Continuing in a political vein...

but mixing politics with the history of religions, I would offer an analysis as to why we do not see many people of conscience coming forward in an avowedly Christian opposition to the present climate of neo-fascistic war-mongering. The crucial step in such an analysis is to suspend one's theological appreciation of Christianity in order to understand it historically and sociologically. So long as Christians of conscience are able to reassure themselves of the validity of their faith theologically (which, in my opinion, can be accomplished quite easily and indefinately), they will never recognize their own complicity in the current crisis which, I believe, is due in significant part to the conversion over the last two centuries of what Max Weber called the "Protestant ethic and the spirit of Capitalism" into the "Capitalist ethic and the spirit of Protestantism." The transition has been fairly gradual but, now that it is upon us, the Protestant ethic appears, for the present moment at least, a relic of religious history. I mourn its loss. I began to mourn its loss almost twenty years ago now, when I was in law school and looking comparatively (for the first time) at different legal systems and religious traditions. Tillich's articulation of the Protestant Principle remains, for me, a brilliant insight into religious history, although it was George Santayana (a Roman Catholic but, to my way of thinking, a true Morisco) who was able to put that Principle into an epigram: "Every human reform is the reassertion of the primary interests of [men and women] against the authority of general principles which have ceased to represent those interests fairly, but which still obtain the idolatrous veneration of mankind" (from The Sense of Beauty).

Harold Bloom has characterized the present historical and sociological configuration of Christian thinking--not any orthodox iteration of Christian theology--as the "American Religion." For the sake of convenience, I would summarize Bloom's argument by means of a satirical version of a song I was taught in Sunday School: "Jesus loves ME/this I know/Lord and Savior/and CEO." Bloom readily acknowledges the offensive nature of his argument to many Christians, but has decided that current exigencies leave him little choice but to be offensive. The true offense lies, as far as he is concerned, with what is being done today in the name of this Jesus. As an historian of religion, I think that there is much evidence to support Bloom's analysis; as someone who lives in a world where the American Religion has found powerful adherents in high places (Bloom identifies George W. Bush as an adherent of this religion), I would hope that self-identifying Christians who argue on theological grounds that the American Religion is NOT the Christianity that they embrace could move beyond being offended by Bloom's argument and, instead, ask themselves if there is any validity to his claim--and if there is, ask next what can they do about it...

For those self-identifying Christians who are willing to grant some validity to Bloom's analysis but who find themselves at a loss as to what to do about such "co-religionists," I have some Bloomian (and probably offensive) recommendations. The first is to recognize, again, that the American Religion is de facto, not de jure. If it were de jure, Christians of conscience could ask their "co-religionists" how it is that they can justify the transformation of "Jesus loves me/this I know/for the Bible/tells me so" into "Jesus loves ME/this I know/Lord and Savior/and CEO." But since all self-identifying Christians are singing the same de jure version of "Jesus Loves Me" (the former version), the question would not make sense. Besides, even if one could pose the question, the spirit of Protestantism would authorize the retort: "What business is it of yours?" No. I do not believe that this issue can be usefully addressed on theological grounds: one cannot challenge the American Religion theologically because it does not have any open existence in theological discourse. The accent in the phrase American Religion is on American--and that is where, I think, the effective challenge to this version of Christianity lies.

As an aside: Those who would undertake the theological reconstruction of Christianity which, in my opinion, would help to prevent this sort of problem from emerging again in the future would do well to work through the ideas of the later Bonhoeffer in a systematic fashion...This is a discussion, however, for another time...

The challenge to what presently passes for the American Religion lies, as I see it, in the offer of an American counter-religion: one that boasts an American prophet. Now, the LDS church has offered such a prophet in Joseph Smith and the lineage of his institutional successors; however, as readers of Bloom will recognize, the LDS church diligently applied itself through much of the latter half of the twentieth century in a concerted effort to prove itself to be the American Religion--not an American counter-religion--hence its self-identification as the Church of Jesus Christ. It cannot be both the American Religion and the American counter-religion. Decisions made by the Church leadership decades ago have already decided that question.

A viable candidate for an American counter-religion is one that can draw upon a powerful prophetic vision of America as a mythological construct. That is indeed what the prevailing American Religion manages to accomplish by means of its conflation of traditional Christianity with the capitalist ethic and spirit of Protestantism. A viable counter-vision of America would have to be one that constructs a radically different mythology. Were it not for Walt Whitman, I would despair of such a counter-vision of America ever being placed on offer.

I find it quite intriguing that Whitman sang himself and the American Religion sings of ME. But Whitman sang a radically different "self"--a broad, inclusive, magnanimous, multitudinous self--not the winner-take-all self of the American Religion. And Whitman, we must be candid, was no Christian; he had moved beyond sectarianism--which can be part of the visionary promise of America--if people of conscience would allow it. Whitman's America was a strong embrace of every conceivable difference; it was a loafing and letting-be: disposing of nothing and arousing only unanswerable questions (1981-92 Leaves: "Birds of Passage: Myself and Mine").

An American counter-religion of Whitmanian pilgrims and strangers--on the move, restless, questing--would be beyond sectarianism without necessarily being "secularist." One may (and, in my opinion, ought to) continue to listen to other wise and/or prophetic voices and continue distinctive religious traditions and practices. Over time, however, a Whitmanian counter-religion of America would produce the conviction that the sectarian practice of religion in America violates the Whitmanian spirit. In other words, a Whitmanian counter-religion of America would probably create future generations of "spiritual progressives"--in the sense of people who are ready to move beyond religious sectarianism. This is not, as I understand it, the goal, nor will it be the effect, of a political organization that today calls itself "spiritual progressives" (which strikes me as just another hyphenated project of multi-culturalism). Whitman had a genuine vision for America that few if any of us have ever taken seriously. For my money, it is the only vision for America currently on offer that opens a way out of our current predicament: namely, what to do about an American Religion that provides moral legitimacy to the Neo-Fascism presently abroad in our land (performing the function that the German Evangelical Church did for the Nazi Party in the early decades of the 20th century).