians, followed by the Eastern Orthodox. These differences and the politicalization of religion, in not only recent times, but also during the second half of the 20th century, have led to multifarious conflicts among and between religious groups throughout America and between religious factions and the political structures of states and the nation.
Eminent French sociologists Emile Durkheim (1857-1917) defined religion as a more or less coherent system of beliefs (monotheism, polytheism) and practices (fasts, feasts) that concern a supernatural order of things (gods, goddesses, angels), places (heaven, hell, purgatory), and forces (mana). This definition, being sterile and generic, goes along way in explaining what religion is but does not explain why it is a universal phenomenon. Neither does it explain the extent of religious conflict in a nation, the United States that claims to be religiously tolerant. Religion wields extraordinary influence in public affairs. Although a rich reservoir of values, principles, and ideals, it is also a powerful source of conflict and violence as diverse religious and secular traditions collide. Globalizing trends that are making the world smaller are also unleashing dynamics that are creating some of the most complex and challenging problems of the 21st century.
Religious Differences
Since September 11, 2001, religious news and religious controversy have been constants on American airwaves, newspapers, and books. From Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the controversy that has surrounded its interpretation to the political insurgence of the Christian Right, editorials, books, and talk shows have highlighted the religious differences found among the American public. For example, in the fall of 2004, Larry King, host of Larry King Live, asked a panel of religious leaders why they thought there is so much anger, hate, and horror in the world. This panel included Deepak Chopra, religious radio personality Dennis Prager, Reverend R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Maher Nathout, scholar and advisor to the Muslim Public Affairs Council. In the middle of the discussion, King, mentioned that religion has been singled out as the cause of the problem and not its cure. The answers coming from the panel ranged from “our ideas of God are based on primitive ideas,” to blaming secular ideologies and beliefs for the widespread murder and torture of individuals world wide. One panel member said that it is a mistake to single out religion as the only cause for world conflict.
Interestingly, as this debate about religious conflict was taking place, two significant stories about religious conflict appeared in American newspapers The first came from the Associated Press in New Orleans and announced, “School Board in Prayer Dispute.” A federal lawsuit to stop the local school board from having Christian prayers at its meetings found both sides citing First Amendment rights in arguing their stands. In this case, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) represented a parent who contended that prayers at Tangipahoa Parish School Board meetings violate constitutional separation of church and state under the First Amendment. The ACLU added another complaint about using religious music during meetings. On the other side, members of the school board argued that “free-speech rights allow them to have the public prayers.” They cited another case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the right of legislatures and other “deliberative bodies” to allow such prayers. The attorney for the school board appealed to tradition to support his case for allowing prayer at the school board meetings.
Another incident reported by the American press was a planned marriage rally at Hickory Motor Speedway in Hickory, North Carolina. Civic leaders and church members from different denominations throughout North Carolina came together on September 25, 2004 at the speedway to support “the traditional definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.” The event was advertised as a “We Are United Rally” and promoted its purpose as wanting to educate people about the issue of same-sex marriage and provide information on participating in the national rally in Washington, D.C., on October 15, 2004.
Also, in 2004, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the Gorham, New Hampshire School Board has approved a high school senior’s after-school Bible study classes, pending review by the school attorney. Liz Woodward, who planed to study biblical counseling at Lancaster, Pennsylvania Bible College, told the school board she needed to hold weekly classes at her school for a required senior project. The school board was concerned about the First Amendment issue of separation of church and state. The board debated the request at length before voting unanimous approval so long as those attending have parents’ permission and an adult supervises the classes. The high school principal reported that the legality of the Bible classes was researched and found to be within federal law because attendance is voluntary and it is an after school activity.
At the University level, it was claimed that the University of North Carolina’s Chancellor James Moeser “excommunicated” a Christian fraternity with an evangelical Protestant theology because it teaches that sexual activity ought to be limited to marriage between a man and a woman. Moeser noted that this standard obviously excluded extramarital and homosexual conduct, which is an espousal of traditional Christian morals. Moeser referred to a 2001 policy statement on “nondiscrimination,” which affirmed no discrimination in employment decisions or educational programs based on age, sex, race, color, national origin, religion, or disability.
Also, the university had adopted an internal policy on non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This statement was added, the report said, to ensure that only relevant factors are considered and that equitable and consistent standards of conduct and performance are applied. Notably, Chancellor Moeser exempted from its operation outside organizations, including the federal government, the military, ROTC and private employers. In 2003, the fraternity in question – AIO – came up for renewal of its official status to make sure that it complied with “university policies on non-discrimination,” including the one on sexual orientation. Based on their rules and consciences, AIO members decided that they could not admit students who disagree with their religious tenets and who are unwilling to adhere to traditional standards of sexual morality. They noted that this would go against the fraternity’s stated purpose. Jon Curtis, assistant director for student activities and organization went forward and pulled the plug on the AIO, a decision that was affirmed by Chancellor Moeser on August 12, 2004. AIO sued the university on August 25, “claiming violation of its rights to freedom of association, speech, and religion.” It was the opinion of some that this is a case study in secular intolerance. Notably, the United States Supreme Court has not yet addressed this issue in the context of student groups at public institutions. Lawyers argued that Moeser ignored the central role that religion and morality have played in America, and where these conscientious students fit into that history. They noted that in Moeser’s world, “traditional Christian religion does not exist.”
Religious differences are the cause of much conflict in the modern world. Conflict has been documented within religious groups, between religious groups, and between religious groups and other social/government organizations. Conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Latin America and between Christians and Muslims in Indonesia, Africa, and the Middle East have called into question the mission and direction of America’s churches. These conflicts do not occur on foreign soil only, but in America as well, in that America is now itself a global village in which non-Protestant and non-Christian religions are on the rise. The belief that many Americans have professed in cultural and religious tolerance—an open-mindedness that has welcomed many diverse cultures to her shores—is now a source of religious and economic conflict.
Personal and Social Benefits of Religion. Even when evidence is provided about religious conflict in America, sociologists quickly point out that religion has many personal and social benefits: it allows for the transcendence of human life, provides a perspective that gives people a means of dealing with death and other conditions of uncertainty, helps people overcome feelings of powerlessness to control the conditions that affect their well-being, and provides a means of coping with unfulfilled personal needs. The values associated with religion account for a loyalty that transcends national loyalty. Explaining this phenomenon is difficult. Religious petitions continue to have priority, especially for evangelicals who tend to rally around a theological flag. On the other hand, theological liberals have a tendency to promote political and social justice with little mention of God or church. Also, people in organized religious congregations tend to participate in larger numbers and are more generous of their time and resources to these organizations than any other organization outside the family. Not only are religious people organized by virtue of their membership in a church, mosque, or synagogue, but also on the conservative side, they are ready to bring their theological and moral beliefs to bear on all political and social issues.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have documented the growth in religious adherence, from 1776 to 1980, in their study of religion in America:
Religious Adherence in America: 1776-1980
Year % Adherence
in America
1980 62%
1952 59%
1926 56%
1916 53%
1906 51%
1890 45%
1870 35%
1860 37%
1850 34%
1876 17%
Although sociologists predicted that secularization would diminish religious adherence and church affiliation, by the end of the 20th century, over 80 percent of Americans said they were connected to some religious organization. Interestingly, in 2006, Gallop reported church attendance at 68 percent for members of the United Church of Christ, 67 percent for Mormons, 65 percent for Pentecostals, 60 percent for Southern Baptists, 45 percent for Roman Catholics, 44 percent for Methodists and Presbyterians, 43 percent for Lutherans, 32 percent for Episcopalians, and 15 percent for those of the Jewish faith.
