Musings on Billy Graham and the Religion of American Nationalism...

As someone interested in the study of religion and American Protestantism in particular, I, of course, had to watch the documentary on Billy Graham on PBS's American Masters on Monday night. As I watched this excellent documentary, I found myself thinking about how Billy Graham was a prime example of American priestly and theocratic civil religion, of a civil religion that has existed at least since the early nineteenth century. Graham, I realised, was a high priest of the civil religion of the American establishment and for what he saw as the American status quo. He was a high priest of an American civil religion that emphasised the sacredness of the status quo social order.

Additionally, I mused on the fact that the American priestly civil religion was not the only civil religion that the US has had since it became a nation. There is another, if a very much smaller, civil religion in the US, the American prophetic civil religion. The American prophetic civil religion is a civil religion that "speaks truth to power", that critiques and often condemns the status quo social order just as the prophets or Nevi'im of the Tanakh criticised and sometimes condemned the priestly civil religion and high priests of the priestly civil religion of their time for the injustices they wrought. Quakers, of course, have long been prominent purveyors of this smaller American prophetic civil religion.

Both American civil religions, of course, have been engaged in a hot and cold culture war with each other for some time. Currently this culture war seems to be heating up once again as the devotees of the priestly civil religion, a civil religion steeped in manicheanism, increasingly see anyone who doesn't share their faith as "un-American". Let's hope we all get out of this priestly theocratic civil religious holy crusade alive.