THE SOUL OF AMERICA
by Forrest Church
November 4, 2001
At a luncheon assembly of the Georgetown University Medical Alumni Association in September 1948, the speaker, Father John Tracy Ellis expressed apprehension for the future of the United States if we continue to rely for spiritual nurture on what he called "the cult of democracy." To make his meaning clear, he quoted General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said on the day he became president of Columbia University, "I am the most intensely religious man I know. Nobody goes through six years of war without faith. That doesn’t mean I adhere to any sect. A democracy cannot exist without a religious base. I believe in democracy."
Some consider civil religion a thin broth, without religious substance. Others recoil from it, even in its most formulaic expression, as an unconscionable abridgment of the First Amendment. Yet, if civil religion should strike you as too religious for a liberal democracy or not religious enough, consider the alternatives. The opposites of civil religion are uncivil religion and secular irreligion (in Benjamin Barber’s now familiar construction, Jihad and McWorld).
English author G. K. Chesterton wrote, "The United States is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence." Abraham Lincoln viewed Jefferson’s language (that we all are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights) as "regenerative," and "the touchstone of our ancient faith." Martin Luther King, Jr. had "a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed."
To recognize the genius of our creed, look at it this way. The strongest competing forces in the world today, fundamentalism and free-market capitalism are built on radically different foundations: fundamentalism springs from faith; free-market capitalism depends on freedom. Yet faith without freedom sponsors tyranny. And freedom without faith leads not to liberation, but to libertine self-indulgence and libertarian selfishness. Our nation’s founders struck a balance between the two. The American Creed explicitly tempers faith with freedom and elevates freedom with faith.
The United States of America is by far the most religious Western nation, with the world’s most diverse religious population. Unlike the communist and fascist national and international experiments of the 20th century, it is also a nation built on a religious foundation, established by its founders "under God," yet dedicated to the separation of church and state for the protection and enhancement of both. America is the model for vital religious co-existence in a world where discrete backyards no longer exist.
Religion is the most powerful force in the world, because it speaks to the heart of life’s meaning. It is also the most dangerous. When confronting neighbors who believe differently than they do or who don’t believe in God at all, religious believers have four options. They can either attempt to convert, destroy, ignore or respect those who hold contrasting views. Fundamentalism embraces the first and, in its most radical expression, the second of these four options. Secularism occasionally imposes the second, but most widely embraces the third. The American way, charted by our forbears and coded in the spirit of our nation’s laws, represents the fourth way. In the spirit of liberal democracy–with respect given to the worth and dignity of every individual and minority rights protected in so far as the commonweal can still be maintained–religious pluralism is celebrated. Yet, far from representing a secular accommodation of religion, liberal democracy–especially in its foundational American incarnation–is powered by an explicit religious vision. This vision is grounded in natural law, articulated in the Declaration of Independence, and embraced by all of our nation’s greatest leaders, from the pilgrims and founding fathers, through Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, up to the present day. This same vision led to the establishment of the United Nations and finds explicit expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The fundamentalist terrorists believe that they are doing God’s work. Osama bin Ladan said only days after the attack, "America was hit by God in one of its softest spots." He and many others perceive America as having wealth but no moral values. To the extent that this is true, the great symbols of our economic power, such as the World Trade Center, may indeed be our "softest spots." Yet, as Thomas Friedman wrote recently in his New York Times column, "American power and wealth flow directly from a deep spiritual source–a spirit of respect for the individual, a spirit of tolerance for difference of faith or politics, a respect for freedom of thought as the necessary foundation for all creativity and a spirit of unity that encompasses all kinds of differences. Only a society with a deep spiritual energy, that welcomes immigrants and worships freedom, could constantly renew itself and its sources of power and wealth." He adds, "Many times we have deviated from the American spirit or applied it selfishly. But it is because we come back to this spirit more times than not, in more communities than not, that our country remains both strong and renewable."
The competing theologies of fundamentalism and universalism figure in our nation’s own history. Misrepresenting American history and threatening to betray its promise, Christian fundamentalists call for a return to what they proclaim to be the faith of our founders. They too excoriate our nation for its loss of values, often persuasive in their critique but misguided in their understanding of the American way. In mirror image to the rhetoric of Islamic terrorist leaders, some have gone so far as to see God’s hand in the attack on America, as punishment for our nation’s liberal social policies. By also viewing the struggle in terms of God and Godlessness, they unwittingly foster the same climate that promotes Jihad.
Yet this contest for the world’s soul is not between Jihad and McWorld, but between the spirit of state-driven fundamentalism and the universalism implicit in democratic pluralism. Barber himself writes that "Democracy remains both a form of coherence as binding as McWorld and a secular faith potentially as inspiring as Jihad." Yet, in the vision of our nation’s founders, a "secular state" without a ontological spiritual underpinning would lack authority sufficient to answer the language of Jihad. Mark Juergeusmeyer, in his book Terror in the Mind of God, comes closer to our founders’ vision when he writes, "Religious violence cannot end until some accomodation can be forged between the two–some acknowledgment of religion in elevating the spiritual and moral values of public life. . . . The cure for religious violence may ultimately lie in a renewed appreciation for religion itself." To re-create civil society (with room for community and spirit) does not entail a novel civic architecture. Rather, it requires reconceptualizing and repositioning institutions already in place and finding ways to model and thereby help to re-create them in an international setting.