Faiths in Conflict. In the aftermath of World War II in America, citizens of every region drew together to affirm their common inheritance as a people and to celebrate the nation’s military and moral victories. Such triumphs seemed to substantiate America’s position, with its robust capitalism and growing Christian community, as a beacon to other nations, the leader of the free world, and a “city on a hill.” This vision sustained America through the years of the Cold War, the Korean Conflict, and the debacle of the war in Vietnam. In the 21st century, this triumph may have become a source of hate and perhaps over confidence as global awareness began to “flatten” the world so that America began to lose its economic and moral might. The conflict with Iraq and the differences between America and such countries as France and Germany appear to confirm, not their envy of America and American values, but detestation for them as America’s actions began to speak louder than her words. The weakening of America’s religio-politico-moral message was obvious.
In their book, Hating America: A History, Barry and Judith Rubin cite five phases of anti-Americanism: (1) Up to 1800, due to extreme environmental conditions, America was deemed so inhospitable that civilization was impossible. Even by 1776, Europeans thought Americans lacked culture, its soil was poisonous, its “lowered orders” were “rude,” and its animals stunted. (2) From 1800 to 1860, America was thought of as a failure and its freedom, an insidious form of slavery. For many Europeans, the horrors of the French Revolution confirmed that democracy didn’t work or at best produced a dreadful society ruled by the lower orders of humanity. (3) From 1860 to 1940, America’s industrialization heightened fear that its populist democracy, mass culture, and economic strength would have a negative impact on the world. America was now thought of as an object of dread. It was described as soulless, capitalist, anti-intellectual, mob-ruled, and culturally inferior. (4) From 1945 until the Soviet Union’s 1991 implosion, the fear of American domination deepened. Soviet Communism, Latin American anti-Americanism, and Islamic fundamentalism added new dimensions to this anti-American fever. (5) Finally, from 1991, the juggernaut of globalization, thought of as a thinly disguised Americanization, coupled with developments in communications, technology and weaponry, made America the world’s sole superpower and the object of resentment throughout the world.
In addition to these five phases, the Rubins have identified four reasons for this resentment: (1) An idealistic strain in American culture has produced a missionary zeal that is often perceived as a superiority complex resulting in an extreme ethnocentrism basically claiming that “our way is better than your way because it is our way.” (2) Americans are optimistic and possess a can-do attitude that has fashioned unparalleled progress. (3) Americans are problem solvers and their capacity for renewal proves that change is possible. (4) Finally, they say that America does not want to run the world—trade with it and travel in it, yes—but not rule it. Their conclusion is that America is an empire, but a reluctant one.
In his historical analysis of religion in America, Andrew M. Manis observed that when America and particularly the South turned inward to think about “the American dilemma” of race, the South became a battlefield of conflicting civil and religious faiths. In Southern Civil Religion in Conflict, Manis points out that during the 1950s and 1960s, the growing civil rights movement, calling on the nation to “live out the true meaning of its creed,” revealed within the South two separate civic doctrines—one based on freedom by law and equality under God; the other, finding in the Constitution a guarantee of individual rights and in the Bible a divine sanction of segregation. During the second half of the 20th century, this conflict became perceptible as many African-Americans returned to their Muslim roots and others, to even earlier expressions of faith found in their African heritage. Among those African-Americans defining themselves religiously in relation to the great religions of the Mideast, some have looked to Judaism rather than Christianity or Islam. A number of movements have emerged, some ambiguously related to both Christianity and Judaism that have identified African-Americans as the true descendants of the ancient Hebrews.
Well before Martin Luther King, Jr. made Gandhian nonviolence a central feature of the civil rights movement, there was serious African-American interest in Gandhi and his teachings. Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, a powerful religious force in urban black America in the second quarter of the twentieth century, drew on “harmonial” religious currents in American religion which had roots in eastern faiths. Also, it has been estimated that about one-fourth the membership of the Soka Gakkai International–USA, the American offshoot of a Japanese Buddhist movement, is African-American.
The religion of African-Americans has always been a source of conflict in America, especially the American south. Albert J. Raboteau, in his study of African-American Religion observed that of all American stories, the African-American Religious narrative, which includes fourteen percent of the nation’s population, is a unique blend of cultures and continents. He called attention to both the cultural diversity of the African continent from which the slaves were taken and to the varied points of view defining the white, at times religious, slave owners. He described how Africans were inspired to reject a theology of white superiority, while they simultaneously incorporated religious rituals such as the ring shout, rhythmic patterns of musical and oratorical cadence, and the identification of Christian Saints with regional gods of rain or war. He mentioned that while one might assume that the white response to this religious expression would be universal in its condemnation and repression, there was instead distinct ambivalence and differences. In April 2008, this response showed some changes in reaction to remarks made by presidential candidate Barack Obama’s minister, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Political Involvement. In contemporary America, politicians have used religious conflict to promote their personal and party ideals as they have continued to recognize that religion provides a means for social control and for promoting certain “conservative” agendas. This overt mingling of politics and religion has compounded the convulsions within religious communities and between divergent religions. From putting “In God We Trust” on coins in the 1950s, to the League of Conservative Voters, the Christian Coalition, Moral Majority, the 700 Hundred Club, and to the faith-based initiatives of 21st century political campaigns, religion has been and is being used for political purposes.
Another issue is that of school prayer, which illustrates the intermingling of politics and religion. School prayer was a regular part of the school day until 1962 when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional (Engel v. Vitale). Justice Hugo Black, entrusted with writing the Court’s opinion provided the following rationale for the decision. He wrote that the union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. He said that the Establishment clause of the First Amendment expressed a basic Constitutional principle that religion is “too sacred” to be perverted by the civil government. The intent of “no establishment” is separation of church and state, however, the “free exercise” clause provides a privileged status for religion. Justice Black had earlier commented that a state or the Federal Government could not set up a church; pass laws to aid any religion, or force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. He concluded that “the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and state’.”
The Supreme Court has also noted that this wall of separation between church and state has never been so tall as to prevent the accommodation of religion by the federal government and state governments. Section 1201 – an amendment to – H.R. 1501, The Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1999, reads “…The power to display the Ten Commandments on or within property owned or administered by the several States or political subdivisions thereof is hereby declared to be among the powers reserved to the States respectively.” The “wall” of separation between church and state seems to have been bridged, if not crossed, at this point. Representative Robert Aderholt of Alabama wrote this amendment. He reasoned that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools (as “political subdivisions thereof”) would help prevent acts of violence like the Columbine High School shooting, and, in general, promote the ethical/civil character of youth.
Although the political thrust of conservative theology is a unifying force, such a political use of religion is also a cause of much religious and political dysfunction in the United States. Differences in religious beliefs have led to discrimination, political upheaval, and even to justifying war on those who are not of the same faith. In 2001, the terrorists’ acts of September 11 had a religious, as well as a political cause. Other issues such as abortion, capital punishment, stem cell research, and gay marriage are thought of as not only political issues, but religious issues as well. In the case of abortion, the last quarter of the 20th century was burdened with many acts of violence at abortion clinics, violence in the name of religion. One of the knotted features of mixing politics and religion has been the use of violence in the name of God as a cure-all for practices thought to be unethical and un-Christian.
Religion as a Social Institution. From a sociological perspective, the church is not only a religious institution, but also a social institution which interacts with and influences other social institutions in society; namely, the family, education, and politics. During the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, both African-American and white Christian churches organized to combat racial inequality. During this time, some churches stood against the increased concentration of wealth and power in America. Peace churches (the Brethren) vigorously opposed the arms race and the Vietnam War. In 1985, The Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Baha’i Faith, published a statement “to the peoples of the world,” proclaiming “the promise of world peace.” Although the Baha’i Faith believes that humankind has evolved to a stage of peace, they also claim, that large numbers of people believe that religion is irrelevant to the modern world. In their view, man made ideologies, designed to save society from the evils, is the source of much human conflict.
