Musings on Culture, Meaning, and Civil Religion

Humans are meaning giving animals. Humans over time and across space have given meaning to their lives, often metaphysical or non-empirical meanings to their lives, and given meaning to the world in which they live, often metaphysical meaning to the world in which they reside. Nationalism, the love of a place in space and the sense of having something in common with others, or at least some of the others , who reside in a common geographical space, is one of the meaning systems, religious groups are another, humans have created over the course of their prehistory and history. It is a meaning system that arose largely in the 19th century.

Most Americans have been socialised into, imbibe, and espouse consciously or unconsciously, the civil, civic, or public faith of the United States. This civil religion, this belief in a corporate and corporeal Caesar or Pharoah and the sacredness of Caesar's or Pharoah's realm, has historically centred upon the faith or belief that the US is a chosen nation (America, "god shed his grace on beautiful thee", America, the city on a hill), that the American people, or at least some of them, have been chosen by god or nature to spread the gospel of the American faith (the American way of "democracy" and capitalism), and that the US has a divine right to stretch from sea to shining sea (manifest or imperial destiny) and beyond (American civic faith evangelicalism and imperialism).

For most of America's history there have been at least two variants of this national faith. There was a Southern variant of the civic faith, which was grounded in sectionalism, pastoralism, and racism and a Northern version of the public religion grounded in industrialism, manifest destiny, the necessity of a stronger central government, and discomfort with slavery, both of which arose in the 19th century. The American Civil War of the 1860s did little to resolve this religious division and eventually the Southern faith became tied to the American Western civic faith of racism, expansion, conquest, exploitation, and states rights, all of which were also found in varying degrees in both the Northern and particularly, in the case of racism and states rights, in the Southern variants of the American civil religion.

Today there are two major variants of the American national faith. The popular media calls them Blue and Red. One of these variants of the civil religion, the Blue Civic Faith, currently dominates the Democratic Party and has dominated it increasingly since the tumult of the 1960s when the Democrat Party split apart and Dixiecrats increasingly migrated to the Republican Party. It centres around American chosenness (America the righteous Holy Virgin who welcomes all to its golden shores) and the beliefs associated with the American way as reinterpreted thanks to the rise of neoiberalism and globalism, the latter of which feeds into the Blue Faith's belief in cosmopolitanism.

This Blue Faith is the faith of specific demographics who reside, generally speaking, in particular geographies. It is the civic faith of many of those who live in the old Northeast and along the West Coast, and particularly those who live in its urban areas, places that experienced increasing number of migrants arriving from outside Europe after 1965 and who, over time, made peace with diversity and multiculturalism and has, as a consequence, become the party of faithful multiculturalists and pluralists. The Blue Faith has made multiculturalism, cosmopolitan, and pluralism central to its religious rhetoric though not necessarily its actual practise. The Democrat Party remains dominated by those who have long dominated the US and primarily serves the political and ideological interests of America's neoliberal but socially neoliberal economic oligarchs, like those in Silicon Valley, and on Wall Street, whose interests they served when they, for example, eliminated Glass-Steagall.

The Red Faith, the civil religion of the Republican Party, has also changed over time thanks, in particular, to the seemingly never ending purgings of RINO's that began after Richard Nixon and the increasing success of the Party's Southern Strategy with its tropes of a Big Bad LBJ and Democrats trampling their civil rights when he and they passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and of a Big Bad LBJ and his Democrat allies undermining America when it passed immigration reform in 1965, something that made the US more diverse and multicultural. Current Republicans, in other words, reacted negatively to the increasing diversity and multiculturalism of post-LBJ America.

Since the 1970s the Republican Party has become the Party of racist Dixiecrats, who switched en masse to the Republican Party, and of elite oil men and other similar economic oligarchs, many of whom had ties or were fellow travellers of the John Birch Society with its paranoia about enemies within whether those enemies are commies, union members, or "liberals", by which they mean any liberal who isn't a laissez-faire liberal like themselves.

The Red Faith, like the Blue Faith, plays to particular demographics who live in particular geographies. They are, generally speaking White, male, somewhat suburban, and rural (including rural folks who have migrated to cities looking for work). Like the Blue Faith the Red Faith sees the US as chosen, believes that Americans are the chosen people, particularly those, at home and abroad, if they think like they do, and believe that the American way, as they envision it, is the best way in history of the world. multiculturalism, and diversity.