Fundamentalism and Global market captitalism are both 20th century movements, one a reaction against the scientific and secular culture that first appeared in the West, but which has since taken root in other parts of the world; the other an extension of that culture beyond the parameters that originally informed it. In Karen Armstrong’s words, "The battle to re-sacralize society has become aggressive and distorted. The battle for God was an attempt to fill the void at the heart of a society based on scientific rationalism." Such a society was certainly not the one envisioned by the framers of our Constitution, nor the one Abraham Lincoln sought to restore. It is far from the dream Franklin Delano Roosevelt expressed in his Four Freedoms Address, and bears little resemblance to the spiritual values Eleanor Roosevelt championed in helping to establish the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. American values go far deeper than laisse faire capitalism. As David Blankenhorn, a member of our congregation and Executive Director of the Institute for American Values writes in the wake of the terrorist attack, "Seldom has the vocabulary of materialism–the assumption that material and especially economic interest are fundamental, whereas philosophical and especially religious ideas are essentially reflective and derivative–been more of an impediment to understanding human behavior."
Postmodernism proclaims the end of "metanarratives," cosmic stories through which our lives acquire meaning. In a recent defense of postmodernism in The New York Times, Stanley Fish argues that we must avoid "grasping for the empty rhetoric of universal absolutes to which all subscribe but which all define differently." Yet it is precisely the vacuum created when we forget our own nation’s metanarrative that invites occupation by the new fundamentalists. Though they themselves betray the univeralist heritage of faith from which they spring, the world’s fundamentalists are directly inspired and subsequently empowered by the perceived and to a degree real lack of spiritual values in a desacralized world. This new war will only be won by reembodying the highest values of democratic pluralism (one nation, and now, one world "under God"), not by insisting on the superiority of modern secular materialism. George F. Will is correct when he writes that the terrorists "hate America because it is the purest expression of modernity–individualism, pluralism, freedom, secularism." But this is an America watered down from the rich mead of our founders. For "modernity" to survive the assault of neo-tribalism, America will have to rediscover its own soul.
The French Dominican priest R. L. Bruckberger presents the challenge we face today in this lament from his book God and Politics, written thirty years ago: "[Here] is where America missed the boat. It is because your country’s spiritual dimension was not apparent to the peoples of the world that, ultimately, you did not win their hearts. When someone has lived right in the middle of the United States for eight years, as I did, he knows that spiritual dimension does exist; he knows to what extent the citizens and the collectivities of America are imbued with [religion] and a very original concept of individual dignity and political freedom. But this was not obvious outside the States. Your wealth and prodigality dazzled the world, but it did not seem as though you had any soul. That is what I so strongly hold against your great writers: they are read throughout the world, but they were not able, or willing, to tell the world what kind of heart and spirit you have. People concluded that you didn’t have any. You were envied, but you were not loved."
Confession is called for in the wake of our nation’s tragedy. To enhance our edge against communism, the West sent weapons, advisors, money, and support to the Afghan Mujahideen. The democratic parliaments of the Western world applauded the ardor with which the Islamists poured their effort into what was, ultimately, one of many proxy wars that were fought by Third World states on behalf of one superpower or the other. With an "ends justifies the means" mentality, in the world’s eyes we became indistinguishable from our adversaries. For this we now reap the whirlwind Eleanor Roosevelt’s words from half a century ago ring true again today: "It is high time that we American took a good look at ourselves, . . . remembering how we established a land of freedom and democracy, remembering what we believed in when we did it."
I have great hope that indeed we will. As an emblem of such hope, consider what has happened to our national anthem over the past two months. Every now and then, some well-meaning group of American citizens attempts to change our national anthem from "The Star Spangled Banner" to "America the Beautiful." These attempts have always failed. And, with the fireball of the World Trade Center scorched on our minds, it might appear that indeed our National Anthem has relevance once again. "The rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there"– these words actually match American experience for the first time since the War of 1812 when they was written. Nonetheless, all across the nation during the weeks following September 11, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was spontaneously displaced as our national anthem by "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America." The precedence of the latter over the former was particularly notable at sporting events.
If "America the Beautiful" lacks the raw military chauvinism of "The Star-Spangled Banner," it far more accurately sounds the keynote of the American Creed, a union of faith and freedom. "America the Beautiful" is an aspirational anthem, reminding us of the Pilgrims who beat "a thoroughfare for freedom across the wilderness;" beseeching God to "mend [our] every flaw, Confirm [our] soul in self-control, [our] liberty in law;" invoking heroes who loved "mercy more than life;" asking God to refine America’s gold "Till all success be nobleness, and every gain Divine;" and, then, concluding with an echo of the Puritan John Winthrop’s "city on a hill:"
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!How appropriate that–at a time when the entire nation was brought together in grief–it was to these sacred verses we spontaneously turned, recalling ourselves to a victory of the spirit, not a victory by might.
Amen. I love you. May God bless us all.
Closing Words:
On September 11th Dennis McCoobery’s wife, Christina, was in Las Vegas, Nevada for a convention. As it became clear that the airports would not be opening for the foreseeable future, she and her officemates rented a car and drove across America. Being video producers, the three transcontinental travelers decided to videotape strangers they met along the way. At rest stops, national parks, fast food joints, and along Main Streets in little towns, they would ask a series of questions relating to the tragedy, evoking a wide range of responses from shock and grief to anger and fear. Over the course of their 50 hour drive, they interviewed almost four dozen American citizens, of every age, differing races and backgrounds, and widely ranging in education and class. The last man they interviewed (right before crossing the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey) was a nineteen-year-old volunteer fireman, laden down with all his gear, on his way to Ground Zero to assist in the rescue effort. They asked him, as they had asked every American before him, one final question to close their interview. "When I say ‘America,’ what do you think of first?" As had fifty people before him–every single man, woman, and child they interviewed in their journey across the country over those sad, new days–the young man answered, "Freedom."