Evangelical Protestants have also opposed the Supreme Court’s ruling against prayer in public schools. Catholics and evangelicals have found themselves on the same side of the pro-life movement against abortion. These prophetic stands—both left and right—have precipitated prolonged debates, volatile rallies, political battles, and even violence between opposing forces. A mark of the resurgence of the evangelical movement has been the popularity of the book The Purpose Driven Life, which author and pastor Rick Warren calls “A groundbreaking manifesto on the meaning of life,” and has sold over 20.5 million copies in the United States alone, and can be read in twenty-eight different languages.
The existence of conflict in the interaction of society’s major institutions means that religion and politics are changing in America. New churches—some as small storefront congregations and others as large community-based and innovative groups—have been formed to fulfill important personal functions that traditional religions are no longer fulfilling as new human needs have emerged. New, religion-oriented educational institutions have been developed and are attracting a K-12 student body from families who desire their children to be educated in schools that profess both an academic and religious purpose. And these congregations are drawn from across the body of different denominations and from the Catholic Church.
Moral education with an emphasis on character and civility and with an unspoken foundation in the Christian religion is also on the rise. Approximately 12 percent of American children are being educated in private schools, 80 percent of which are of some religious affiliation. Also, approximately 630,000 children are being educated through home-schooling. A 1992 Gallup poll showed that 70 percent of Americans support choice in education, and that Christian parents “have been the vanguard of the educational choice and parental rights movement.” These figures document a culture- or values-shift in America, and the public schools has been one of the battlegrounds.
A New Paradigm: Religious Economy
A new paradigm has emerged among sociologists to shed light on the growth of religion in the 20th and 21st centuries. For most of the 20th century, secularization theory (“secularization” refers to the process of the separation of state and church and in most of the Western world there has been at least sufficient separation of church and state that people are capable both of living their lives apart from direct interference on the part of religion and may choose among various religions without suffering civil disabilities) was the dominant theoretical view of religion in the modern world. In spite of the appearance of overwhelming evidence for the secularization thesis, since 1975, there is evidence that challenges this taken-for-granted position. This evidence is both historical and contemporary. To date, much of the evidence is limited to North America, but there is growing documentation from around the globe to support the challenge to secularization theory. The new paradigm, which is a theory of religious economy, does not deny that secularization is a powerful force in the modern world but argues that secularization theory does not adequately explain the increase in religious affiliation, especially in the United States.
In 1993, Stephen Warner pointed to the proportion of the population enrolled in churches that grew hugely throughout the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. This was also a time of rapid secularization and modernization. Scholars of the new paradigm attribute the growth of religious affiliation in the U.S. to the disestablishment clause of the Constitution. Sociologists have concluded that by radically separating church and state, religious pluralism has been and is being encouraged; the United States Constitution guarantees pluralism.
Today, the United States has the largest number of religious groups in the world. The largest, most comprehensive surveys on religious identification were done by sociologists Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman and associates at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Their first major study was done in 1990: the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). This scientific nationwide survey of 113,000 Americans asked about religious preference, along with other questions. They followed this up, with even more sophisticated methodology and more questions, with the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) conducted in 2001, with a sample size of 50,000 Americans. The following table comes from the NSRI and ARIS data:
Top Twenty Religions in the United States, 2001
(Self-identification, ARIS)
RELIGION 1990 Est. 2001 Est. % of U. S. Pop., % Change
Adult Pop. Adult Pop. 2000 1990 – 2000
Christianity 151,225,000 159,030,000 76.5% +5%
Secular 13,116,000 27,539,000 13.2% +110%
Judaism 3,137,000 2,831,000 1.3% -10%
Islam 527,000 1,104,000 0.5% +109%
Buddhism 401,000 1,082,000 0.5% +170%
Agnostic 1,186,000 991,000 0.5% -16% Atheist 902,000 0.4%
Hinduism 227,000 766,000 0.4% +237%
Unitarian Universalist 502,000 629,000 0.3% +25%
Wiccan/Pagan/Druid 307,000 0.1%
Spiritualist 116,000
Native American 47,000 103,000 +119%
Baha’i 28,000 84,000 +200% New Age 20,000 68,000 +240%
Sikhism 13,000 57,000 +338%
Scientology 45,000 55,000 +22%
Humanist 29,000 49,000 +69%
Deist 6,000 49,000 +717%
Taoist 23,000 40,000 +74%
Eckankar 18,000 26,000 +44%
Although the United States Constitution may insist on a separation of church and state and that in America there is a right to religious expression, no religion is guaranteed favored governmental dominance. This does not mean that religion is not involved in the political institutions that govern American society. Constitutionally, religion and government are separated; that is, in America, there can be no state-run religious institutions. Given this fact, there remains some doubt that religion and politics can ever be separated. The conflicts over abortion, and the other issues mentioned above, alerts one to the relationship of religious and politics. In politics, at least, religion has become a major source of political conflict. As theologically conservative Christians denounce the threat of “secular humanism” in the United States, as the Catholic Church struggles with pedophilic priests, and as Muslims and conservative Christians struggle with issues of tolerance and civility, religious conflict is a persistent issue that dominates American life and religious practice. As a result, more and more the social-moral agenda of education and government is correlated with a theological orientation.
Different interpretations of religious conflict point to different causes. Robert Wuthnow has written that religious conservatives and liberals disagree not only about religion but also about the role of government in public life. He says that many of the most hotly debated issues of the past several decades (e.g., civil rights, women’s rights, homosexual rights, military and social spending, abortion, pornography, school prayer, and the teaching of creationism) arise out of differences rooted ultimately in their two ways of viewing God and the world. The first is a conservative public theology that champions strong traditional morality, strong national defenses and a heady brew of free enterprise. It claims that its authority comes from a literal interpretation of the Bible and has the goal of returning America to biblical ideals “on which it was founded.” The opposing view is a liberal public theology and puts forward a more relativistic code of personal morality, a cooperative multilateral spirit in foreign relations, and strong government initiatives capable of infusing norms of social justice into the capitalist mind. The liberal view is also biblically oriented, but projects its view as cultural wisdom rather than divine revelation.
Sociologist Stephen R. Warner provides a different analysis. Warner’s research suggests that it is theology, not politics that unites conservatives, and that their political views are diverse and vary in much the same ways as those of the general public. He also perceives religious liberals as united not by religious doctrine but by an optimistic and socially responsible attitude. He calls this a “worldly morality.” The research provided by both of these scholars continues to inform and make available insights about religious differences, conflicts, and politic-religious involvement. Religious scholars and socio-theorists understand that both theology and politics are forces that unite and divide Americans on an array of issues. These forces exist as causes of conflict inside and outside the sphere of religious organizations.
Historical Background: America’s National Identity
Samuel P. Huntington, in his 2004 book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, places religious conflict in the United States in the larger context of changes occurring “in the salience and substance of American national identity.” He makes the observation that “salience,” or projection, is the importance that Americans ascribe to their national identity compared to their many other identities, and “substance” conveys what Americans believe they have in common and distinguishes them from other nations and cultures. With reference to “substance,” Huntington says that race and ethnicity have largely been eliminated as Americans are accustomed to seeing their country as a multiethnic, multiracial society. He notes that this isn’t the way it has always been nor is it the way might continue. For example, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, many Americans have begun to re-emphasized race and ethnicity in an effort to tighten their conception of what it means to be an American. One of these is stressing that “real” Americans adhere to Christian beliefs and values.
