American Civil Religion

Every culture has a form of civil religion, where certain cultural values are treated as quasi-religious beliefs, important figures are treated as prophets or priests, and ideas or symbols are treated as gods. It is just that in the United States of America, our civil religion has a certain level of potency that most other cultures do not reach. I'm not sure why this is the case, except that our culture has a messianic quality to it deriving from our history (settling a new "Promised Land" through a belief in manifest destiny) and our founding beliefs (a form of political liberty unseen in the world up to that time).

If you don't believe this to be the case, witness the debate that goes on anytime the use or abuse of the American flag is brought up. It is one of the most potent of our religious symbols. On this and other blogs, and in the United Methodist Reporter, a seemingly minor recent debate over whether the flag is appropriate to use in the sanctuary ignited visceral reactions on the part of some. Wrapped up in this is the key to understanding the flag (or other pagan icons) as sacred symbols of civil religion: the mere suggestion of circumscribing its use in certain contexts is regarded by many as blasphemy.

As one Methodist wrote in this letter to the editor, "As for our flag, the symbol of freedom -- when it leaves the sanctuary, I leave with it." (Munch on that sentence awhile. Conjure up an image in your mind of what it would look like to leave a sanctuary following the flag. Think about all that it suggests: what you are turning your back on, where you are placing your loyalties, what you are implicitly claiming to be the true "symbol of freedom," etc.).

I bring all this up because of this post written by John at Locusts and Honey. You need to read the Billy Abraham article to which he refers (you can get it from John's post or access it here). It is a penetrating analysis on the religious orientation of President Bush, but what is much more important is the wider context of American civil religion that Prof. Abraham sketches. And underlying it - because Bush is a Methodist and this plays into Prof. Abraham's essay - is an absolutely devastating critique of United Methodist practice.

For instance, Abraham writes, "The operational (if not canonical) theological ideology of United Methodism over the last generation is constituted by a vapid pluralism that makes room for any and all the options that make the rounds. In fact one way to read the ruling orthodoxy of United Methodism as developed in the sixties is to see it as the adoption and then freezing of crucial aspects of American civil religion as it was practiced in the mid-twentieth century. It is surely no accident that the code-words of the functional theology of United Methodism are more or less the code-words of recent American culture. Both are saturated with the language of diversity, multi-culturalism, pluralism, and inclusivism. Both are exceptionally nervous of any kind of robust confessionalism; both want to be formally open to evangelicalism but are paranoiac about its volatility and independence. United Methodism in the United States is an echo-chamber of contemporary American debate and political polemic" (p.13).

To refer back to another recent post on this blog, that explains a heck of a lot about the Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors campaign in the UMC. It is essentially a business-model marketing scheme that aims toward good American citizenship. And it has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

If reformations didn't destroy so many good things in the inertia that gets built up through the process of destroying idols, I would say that we were in dire need of a reformation ourselves. As it stands, there is little to distinguish American Protestantism from American Civil Religion. And that means Jesus is probably going to spew us out of his mouth.