This Blue Faith is the faith of specific demographics who reside, generally speaking, in particular geographies. It is the civic faith of many of those who live in the old Northeast and along the West Coast, and particularly those who live in its urban areas, places that experienced increasing number of migrants arriving from outside Europe after 1965 and who, over time, made peace with diversity and multiculturalism and has, as a consequence, become the party of faithful multiculturalists and pluralists. The Blue Faith has made multiculturalism, cosmopolitan, and pluralism central to its religious rhetoric though not necessarily its actual practise. The Democrat Party remains dominated by those who have long dominated the US and primarily serves the political and ideological interests of America's neoliberal but socially neoliberal economic oligarchs, like those in Silicon Valley, and on Wall Street, whose interests they served when they, for example, eliminated Glass-Steagall.

The Red Faith, the civil religion of the Republican Party, has also changed over time thanks, in particular, to the seemingly never ending purgings of RINO's that began after Richard Nixon and the increasing success of the Party's Southern Strategy with its tropes of a Big Bad LBJ and Democrats trampling their civil rights when he and they passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and of a Big Bad LBJ and his Democrat allies undermining America when it passed immigration reform in 1965, something that made the US more diverse and multicultural. Current Republicans, in other words, reacted negatively to the increasing diversity and multiculturalism of post-LBJ America. Since the 1970s the Republican Party has become the Party of racist Dixiecrats, who switched en masse to the Republican Party, and of elite oil men and other similar economic oligarchs, many of whom had ties or were fellow travellers of the John Birch Society with its paranoia about enemies within whether those enemies are commies, union members, or "liberals", by which they mean any liberal who isn't a laissez-faire liberal like themselves.

The Red Faith, like the Blue Faith, plays to particular demographics who live in particular geographies. They are, generally speaking White, male, somewhat suburban, and rural (including rural folks who have migrated to cities looking for work). Like the Blue Faith, the Red Faith sees the US as chosen, believes that Americans are the chosen people, at least those Americans who think like they do, and believe that the American way, as they envision it, is god's way.

If I were a Christian dogmatist or a Christian theologian I might find the prominence of the American civil religion among American Christians fascinating. Though the Judeo-Christian god demands that his chosen people not have any other gods before him, regarding any of his chosen who do have other gods before him as idolaters, the prominence of the American faith within American Christianity and the extent of the American civil religious faith among American Christians seems to foreground the fact that large numbers of American Christians believe in a hybrid Christian-American public religious faith and that much of American Christianity is a hybrid and hence idolatrous pseudo-Christian faith. Many American Christians, in other words, give to Caesar not only what is Caesar's, but give to Caesar what seems to be gods if one takes their scriptures seriously. Many American Christians worship the American nation as if it were a god and believe that the American nation embodies god, the will of god, and the mission of god as incarnated in their holy trinity of Nation, Mammon, and "Democracy".

Another thing that fascinates me about the American civil religion is the fact, that, like all forms of religion, it is grounded ultimately in metaphysical assumptions and emotions or passion rather than in the scientific method of dispassion or objectivity and empirical analysis. As a scientist and a social scientist one of the things I find interesting about many devotees of the American civil religion is the contradictions that they embody. Some of them, for instance, whinge and whine about academics not being objective enough, foregrounding the influence of science on their faith, while simultaneously condemning academics for not being nationalist and patriotic enough, foregrounding the ethnocentrism that is part of their faith. They condemn academics for not parroting what they think of as nationalist or patriotic. Academics, of course, can't win in such a situation because science requires that a scientist be dispassionate or objective, while the American civil faith, grounded as it ultimately is in the emotion of passion, makes it difficult if not impossible for one to be dispassionate or objective. Welcome to the American civil religion version of Catch-22.

There is,  of course, an inherent danger in passion. The cultural idelogy of romanticism, for instance, grounded as it is in a constructed culture of passion, has probably killed and maimed more people than Hitler and Stalin combined. Jealousy, as history shows, has been hazardous to the health of many, particularly women, and particularly in societies where guns are readily available to those revved up on emotional passions. Now don't get me wrong, I wouldn't argue that romanticism has killed and maimed more people than monotheistic and ethnocentric forms of religion. Yet. Monotheistic religion, after all, has been around a lot longer and, as such, has had more opportunity to put its inquisitions and holy wars into practise. I would argue, however, that romanticism is creeping up on religion in terms of its damages done particularly if one argues that the varying forms of civil religion on the planet are examples of the sacralising impulse in secularisation.