By 1950, the dominant theme in American culture was “White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant,” or WASP. The Anglo-Protestant culture, says Huntington, has been central to American identity and was crucial in defining the American Creed. The first American Creed was articulated by Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These are still magic words in American history; words that set the tone for what some have called “American values.” For many, to question them is to commit some combination of sacrilege and treason. Actually, they are not quite the words Jefferson first composed in June of 1776. His original draft, the pure Jeffersonian version of the message, before editorial changes were made by the Continental Congress, makes it even clearer that Jefferson intended to express an essentially moral or spiritual vision. He writes, “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”
The American Creed makes two monumental claims, one explicit and the other implicit. The explicit claim is that the individual is the sovereign unit in society. His natural state is freedom and equality with all other individuals. This is the natural order of things. All restrictions on this natural order are illegal and immoral transgressions, violations of what God intended. The implicit claim is that the removal of those artificial and arbitrary restraints on individual freedom will release unprecedented amounts of energy into the world. The liberated individual will, in effect, interact with his fellows in a harmonious scheme that recovers the natural order and allows for the fullest realization of human potential. Jefferson’s optimism was perhaps itself an unrealistic judgment at the time as the evolution of democracy (and liberation) brought with it conflict and an intermingling of religion and government in almost every part of the American republic.
In 1918, another, broader American creed was written as a result of a nationwide contest. It said, “I believe in the United States of America as a Government of the People, by the People, for the People; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; A democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many Sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of Freedom, Equality, Justice, and Humanity for which American Patriots sacrificed their Lives and Fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to Love it; to Support its Constitution; to obey its laws; to Respect its Flag; and to defend it against all enemies.” This version of the American Creed was intended to be a brief summary of the American political faith founded upon documents and events fundamental in American history and tradition.
The American Creed. For more than three centuries, the Anglo-Protestant culture—in its many variant forms—has been central to the American Creed and subsequent American identity. It is what Americans believe they have in common and what distinguishes them from other people. Understandably, the American Creed, like the Constitution itself, has been a fluid concept adapting itself to cultural changes and major events in American life. For this reason its interpretation and importance remain at the center of conflict in American society. Also, since the passing of the 1965 Immigration Law, the salience and substance of American culture have been and are being embattled on both the political and religious fronts. A new wave of immigrants from Latin America and Asia, the popularity of multiculturalism and diversity, the spread of Spanish as the second American language, the Hispanization trends in American society, the assertion of group identities based on race, ethnicity, and gender, the impact of diasporas and their homeland governments, and the growing commitment of community and government leaders to cosmopolitan and transnational identities continue to challenge traditional American values.
In 1986, Peter L. Berger observed that the results of the U.S. Constitution amendment, “that there will be no law establishing a particular religion,” created not only religious pluralism but also, moral pluralism in the United States. He concluded that this amendment resulted in religious conflict in America because religious pluralism has perhaps entailed political efforts to enforce particular moral beliefs, many with religious implications. Berger pointed to three religio-political controversies that defined the second half of the 20th century: (1) the civil rights movement, (2) the antiwar (Vietnam War) movement with its various Left-leaning offshoots, and (3) what he calls the “bourgeois insurgency” with the anti-abortion movement at its core.
With reference to the “bourgeois insurgency,” there is data to support the fact that evangelicals are moving from the lower economic class in American society and away from what sociologists have called society’s “economic margins.” Young Americans who are driving this trend are generally not products of a “religious ghetto” or fundamentalists; rather, they are the “new faithful” who have been exposed at every turn to America’s broader, pluralistic culture. The new faithful tend to be highly educated and worldly-wise and can be found in the most diverse cities and at some of the most demanding secular colleges. Many of the new faithful tend to be campus leaders and are intellectually serious. Berger finds that all three of the movements which he mentioned are characterized by a “moral fervor sustained by religious certitude.”
A Wall of Separation. Key legal and political decisions of the past twenty-five years reveal these religious conflicts in action. For example, in 2002, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco decided by a 2-to-1 vote that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were a violation of the separation of church and state. The judges said that these words were an endorsement of religion and a profession of religious belief in monotheism. Although consistent with the words of Jefferson, the 1918 American Creed, and with the 1954 act of Congress that added them to the Pledge in 2002, they were ruled unconstitutional with the stipulation that public school teachers, as state employees, could not recite them in class.
The Supreme Court’s decision in this case stimulated vigorous controversy on an issue central to America’s identity. Supporters of the decision agreed that the United States is a secular country, that the First Amendment prohibits governmental rhetorical and material support for religion, and that American citizens should be able to pledge allegiance to their country without affirming a belief in God. Some disagree, affirming the view that America is fundamentally a religious country with a secular government. This was Huntington’s thesis. He notes that atheists continue to be “outsiders” in the American community. Although they do not have to recite the Pledge or engage in any religious practice of which they disapprove, they do not have the right to impose their atheism on others.
An interesting corollary of this debate is whether the “separation of church and state,” was meant to establish a government free from religious domination or to establish freedom for religion anywhere and in any place in the United States. This debate continues to stimulate questions about America’s identity, of whether America is a religious state with a secular government or vice versa. Huntington’s interpretation is clear, but it is not universally accepted, that “the framers of the American Constitution prohibited an established national church in order to limit the power of government and to protect and strengthen religion.”
James Chester Antieau, Arthur T. Downey and Edward C. Roberts in Freedom from Federal Establishment, have recommended caution when interpreting the intentions of the persons responsible for the First Amendment. Some social theorists have taken note of statements made by separationists who believe that the founders intended to separate church and state by depriving the state of its power to either aid or hinder religion, and the words of accomodationists, who believe that the state retains that power and so is constitutionally able to advance religion as a moral good.
Religious Conflict as a Present Reality
Historians of American religious history believe that current religious conflict in America was perhaps unforeseen by our nation’s founders or maybe something they were willing to let future generations workout. The current reality is that since 1950, religious conflict has initiated a cultural shift in American society—a shift in the way America is defined and will be defined in the future. Since 1950, the historical context of religious conflict has taken two basic forms: conflict within religious groups, which may be defined as theological conflict or conflict about religious beliefs particular to one religious group or another, and conflict between religious groups (people of faith) and other social or government institutions. The issue of the separation of church and state may itself be considered an over-arching category of religious conflict that is both belief-oriented and socio-political. Issues such as prayer in public/government buildings and events, posting the Ten Commandments and other religious paraphernalia in government buildings and in state schools and colleges, and references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance or on money are examples of such issues.
States’ Rights and the First Amendment. Social theories, politicians, and legal experts have made it clear that the men who drafted the First Amendment not only did not have in mind what later Constitutional scholars have said they meant, but different ones among them had quite different things in mind. They reasoned that the “establishment” clause and the “free-exercise” clause implied a balanced theory of church-state relations. The overriding issue was to make sure that the new national government and its institutions would not usurp the rights and powers won in several states. Their decision has been interpreted by some as more politically motivated by issues of states’ rights issues than theological or belief issues.
Thomas Curry, a Constitutional historian, interprets the passage of the First Amendment as a symbolic act, a declaration for the future, guaranteeing the religious liberty won by the revolutionary states. Curry’s understanding of these matters is that the colonies were both sectarian and varied in their religious beliefs, from the Puritans that dominated New England, although with a sharp divergence between theocratic Massachusetts and latitudinarian Rhode Island. There was Virginia and the Carolinas with their Anglican establishment, and Pennsylvania, which was first dominated by Catholic libertarianism and then by Quaker ideology. New York was led by a tradition of Dutch mercantilism and demonstrated that religious liberty could be the fruit as much of commercial pragmatism as of lofty ideas. One conclusion reached by historians is that one of the miracles of American history is that the representatives of these divergent political philosophies could agree on anything. Agreement on their interpretation of the First Amendment was one of their less miraculous concurrences. Curry concludes that America’s founders were mainly united in what they were against.
