Today's post refers to a two-part posting regarding the secularization process in American culture. The discussion is based on Harry Ausmus's book "The Polite Escape: On the Myth of Secularization" (Ohio University Press, 1982) which I worked on as a literary consultant. Part two of the original post looks at the difference between the secularization process and secularism, and, perhaps, sees that there is more to this cultural gap than folks even want to consider. In our current cultural context, we might want to give secularization serious thought.
**************************************************
"The Polite Escape Revisited (Part Two)" (November 19, 2004)
So the secularization process in our culture moves on apace as long as things are steady, and there is no threat to the status quo. During many of our conversations back in the 70s, Harry would tell me to mark his word: All the moralizing about the Vietnam War was going to create an outbreak of fundamental believers that would make the Second Great Awakening look tame. Well here we are. The chicken hawks and Bible thumpers have come home to roost. And perhaps at no other time in American history has a challenge to the status quo been so great and our senses of normality so uncertain.
We are stumbling and twitching through an age of anxiety. Our faith in The Republic has been shaken by more than 9/11. It has been shaken by an enforced necessity to live in a global community engineered by technology that we can't really see and don't understand and by a real world in which none of our secularized values seem to obtain. We are used to easy solutions and the barriers of two oceans, but now we seem bereft of worldly direction and The Republic seems impotent. This is why so many of us call on the power of an Absolute. Nobody can claim you're wrong if you do that. Does this mean we have leapt out of secularization into a cultural face off between secularism and divinity?
First, secularization is different from secularism. Secularism is a philosophy professing that religion and social institutions of a society should be distinct and forever separate. Religion can voice opinions about societal institutions, but it has no authority or power to alter those institutions. Traditionally, secularization represents an implementation of secularism, and many in America today fear that is what got us in this terrifying situation (Ausmus to the contrary notwithstanding), Hence we have the face off. Did anyone see this coming, and what alternative was offered?
Many historians consider Reinhold Niebuhr to be the second greatest native-born theologian in American cultural history (the first being Jonathan Edwards). Expressed in the 1950s, his so-called neo-orthodoxy proposed an ideology known as "Christian Realism," what he called his practical theology. Jerry Falwell, George W. Bush and their ilk would consider him heretical for showing more interest in the paradoxes of human life than in the salvation offered through Christ. Niebuhr felt we must take "myths" seriously, but not literally. For example, the cross of Christ was a particularly important theme for Niebuhr since it revealed the great paradox of powerlessness turned into power, of a love in justice that overcame the sinful world. He "focused more on the doctrine of man than on the doctrine of God, and showed more concern for life in society than for life in the church."
Niebuhr was prescient about religion in American modern life. He contended that the major heresy for the Church, be it Catholic or Protestant, is for it to identify itself with God, to suppose the opposition to its way is opposition to God's ways. When the Church is guilty of such pretensions, it needs to be, and usually is, attacked by a secular force. The secular voice becomes a judgment of God upon a Church that has forgotten its true nature. This sounds reasonable and modern, but Niebuhr offered struggle, not absolute hope. And so here we are at the face off. When The Transcendent Mystery confronts secularism. secularism withers. Currently, secularism seems to be weak and fading. Fear of the unknown has generated reliance on the unknowable.
The rise of Christian fundamentalism in everything (including in rap and hip hop) is consistent with other periods in our history, sometimes as part of turn-of-the-century phenomena and sometimes as precedent to a major cultural cataclysm especially when the period is marked by significant shifts in or threats to the culture. That we are experiencing the Third Great Awakening will be up to the historians, but for now, if we look, we can see the signs.
Consider the call for "strict constructionists" as judges and justices. This regards the Constitution as holy writ (like the Talmud and the Koran), as inviolable, not open to "deconstruction" — and thus we have an ironclad, absolute secularization of state as god/God. And justices of the Supreme Court have become high priests, alone aware of the "true" meaning of the ancient text. Consider the Bush administration's foreign policy framed as "Liberty is God's gift to people" around the world, thus justifying empire as deliverance. And in the response to the defeat of its candidate for President, the Democratic Leadership Council has announced it is time for Democrats to shake off their secular image, to rephrase their position in moral and religious language. They are stepping up their efforts to rally religious and church groups to their side (NY Times, 11/17/04, p. A20). And there are bushels of examples from popular culture.
The real test is our answer to this question: Do Americans have more faith in "Americanism" or in their personal religions? And then the hypothetical: If they were faced with giving up their religion or giving up America, which would they choose? (historically, not much of a hypothetical; the Puritans, Pilgrims, Jews, Huguenots and others had to answer it.) Ironically, much of America was settled by people fleeing an oppression of church run states, most of which have evolved into quite secularized states, keeping religion private and apart from the public domain...while America now seems to feel that it has had enough of its presumed secularization and prefers some sort of nationalized divine Awakening.
***************************************************
Such litanies as "Make America great again" hearken to this need for the the Republic—not the government—to be recognized as the divinely inspired salvation of the people, especially the non-elites. "Fear of the unknown has generated reliance on the unknowable."
No comments:
Post a Comment