Civil Religion

The United States is one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world. Although the country is predominantly Christian, doctrinal differences among Christian denominations are often as deep as the differences between Christians and Jews or Muslims. Adherents of virtually every religion on the globe live in the U.S., and recent polls put the number of secular Americans (those unaffiliated with any religious body) at approximately 16%.

This diversity poses a significant challenge to America’s social and governing institutions: what commonalities enable and define the collective civic enterprise? What makes one an American? The United States’ national motto is e pluribus unum, “out of the many, one.” Prominent social and political theorists have long argued that a common belief structure, or “civil religion,” is required in order to turn the many into the one.

The term “civil religion” was first coined in 1967 by Robert N. Bellah, in an article that remains the standard reference for the concept. The proper content of such a civil religion, however, has been the subject of debate since the Revolutionary War. Over the past decades, as the nation’s diversity has dramatically increased, that debate has taken on added urgency, with political theorists, sociologists and scholars of religion all offering their perspectives to political and religious leaders.

In a culture as diverse as that of the United States, a “civil religion” or common value structure provides citizens with a sense of common purpose and identity. Despite the claims of some conservative Christians, Christianity does not provide that social glue; the United States is not and has never been an officially Christian Nation, although it has historically been culturally Protestant.

The U.S. Constitution contains no reference to deity, and specifically rejects the use of any religious test for citizenship or public office. In order to be consistent with the Constitution, any civil religion must respect the nation’s commitment to individual autonomy in matters of belief, while still providing an overarching value structure to which most, if not all, citizens can subscribe. This is no small task in a nation founded upon the principle that government must be neutral among belief systems. This constitutionally-required state neutrality has long been a source of considerable political tension between citizens intent upon imposing their religious beliefs on their neighbors and those who reject efforts to enforce religious hegemony. Thus far, no proposed value system or theorized civil religion has been entirely able to resolve that conflict.

To the extent that Americans do endorse an overarching ideology or civil religion, it is a belief system based upon the values of individual liberty and equal rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Bellah, Robert N. “Civil Religion in America.”  Daedalus, 1967; reprinted in Daedalus 134, 4 (Fall 2005), 40-56.]

A Constitutional Culture

In the wake of the horrific shooting in Tucson last month, PBS’ Mark Shields made an “only in America” observation.

“This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African-American President.”

There, in a nutshell, is what most of us would consider the triumph of American culture—the fact that the nation has moved, however haltingly, toward a vision that allows all of us to be members in good standing of our society, equal participants in our national story, whatever our religious belief, skin color, sexual orientation or national origin.  What makes us all Americans isn’t based upon any of those individual identities, but upon our allegiance to what I sometimes call “the American Idea”—a particular worldview based upon an understanding of government and citizenship that grew out of the Enlightenment and was subsequently enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

American culture is not threatened by immigrants who come to this country because they find that worldview attractive, but it is threatened by an appalling lack of civic literacy.

One recent survey found only 36 percent of Americans able to correctly name the three branches of government. Other research has found that fewer than half of 12th grade students can describe the meaning of federalism; that only 35.5% of teenagers can correctly identify “We the People” as the first three words of the Constitution; that barely a quarter of the nation’s 4th, 8th and 12th graders are proficient in civics, with only five percent of seniors able to identify and explain checks on presidential power.  I could go on. And on.

The consequences of this ignorance are profound.

Self-government requires a civically educated citizenry. When a nation’s citizenry is very diverse, as in the United States, it is particularly important that citizens know the history and philosophy of their governing institutions; in the absence of other ties—race, religion, national origin—a common understanding of, and devotion to, constitutional principles is critical to the formation of national identity.

Devotion, however, must be based on genuine understanding of the history and context of our constituent documents if it is to enable, rather than impede, deliberative discourse. When pundits and politicians make constitutional claims, citizens need sufficient education and knowledge to critically evaluate those claims.

Right now, Americans are embroiled in one of our recurring debates about the adequacy of public education.  It’s a vital issue, but while we are addressing it, we need to recognize that deficits in civic literacy don’t just threaten democratic institutions. Such deficits have real and deleterious consequences for fields as diverse as science, religion, and public education itself.