Evangelical Rejuvenation. Theodore Caplow’s research, which spans a broad range from abstract social geometry (Two Against One: Coalitions in Trials) to the study of armed conflict (Systems of War and Peace), focuses mainly on social change. Caplow’s American Social Trends, published in 1991, examined changes in the family, education, work, religion, leisure and government between 1960 and 1990, together with trends regarding money, sex, health, intoxication, and social conflict. He was senior author of Recent Social Trends in the United States 1960-1990, a reference book published in the same year, and of The First Measured Century, an inventory and interpretation of American social trends from 1900 to 2000 that was published in 2001.
The Social Change Report, a quarterly newsletter which Caplow edits, is distributed to more than six thousand opinion-leaders in North America and Europe and shows that the majority of Americans are as furiously religious as ever and probably more religious than they were in the 19th century. The upswing of church membership, the report states, finds its most dramatic expression in the upsurge of evangelicalism in its various forms. With the Jimmy Carter campaign for the Presidency in the mid-1970’s Caplow finds a convenient marker when traditional religious and moral beliefs erupted into the center of public life. Marked for death in the middle 1960’s and early 1970’s by the rise of secular humanism and the emphasis among the “beat” culture on Eastern religions, evangelical Christianity came soaring back into predominance and became mobilized in the service of Right-of-Center political causes.
Caplow also interprets evangelical rejuvenation as perhaps the most spectacular expression of the hidden religiosity of the American people. Evangelicalism has manifested itself everywhere and finds support in both the Protestant and Catholic communities of faith and in Judaism. Both Caplow and Berger conclude that, for the most part, Americans are not secular atheists. Sociologists have concluded that secularization in America is class-specific, and characterized by a new class of people who derive their livelihood from the production and distribution of symbolic knowledge. They observe that the evangelical reawakening may be understood, in part, as a rebellion of other groups against the culture of the secularized New Class, and especially against the coercive imposition of that culture on children in the public schools. Therefore, it makes sense then that education has been one of the major battlefields in this conflict, with attention focused on such issues as prayer in the public schools, posting the Ten Commandments in schools, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and making Bible reading an important part of the moral education of children.
This trend may be called “counter-secularization” and is observed, not only in America, but also in many parts of the world, especially in Muslim societies. Sociologists point out that in America the “ironic fact” is that a climate of tolerance and relativism is constantly being disturbed by “eruptions of unbridled fanaticism” with their absolute claims, non-negotiable demands, and a determination to pursue their objectives by any means necessary. But not all evangelicals or conservatives are disruptive or fanatical. Many of today’s young adults are adopting the teachings and traditions of an orthodox Christian faith. More and more, private religious experiences are evolving into public declarations of faith. There is, some say, an ill-defined longing for God evolving in American life. Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago with its multiple church locations and the thousands who attend its services each week, and Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California with its 16,000 members are a testimony to this spiritual search. In Atlanta, Georgia and outside its perimeter is the growing population of North Point Community Church now approaching 20,000 members and attracting middle and upper middle class Georgians to its contemporary, Broadway type Sunday productions and performances.
2004 Presidential Election. American churches have been involved in public policy debates, from abolition to temperance to civil rights. In 2004, when religious groups began to mobilize for the presidential election, the Southern Baptist Convention – the nation’s largest Protestant denomination – and the Promise Keepers men’s spiritual renewal movement began their first major voter registration and turnout drives. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said, “To be uninformed or to not be involved in the process is to be irresponsible and to become part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”
The National Council of Churches, an organization that represents mainline Christian denominations, mounted numerous rallies in its first registration and turnout effort, called “Let Justice Roll.” Assisted by the Center for Community Change, their goal was to keep the issue of ending poverty before the American people. Associated Press religion writer Richard N. Ostling observed that 2004 witnessed unprecedented outreach by the Republican campaigns to voters who regularly worship at their church or synagogue. In 2000, an exit poll done for The Associated Press and other news organizations showed that George W. Bush beat Al Gore by more than 15 percentage points among white voters who attended church weekly or more.
Although debates over gay marriage and abortion have kept religious groups involved in the political process, Steven Waldman, editor of the website Beliefnet, saw a broader issue at play in the 2004 political process. He believes that keeping the Republican Party in power is a major battle in the larger culture war between religious conservatives and those who advocate a “constitutional” separation of church and state. This controversy centered on certain key moral issues. Thus, the voter registration sponsored by Southern Baptist not only focused on the family media ministry, but named its drive to register voters the “I Vote Values” drive.
Another religious group with the goal of fighting poverty, named their voter registration drive “Call to Renewal.” Call to Renewal is a national network of churches, faith-based organizations, and individuals working to overcome poverty in America. Through local and national partnerships with groups from across the theological and political spectrum, they have convened a broad table of Christians focused on anti-poverty efforts. Their purpose is to influence local and national public policies and priorities, while growing and developing a movement of Christians committed to overcoming poverty. Their stated purpose was to make poverty a religious and electoral issue in the 2004 elections. They organized a six-state and 12-city tour in order to increase awareness about the needs of people living in poverty and inspire, encourage, motivate and engage them in a renewed commitment to seek justice.
The get out the vote campaign in 2004 was merely the tip of religion’s involvement in politics. Evangelicals created Rock the Vote campaign which registered over 50,000 voters. Bishop T. D. James of The Potter’s House in Dallas is an example of African Americans getting involved in the election through their churches. Among Catholics, Priests for Life is an anti-abortion network which, in 2004, addressed the issue of abortion, spending one million dollars on newspaper ads, training 1,000 get-out-the-vote volunteers, and faxing all United States parishes, urging Roman Catholic clergy to preach about the election. The Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who monitors religious politicking, remarked that the registration drives were inherently partisan. Also, Jerry Jones of the nonreligious Center for Community Change Voting Project observed that there were really no equals to the faith-based drives for votes in the political election of 2004.
Conflicts within Religious Groups. Conflicts within religious groups are not as pronounced politically in American society as conflicts between religious groups and other social and government agencies, but are culturally important nonetheless. Between 1950 and 2001, major denominations tended to return to or to adopt more traditional (conservative) religious practices. Theodore Caplow and his research associates found that with respect to doctrine or belief, there is little difference between Protestant denominations. The largest change during the last half of the 20th century has been between sacramental and evangelical denominations. Caplow admits that this distinction is not absolute and recognizes a charismatic revival among Catholics, Episcopalians, and Lutherans. He also notes that some Methodist services today have a more sacramental tone.
In American Social Trends, Caplow revealed that evangelicals are more reactionary than mainline churches. He concluded that the effects of the liberal drift in the mainline churches and the conservative countercurrent among Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have stimulated political participation by churches and church-related organizations. Caplow noted that at both extremes of the liberal-conservative spectrum in religion linkages are being developed between conservative and liberal political groups that have the potential for changing the religious and political landscape of American life. One example of the conservative countercurrent is the actions of Southern Baptists. From the late 1970s forward, Southern Baptists came to view themselves as fundamentalists and moderates (those against the fundamentalists). Doctrinally they were not terribly different, but the differences were enough to cause a great conflict that even today threatens to cause a schism that would divide the largest Protestant denomination in the United States into two groups. The biggest issue on which the two sides differed is biblical authority. Both sides view the Bible as the central authority in one’s life but the fundamentalists believe the history and religious teachings of the Bible to be without error, while the moderates believe only the religious truths of the Bible to be without error. This controversy continues to occupy the denomination’s attention in the 21st century.
Another intra-religious battle has also taken place among Catholics and the revelation of child molestation by a considerable number of Catholic priests and a subsequent cover up by higher-ups among the Catholic clergy in America. The Boston Globe reported in 2003 that when abuse cases became public in the early 1990s, and again in January 2002 when the Globe revealed the extent of Rev. John Geoghan’s abusive behavior, “Cardinal Bernard F. Law characterized these as isolated incidents.” When more alleged victims came forward, it became clear that clergy abuse was a systemic problem in the Boston Archdiocese, involving scores of priests and hundreds of victims across the metropolitan area.
