The Politicization of Religion
TMcD continues, in comments, to argue that religion is inherently political in the United States today. But reading his latest comment (which demonstrates a little less comity than one might hope for), I was wondering, hasn't religion almost always had political content in the United States?
Historical examples:
*The black and white churches in the Civil Rights era.
*Anti-Catholic bias, and general nativism, on the part of the nineteenth- (and early twentieth-) Republicans.
*The role of Christianity in the abolitionist (and pro-slavery) movements.
*The divide in colonial times between Anglicans (i.e., Church of England) and other sects.
*Going back further, the origins of much of our contemporary political ideas can be traced back to the English civil war, which had largely religious causes.
Indeed, one could argue that the same cleavages run through many of these conflicts. Kevin Phillips's The Cousins' War makes this case pretty well.
So, my question is, How different are things today? I'm skeptical that the current situation is different from Father Coughlin, for example. It seems that every thirty years or so, we have the same conflicts but imagine that these new conflicts are really new. Completely different from the conflicts of the past. (Just like each generation imagines that it invented sex. Except for those poor souls raised during the Reagan years. "Just say no.") But the Preacher saith, There is nothing new under the sun.
But, this is new: Sam chimes in. Although his last paragraph may set off a second comments war.
posted by Number Three @ 6:40 PM
2 Comments:
Em, you recite a lot of history here to suggest that religion has often played an active and even polarizing role in American politics. But that's not really the point I'm disputing. What strikes me as different now is how one-sided this polarization is in the contemporary political landscape. The anti-slavery movement was countered by a very active racist set of southern churches (the historical origin of the Southern Baptist split, if I recall). I could be wrong, but I don't know that the abolitionists ever accused southerners of being godless secularists. During the Father Coughlin era, you had some very prominent Christian spokesmen from the left, including people like Reinhold Niebuhr (and his brother Richard), who at the time was one of the best known religious leaders in the country. Then there's MLK.
Now maybe you're right, and today's attempt to "corner the religious market" by the GOP is just more of the same. But it seems to me a dangerous thing when you put all the religious posturing on one side of a debate, and enlist it, as now, as windowdressing for some pretty vile demagoguery. (A caveat: I do not consider conservative religious activism on abortion to be demagoguery, per se, even though there is some regrettable extremism over there. Abortion is a legitimate moral issue, as I see it, and pro-life groups certainly have something to contribute, even if I don't agree with them on all or even most points.)
One short point. I meant to add that I'm in fundamental agreement with Sam's interpretation of the debate. To some extent, Emery and I are just "talking past each other," as Emery once described it in an essay on Rorty.
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