Math and science are important, but creating informed, empowered American citizens able to recognize and resist demagoguery is even more so.

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The Language of Crazy

For the past several months, in these and other columns, I have tried to explain (to myself as much as to my readers) the rising tide of anger and vitriol that seems to have engulfed our country.

I’m not naïve, and I’ve read enough history to know that we haven’t suddenly been uprooted from some past Garden of Eden. There have been plenty of other angry times in our nation’s history; the Civil War was the worst, but hardly the only example. In my own adult lifetime, Martin Luther King, JFK and his brother Bobby were all assassinated. The Sixties gave us the Weathermen and the Yippies, the Chicago police’s display of brutality at the Democratic National Convention, the Kent State massacre and the Watts riots. (It wasn’t all Woodstock and “Flowers in your hair.”) A complete list would fill this newspaper and then some.

But there was something really chilling about the news that an Arizona Congresswoman was shot through the head in an attack that killed several others—including a nine-year old child and a federal judge. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was holding a “Congress on the Corner” event at a local supermarket—one of those predictable, “keep in touch” “meet and greet” events that politicians routinely sponsor—when she and the others were gunned down in broad daylight. As I write this, the Congresswoman is in critical condition following brain surgery; her survival—and if she does survive, her condition—remains in doubt.

In the aftermath of this horrific episode, the national conversation has focused on whether the debased nature of our political rhetoric encouraged a mentally unstable person to take violent action.

Congresswoman Giffords was one of twenty Democrats who had been “targeted” during the off-year elections by Sarah Palin. Palin’s webpage had featured photos showing each of the twenty as seen through crosshairs on gun-sights. (Not surprisingly, Palin quickly removed the page, and scrubbed the inflammatory photos.)  The language employed during the campaign by Representative Gifford’s Tea Party opponent was filled with gun imagery and dark allusions to “Second Amendment remedies.” And who among us did not see the earlier coverage of unhinged people brandishing guns and screaming obscenities at Town Hall meetings about health care reform?

For those who refuse to believe that language has consequences, think about the gay youngsters whose suicides have followed repeated taunts of “faggot,” and other homophobic slurs. Think about the generations of GLBT folks who stayed far back in the closet as a result of the constant, offhand dismissal of gays and lesbians as somehow less than human, less than “normal.”

I am not suggesting that intemperate language “created” this tragedy. There are plenty of other cultural culprits, beginning with the zealots who believe that any restriction of the right to carry a gun, no matter how reasonable, is part of a communist plot. Indeed, last year Jan Brewer, the intellectually-challenged Governor of Arizona, signed into law a bill that lifted all restrictions on the right of Arizona residents to carry concealed weapons. One of the restrictions eliminated by that measure was a requirement of a background check that might have kept a mentally troubled individual from carrying a handgun.

But while violent imagery and intemperate language don’t cause such acts, they absolutely do contribute to the creation of an environment within which the unthinkable becomes just another possibility, where violence becomes a viable option to be explored, and where grievance—real or imaginary—justifies barbarism.

When this sort of rhetoric is employed in the service of bigotry, and a seething, resentful anti-intellectualism, as it currently is, we should not be surprised when violence erupts.

It creates, as they say, a perfect storm.

Let’s Make a Deal

Most taxpayers want their government to be run in a businesslike fashion—to operate efficiently and to be careful stewards of tax dollars.  But most of us also understand that government isn’t a business.

So when is it prudent or acceptable for government to invest our tax dollars in for-profit ventures? When do such deals make economic development sense?

I vividly remember the early days of the Hudnut Administration, when downtown Indianapolis was a pretty forlorn place. Businesses were leery of locating in the urban center, and banks and other financial institutions routinely refused to make loans for those few who were willing to do so. The ability of the City to step up, to guarantee those loans and provide infrastructure and other accommodations was crucial to reversing urban decline. The point was to demonstrate to the private market that downtown enterprises could be viable. The trick—and it could be very tricky indeed—was to generate sufficient business activity to allow market forces to take over, without artificially depressing that market, or inadvertently subsidizing some businesses to the detriment of others.