In an elaborate culture of secrecy, deception, and intimidation, the Catholic Church kept tales of abuse away from the public. Victims who came forward with abuse claims were ignored or paid off, while accused priests were quietly transferred from parish to parish or sent for brief periods of psychological counseling. Despite reports of child rape and other criminal behavior by clergymen, church leaders made no apparent effort to inform law enforcement authorities.
By the end of 2002, some 1,200 priests had been accused of abuse nationwide, according to a study by The New York Times. Over the course of that year, five U.S. prelates resigned in connection with sex scandals, including Boston’s Cardinal Law – joining four others who had resigned in previous years. As word of the sexual abuses spread, bishops in many other countries were forced to resign. The significance of this problem is illustrated by the April 2008 visit to America by the Pope and is subsequent prayer on behalf of the victims of this abuse and his vow to change the culture that precipitate it.
The sexual scandal in the Catholic Church and the split among Southern Baptists are just two of the intra-religious battles that will be chronicled in the next section of this book. With the death of Pope John Paul in the spring of 2005, another controversy is beginning to seethe between America Catholics and the more conservative Catholics represented by John Paul. Issues such as homosexuality, marriage of Catholic priests, a larger role in church affairs for the laity – especially women – and birth control are at the forefront of this potential clash.
Cultural War
James Davidson Hunter’s Cultural War, The Struggle to Define America, which was published in 1991, to some extent has been brought up-to-date by Dale McConkey in his “Whither Hunter’s culture War? Shifts in Evangelical Morality, 1988-1998 – Statistical Data Included.” The purpose of McConkey’s paper is to examine both the current state of the culture war and its precipitating trends over the past decade. He asks the question whether evangelicals have been softening their traditionalist moral positions on issues like women’s roles, homosexuality, nonmarital sexuality, birth control, abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. In his lengthy and comprehensive report, McConkey addresses three fundamental questions: (1) Are evangelicals leaving the socioeconomic margins of society? (2) Is evangelical morality becoming more liberal? and (3) Is the culture war dissipating?
For his analysis and conclusions, McConkey utilized data from the 1988 and 1998 General Social Surveys, which show that evangelicals are capitulating on some – though not all – arenas of moral conflict, and says, that “the cultural tension between evangelicals and religious progressives remains strong.” He also explains that “evangelicals will likely continue to experience a cultural tension with the larger culture, but this tension is not likely to result in anything resembling warfare.”
Subcultural Identity Theory. Focusing on religion, the subcultural identity theory maintains that religion survives and can thrive in a pluralistic, modern society by embedding itself in subcultures that offer satisfying, morally orienting collective identities which provide adherents meaning and belonging. The theory also concludes that those religious groups will be relatively stronger which better possess and employ the cultural tools needed to create both clear distinction from and significant engagement and tension with other relevant outgroups, short of becoming genuinely countercultural.
Hunter also supports this thesis. His book, Culture Wars is an attempt to understand and appreciate the gravity of the religious realignment that has occurred in postwar America. It is Hunter who views the tensions among religions conservatives and religious liberals as both deeper and more significant than many have been led to believe. Hunter believes that a cultural schism has now divided each major faith tradition and has bifurcated the United States into two camps. On one side of the divide are the orthodox, those who are committed to “an external, definable, and transcendent authority.” Evangelical Christians are the dominant group in this camp, though traditional Catholics, orthodox and conservative Jews, and political allies like the Christian Coalition and the National Right to Life Committee would also be included. On the other side of the battlefield are the progressivists – more often than not called “liberals” – who share the tendency to resymbolize historic faiths according to the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life. These would include most of the mainline churches that comprise the World Council of Churches, as well as secular organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, and the National Organization of Women.
In his effort to understand this religious bifurcation, Neal Christopherson explores the relationship between religion and secular culture, which he says has often been one filled with tension. Christopherson focuses on religious literature and gender roles and utilizes subgroup identity theory for understanding the tensions and divisions often expressed in youth literature. His point is that among conservative Protestants there is a growing tension between resisting secular culture, and accommodating certain aspects of faith to secular ideals. As a sociologist, Christopherson observes that the actions of religious groups are often shaped by their relationship and interaction with other social structures, and with the dominant secular culture. He notes that this relationship has created a dilemma for conservative Protestants. Some want to resist modern secular culture and its many sinful ways, but others understand the necessity of adapting to modern cultural and understanding the values of others. He says that religious groups like evangelicals will be stronger if they find an “a complex balance of accommodation and resistance.”
Tensions and Conflicts. The tensions and conflicts within religion and between religious groups and secular organizations are an ongoing reality. Florida preacher Reverend James Kennedy, of the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and the Coral Ridge Hour television program, at a national conference on “Reclaiming America for Christ” said, in 1998, that the time has come to reclaim America for Christ. The feeling at this conference was that America will self-destruct if laws in the United States laws have no correlation with the laws of the Creator. The only hope, according to the message of the conference, is to make America righteous again by reclaiming it for Christ through grassroots Christian activism.
While many will agree with Kennedy’s words, Christian Smith has asked, “To what extent do the views and commitments of people like James Kennedy and his conference participants actually represent those of the tens of millions of ordinary American evangelicals?” and “Are most evangelicals really committed to defending an exclusively Christian America?” and “Are American evangelicals in fact hostile to religious and cultural pluralism?” and finally, “How do most evangelicals think about America’s past and envision its future when it comes to issues of national cultural identity and moral diversity?”
To answer these questions, Smith conducted more than two hundred personal interviews with evangelicals on the subject of “Christian America.” He reveals a surprisingly diverse range of perspectives on the matter. He found that evangelicals are not unanimous that America was once a Christian nation and that about 30 percent were uncertain whether American was ever a Christian nation. Altogether, about 40 percent of those interviewed either denied or somewhat doubted the idea that America was once a Christian nation. Smith was quick to point out that many of them answered otherwise on the Religious Identity and Influence telephone survey.
Smith concluded that a significant minority of evangelicals does not possess a strong image of a Christian American past. For this reason, young people have no model of what needs to be “reclaimed” by the Christian Right. Smith says that Kennedy’s exhortation to “reclaim America for Christ” does not make much sense. Yet, there are a few evangelicals who believe that America should definitely not be a Christian nation in the sense that the Christian Right often uses the term. Despite varying opinions, Smith found that the majority of those interviewed did believe that America was once a Christian nation, and many of them felt that America still should be a Christian nation.
Counter Opinions. The anomalies and exceptions that Smith found in his survey are important because they point out the counter-opinions for every conventional view. For example, evangelicals are generally opposed to the gay and lesbian rights movements, yet some interviewees took a different view admitting that there needs to be a certain amount of tolerance and advocating a live-and-let-live attitude. Still, some were more accepting of human sexual differences saying that its not their place to judge a person and that homosexuality is neither right or wrong.
American evangelicals are also strong for their pro-Life views on abortion, yet, here to, there were contrary opinions. Some respondents redefined child protection, using a utilitarian calculus of suffering, in order to justify some abortions, but most of the pro-Choice evangelical minority cited belief in individual freedom to make moral choices and the futility of forcing morality on those who disagree with them. Most of the evangelicals, says Smith, fall on the conservative side of the political spectrum and support the Republican Party, but not all. Evangelicals also think that liberals and secularists are the people who most oppose Christianity and Christian moral causes. At the same time, most evangelicals endorse American capitalism, although some see capitalism at the root of moral evils in society.
Smith also found that evangelicals are generally civil and non-violent in their political and religious disagreements with liberals. He found that they have simply absorbed a fair amount of liberal American tolerance, and embraced many central features of the dominant American political culture. This includes respect for individual autonomy and tolerance of differences—even as they criticize and resist these traits in other ways.
Smith also says that the anti-establishment, decentralized, voluntaristic, fragmented, and individualistic culture that has permeated most sectors of the broad American evangelical church tradition for nearly two centuries has influenced the beliefs and attitudes of many evangelicals. Many feel that the ancient traditions of Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism are extraneous and irrelevant to American evangelicalism. The background of many contemporary evangelicals lies outside of the religio-political establishment in America. Most are Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Restorationists, Holiness Christians, Free Church believers, and members of smaller Presbyterian and Lutheran denominations. Many attend independent and nondenominational churches – churches that do not have “First” in their names. Taken together, he found that most evangelicals believe that America has lost its religious, collective identity—one they seek to reclaim.
Smith indicates that explaining the views of ordinary evangelicals—as opposed to a handful of outspoken evangelical elites—in all of their depth—instead of compressed and oversimplified in a rudimentary answer categories on surveys—“reveals a diversity and complexity that contradicts conventional wisdom about evangelicals.” He adds the point that American evangelicals are disturbed by social and moral issues, as are the majority of other Americans, but few evangelicals actually subscribe to James Kennedy’s program of “reclaiming America for Christ” in the way their opponents fear. Finally, Smith does not believe that the idea of a Christian America will sustain a major Christian political movement that will somehow re-Christianize America.
Rise and Fall of the Cultural War. Paul Weyrich, a longtime conservative strategist and a founding influence on the Moral Majority, believes that there is no longer a moral majority in the United States and that religious conservatives have lost the culture war. Weyrich says that there may not be a moral majority as an organized movement any longer in the United States; on the other hand, he suggests that the culture war he speaks of and the culture war that James Davison Hunter wrote about may be merely a conflict among evangelical and non-evangelical elites carried out on a political stage for more than religious reasons, and not a war among ordinary evangelicals or progressives (liberals) in cities and towns across America. The same can be said for the battles within denominations about conservatives and moderates: these battles may have been more about power issues than religious issues.
Dale McConkey reviewed Hunter’s thesis and concluded that cultural-religious disputes are more often than not fought in the political arena. He theorizes that religion and politics have led a parallel and often interconnected path, inside the “faith” and outside, between the religious body and other social and political institutions. McConkey provides a brief history of conservative Christian politics to illuminate the current state of the culture war beginning in 1976 —what he calls the “Year of the Evangelical.” The essays which follow in this volume establish a historical path that defines the issues and controversies that these scholars pointed to and reveal this politico-religious intermingling.
McConkey’s views are important for understanding the interplay of religion and politics in contemporary America. He points out that the phrase “culture war” did not appear on either the political or academic scene until the late 1980s, and that its origins are much earlier, perhaps two decades or more. It was, he notes, a possible reaction to the moral relativism of the 1960s. Conservative Christians became involved in politics in the 1970s and participated in electing Southern Baptist and self-proclaimed evangelical Jimmy Carter to the presidency. Thus, Time magazine declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical.”
The Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. By the 1980s, religious conservatives were coming of age politically. They were known as the “New Christian Right” (NCR) and became a political force in such organizations as the Moral Majority, headed by Jerry Falwell. It is ironic that Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 in an effort to unseat the evangelical Jimmy Carter. Disillusioned by Carter’s presidency, the Moral Majority and a network of smaller NCR groups sided with Ronald Reagan. This led to an exodus of southern Democrats who then switched to the Republican Party. McConkey says that some may doubt this but Pat Robertson’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1988 put this issue to rest.
It was in the 1980s that the Moral Majority reached its peak, showed signs of decline, and by the end of the decade pulled up stakes and disbanded. Sexual and financial scandals did not help their cause (Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart) and poor showings by Pat Robertson sealed the deal. McConkey points out that the 1980s were the “age of discovery and disappointment” for the NCR, but 1988 began an “age of realism.” As soon as the Moral Majority folded, Pat Robertson formed the Christian Coalition, which found grassroots success in electing religious conservatives to local and statewide offices. The Christian Coalition is credited with strengthening the success of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” that helped Republicans secure control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. Conservative Catholic Patrick Buchanan provided a more politically refined face to the NCR and introduced Hunter’s phrase “culture war” to the lexicon of American politics in his primetime address to the 1992 Republican National Convention. He stated, “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It is a culture war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as the Cold War itself. …”
By 1999, the conservative evangelicals were already admitting defeat. Even with Reagan and Bush in Control of the White House for twelve years, little progress was made toward changing the cultural momentum in the United States. Paul Weyrich, the Free Congress Foundation president and longtime right-wing strategist commented in an open letter to conservatives on his web site in 1999 that he no longer believed that there is a moral majority in American or that a majority of Americans actually shares conservative, evangelical values. McConkey observed that this admission was nothing new in that “religious conservatives have often portrayed themselves as victimized minorities.” A decade earlier, Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, said, “[W]e know that we are not a majority.” What was new about Weyrich’s plan was his suggestion that Christian conservatives return to “the separatism practiced by conservative Christians earlier in the 20th century.”
Evangelical Megashift. It is significant that Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family president James Dobson, and former Dobson associate and 2000 Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer quickly denounced Weyrich’s surrender. By 1998, the Christian Coalition was clearly absent during the 1998 midterm elections, and in 1999, they experienced considerable financial, legal, and administrative difficulties. McConkey concluded that the optimism of the NCR in 1988 had been replaced only a decade later with at best a questionable future.
Hunter called this softening or erosion of traditional, orthodox evangelicalism an “evangelical megashift.” By the end of the Clinton administration, at least, the New Conservative Right had become disorganized politically and theologically. Some said they were more open to the possibility of historic and scientific flaws in the Bible, though they hold firm on the historical accuracy of the New Testament narratives, thus revealing a theological shift in the conservative religious world view. Also, on moral issues like drinking, smoking, gambling, dancing, movie-going, and card-playing, evangelicals took more moderate positions. Politically, they are still more conservative than the rest of society, but Hunter’s research demonstrated that they were clearly more moderate and less activist than the leading spokesmen in the Religious right might have others believe.
The Tide Turns. On December 24, 2001, Dana Milbank reported in the Washington Post that Pat Robertson’s resignation as president of the Christian Coalition clearly confirmed that President George Bush was the new leader of the Christian Right. For the first time in American history, Milbank saw that the United States President was also the evangelical leader of the nation. Milbank provides several reasons for the adulation. First, religious conservatives have thought of Bush as one of their own since the presidential campaign, when he spoke during a debate of the guidance of Jesus. Second, key figures in the religious right such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Billy Graham and Franklin Graham have seen their political influence diminish, in part because they are no longer mobilized by their opposition to a president. Finally, Bush’s handling of the anti-terrorism campaign since September 11, 2001 has solidified his standing by painting him in stark terms as the leader in a fight of good against evil.
In 2004, Ralph Z. Hallow reported that many evangelicals were complaining that President Bush hasn’t been the evangelical leader they expected him to be. Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, speculated that many evangelical conservatives are upset with the President’s runaway budget and his failure to strongly condemn illegal homosexual marriage in California. A little known meeting with the religious right and President Bush was reported by The American Atheists web site and took place one month before the 2004 Presidential election. The Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report picked up the item for its daily dispatch. The 90-minute meeting was held to “assuage concerns that he (Bush) might be soft on abortion, homosexual rights, school choice, state-church separation and other issues.”