Today, downtown Indianapolis is flourishing. Those early, strategic investments have paid substantial dividends. Municipal loans have largely been repaid, and more importantly, the central city’s tax base has grown substantially.

There are probably cases where public investment in the urban center is still necessary, but many of us who participated in that early redevelopment process are scratching our heads over the Ballard Administration’s proposal to put $98 million dollars (up from an originally announced $86 million) into North of South, a hotel and apartment complex being developed by Buckingham Properties.

The Administration justifies this use of taxpayer dollars (at a time when libraries and public transportation are starving for funds) by pointing out that private lenders all rejected the project as too risky. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that those lenders may have had sound business reasons for coming to that conclusion.

Indianapolis has recently added over 1000 downtown hotel rooms; furthermore, hotel bookings in central Indiana declined by 5% during 2010. Why—in the face of excess capacity —would lenders risk financing a hotel project right now?  And why should taxpayers subsidize a hotel that will compete with hotels in which we’ve previously invested?

Local blogger Paul Ogden recently posed a fair question: Why is it too risky to borrow $6 million to buy and install new parking meters, but not too risky to issue $98 million in bonds for a project private lenders wouldn’t support?

Ogden also noted that the project’s lobbyist is Tom John, who just stepped down as Marion County Republican Chairman.

Councilor Ryan Vaughn cast the deciding vote on the ACS parking contract despite being ACS’ lobbyist. More recently, Robert Vane resigned as the Mayor’s Press Secretary and won a no-bid consulting contract with the Capital Improvement Board.

It all looks a bit too cozy.

When there is an appearance of impropriety, taxpayers can be forgiven for questioning questionable deals.

Moral Deficit

There are plenty of issues that people of good will see differently.

For example, most Americans—at least the ones I know—consider themselves fiscal conservatives, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily agree about which policies are fiscally responsible. Depending upon their understanding of economics, some people will argue that now is the time to cut back spending to concentrate on deficit reduction; others insist that cuts now will delay economic recovery and reduce tax receipts–that we should spend to stimulate the economy and create jobs, because more jobs will both reduce government expenditures and generate more tax revenues with which to pay down the deficit. Both groups want to reduce the deficit; it’s an honest disagreement over the best way to do so.

Other disagreements are harder to understand.

The Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act would pay health care costs for 9/11 first responders who were sickened by toxic fumes and debris when the Twin Towers fell.  I don’t use the word “hero” very often, but that’s what these firefighters, police officers and medics were. They braved the inferno in order to rescue those inside, and they are now suffering from injuries and illnesses caused by that desperate effort. It passed the House with 90% of Republicans opposed. Then Senate Republicans refused to allow a vote on it, because “it would add to the deficit.”

Concern for the deficit would have been more believable had GOP Senators not been holding this and other measures hostage to their insistence that the richest 2% of Americans retain the favorable tax rates they received from George W. Bush.

Extending those rates would cost many billions more than providing much-needed medical care for first responders. Marginal rates are at historic lows: in 1945, the rate was 91% of every dollar earned over 200,000; in 1982, 50% of everything over 106,000; in 1993, 39.6% of earnings over 250,000.  It is now 35% of everything over 357,700. If the Bush tax cuts expire, rates will revert to 1993 levels. Those levels would remain very low by historical standards, but even so, expiration would generate billions to reduce the deficit.

Republicans argue that low taxes on the wealthy spur job creation. The evidence for that assertion is mixed, to put it mildly. If we really want to encourage job creation, we’d be better served giving businesses tax credits for new jobs.

The income gap between rich and poor in this country is wider than it has been since the gilded age. Joblessness is at its highest point since the Depression. These indicators are warning signs, not just for our economic health, but for our civic well-being.

Denying first responders desperately needed medical treatment so that millionaires won’t have to endure a 4.6% marginal tax rate increase cannot be excused as a good-faith policy dispute. It is, quite simply, disgraceful.

Americans are facing two kinds of deficits right now: monetary and moral. Ultimately, our fiscal problems—difficult as they seem—may be easier to resolve.