Thus, during the 2004 presidential election, the evangelical movement became solidly identified with the Republican Party. As the election approached, Guardian Newspapers reported that the Bush campaign was now calling in favors in the battleground states. Ralph Reed, formerly a central figure in the Christian Coalition movement, was recruited to coordinate its work in the southeast. It sent a mass email to evangelical pastors in Pennsylvania, asking to use their church halls for party organizing. And, according to the New York Times, he urged religious volunteers to turn church directories over to the campaign, distribute guides on political issues and persuade their pastors to hold voter registration drives, with deadlines for each task. Critics of the administration have complained that this new level of politicization violates the separation between church and state, and endangers the tax-exempt status of the churches.
The question is “Has the ‘evangelical megashift’ of 1987 begun to drift back into old and familiar territory?” ABC News reported that President Bush made the case for his plan to let religious groups compete for federal aid to a very sympathetic audience at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Bush said, “The days of discriminating against religious institutions simply because they are religious is over.”
Religious Diversity
Samuel Huntington explains that several scholars in the 1980s and 1990s advanced the idea that America is losing its Christian identity due to the spread of non-Christian religions. These scholars documented the growth of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and Buddhists in American society. With their growth, the idea of religious diversity has shattered the paradigm of America as an overwhelmingly Christian country with a small Jewish minority. Huntington also notes that some scholars have suggested that public holidays should be adjusted to accommodate this increasing religious diversity and that Easter and Thanksgiving should be replaced with a Muslim and Jewish holiday. But he does not believe that increases in the membership of some non-Christian religions have had any significant effect on America’s Christian identity. He says, “Americans are still a Christian people, as they have been throughout their history.”
Religious controversy in America did not begin in 1950. The concern of this book is the issues from that time forward, but religious controversy is nothing new. In 1927, the concern for understanding the issues and controversies of the day were widely shared, as demonstrated by H. H. Hemming and Doris Hemming’s “Translator’s Introduction” to Andre Siegfried’s America Comes of Age. They pointed in length to the first world war as the momentous occasion that brought about sudden and unexpected changes in American life, and then the great depression when America’s religious faith and political doctrines were put to the test.
World War II brought prosperity to America and with it, a deepening religious commitment; although Peter Berger documents that the mid-century rise in American church attendance probably had more to do with social status than with religious conversion. The silent majority was a product of military training and the Cold War – translated as “the organization man” – and transformed into “the corporate man,” but was on a collision course with more deeply rooted aspects of the American character: individuality, eccentricity, kinship, and autonomy. E. J. Dionne and Allen Carlson have noted that perhaps the central tragedy of the 1960s was the distortion of these authentic American traits by the political and cultural left.
Were the 1950s “a house of cards,” impressive on the surface, but fragile within? Did the yearning for stability after the turbulent years of World War II mask a growing unrest, an unrest that, as it continued to bubble up from the baseline of society, was extinguished by the church with support from other social institutions and the government? In Chapter 13 of The End of Ideology, Daniel Bell reviews the decades of the forties, fifties, and sixties and laments that dissent, questioning, and radicalism in the form of new ideas were disappearing from the American scene. He says that it was the breakup of the old Left, and in reaction to these re-evaluations, that Dissent [the magazine] arose. Dissent focused on those who were calling the old radical clichés into question. Much of this debate was carried on in the New York intellectual world. Unfortunately, while Dissent talked of conformism in American society, and the need for “new ideas,” there was little path-breaking thought on radicalism. Dissent itself attacked Partisan Review and Commentary for not being radical enough, but there was little in Dissent itself that was new. David Bell has observed that Dissent never exemplified the radicalism that it professed; that it never – at least in politics – opposed anything.
Questioning the status quo or another’s beliefs has not ended in America, especially among those interested in the nuisances of democracy and religion. There remains a struggle in the minds of Americans concerning this relationship: some would make America a theocracy, while others would give religion no political considerations at all. In 2005, Albert J. Raboteau in the Boston Review noted that American democracy offers religion an opportunity and American pluralism provides it with a challenge. Pluralism challenges Americans to experience its religious values and attitudes, and the beliefs of others with respect and dignity. Pluralism means a respect for difference and implies tolerance for the views of others. It rejects relativism in values but seeks to understand what values people of different faiths share in common.
For Further Reading
Albert J. Raboteau. African-American Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Andrew M. Manis. Southern Civil Religions in Conflict, Civil Rights and the Culture Wars. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002.
Antieau, Chester James, Arthur T. Downey, and Edward C. Roberts. Freedom from Federal Establishment: Formation and Early History of the First Amendment Religion Clauses. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1964.
Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman. Religious identity Survey (ARIS), 2001. http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/aris_index.htm.
Barry Rubin and Judith Rubin. Hating America: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Center for Religion and American Culture. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia. http://www.iupui.edu/~raac/ .
Christian Smith, “Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want,” California: The University of California Press, 2000.
Christopher Lasch and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn. Women and the Common Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Co Inc., 1997.
Colleen Campbell. The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2002.
Dale McConkey. “Whither Hunter's Culture War? Shifts in Evangelical Morality, 1988-1998 - Statistical Data Included.” http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_ m0SOR/is_2_62/ai_ 76759006/print.
Dana Milbank. “Religious Right Finds Its Center in Oval Office, Bush Emerges as Movement’s Leader After Robertson Leaves Christian Coalition.” Washington Post December 24, 2001, A02.
Daniel Bell. The End of Ideology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Daniel V.A. Olson and Jackson W. Carroll. “Religiously Based Politics,” in Leonard Cargan and Jeanne H. Ballantine. Sociological Footprints, Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994.
E. J. Dionne and Allan Carlson. “Two Views: How Did the '50s Ever Beget the '60s?” The American Enterprise, May/June, 1997.
James Davison Hunter. Culture Wars, The Struggle to Define America, New York: BasicBooks, 1990.
James H. Hutson. The Founders on Religion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Jason Smith. “The Strange History of the Decade: Modernity, Nostalgia, and the Perils of Periodization.” Journal of Social History, Winter 1998.
Jeffrey K. Hadden, “Religion and the Quest for Meaning and Order: Old Paradigms, New Realities.” Sociological Focus, 28:1. February 1995.
Joseph P. Hester. Ten Commandments: A Handbook of Legal and Social Issues. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Publishers, Inc., 2004.
Joseph P. Hester. An Ethic of Hope: Christian and Secular Ethics Crisis and Transformation. West Conshohocken, PA: Infinity Publishing Company, 2008.
Neal Christopherson. “Accommodation and Resistance in Religious Fiction: Family Structures and Gender Roles.” Sociology of Religion, Winter 1999.
Peter L. Berger. “Religion in Post-Protestant America,” in Leonard Cargan and Jeanne H. Ballantine, eds. Sociological Footprints. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1994.
Ralph Pyle and James Davidson. The Search for Common Ground: What Unites and Divides Catholic Americans. Charlotte, NC: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997.
Ralph Z. Hallow. “Evangelicals frustrated by Bush,” The Washington Times, February 20, 2004.
Robert Bellah, et al. The Good Society. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America: 1776-1990. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Robert Wuthnow. One Nation Under Whose God? Hartford Courant, March 12, 1989.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America 1776-1980. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Samuel P. Huntington. Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Stephen R. Warner, “Works in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociology of Religion in the United States,” American Journal of Sociology, 1993.
Stephen R. Warner. New Wine in Old Wineskins: Evangelicals and Liberals in a Small-Town Church. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Susan Adler. “Education in America.” The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, 1993.
“The American Creed.” http://www.ushistory.org/documents/creed.htm and http://www.usflag.org/american.creed.html.
Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg. The First Measured Century. Washington, D. C., The AEI Press, 2001. See also, All Faithful People. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1983; Middletown Families. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota press, 1982; and American Social Trends. New York: HBJ, 1991.
Tom Peters, “Separation of Church and State Home Page.” http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/tnpidx.htm.
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