The Public Faith:
The US Civil Religion and
My colleagues know too well that I have been grieving the 2016 election as an instance of a worldwide return to the populist autocratic right. I need to grapple with what I considered a setback for the human advance beyond political tribalism, an exaltation of private wealth over commonweal, and a threat to our public faith and planetary consciousness. I turn to reading, listening, thinking, questioning, and writing as an alternative to depression.
- The American Depression
In my inquiries I discovered many experts who analyzed the subordination of democracy to the economy and in particular to the global capitalist order. Their scholarly books and papers described how the banks and large international corporations, once more constrained by social democratic policies, have been gradually unchained to be able to construct a system of fast-growing inequality. They also describe the transition from the industrial to information economy, from manufacturing to a service dominated economy; and the fall of neoliberalism into corporate sectarianism.
Using one-on-one interviews while canvassing, I listened to many ordinary workers who have given up on American political institutions to tame an economy that maintains them poorer in income and in their ability to consume. They feel that government programs benefit those whom they do not consider true citizens. They resent their label as losers and desire to show the so-called winners in education, income, and preference that they too counted. No longer were their religious, labor, ethnic, and veterans’ organizations a source of influence to deal with the elites who were running things.
Psychologists demonstrate that when the fear, flight, and fight instincts prevail, boundaries are drawn, walls are built, and military force dominates. People no longer savor life which recent statistics in America concerning life expectancy, drug addiction, and suicide seem to confirm.
I suggest that though experts and victims harken back to the Great Recession of 2008, when banks survived but mortgages and family savings did not, the nation was not primarily experiencing an economic depression. And though many people personally felt, and still feel, the loneliness and disrespect that undermines their purpose to live, we are experiencing primarily not a psychological depression. I suggest that we are suffering a political depression.
And the core of that depression is a crisis in faith. I accept the psychologists and neuroscientists who look to genetics and culture to explain the differences in mind and language between righteous conservatives and freethinking liberals. However, while the crisis of faith we suffer may reach into our personal, household, or private domain, it is in the public realm that we must look for a cure.
2. Three stories
The expressions of public faith and specifically the public faith of Americans can be found developing throughout the history of the United States. We find them in documents of the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the inaugural and farewell addresses of Presidents, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the major speeches of persons deemed to articulate that faith often etched into monuments that ring the National Mall. In this history, we witness a 200-year growth from elite representation to more inclusive democratic participation.
The key belief of a democratic Republic is the dignity and equality of all human beings. This is the foundation of a structure of human rights that contains spaces for voluntary civic associations, all ordered through a government chosen and run by representatives elected by popular vote. The main principle of unity for a democratic Republic is not cultural identity — not background, religion, beliefs, or ethnicity. It is choice starting with the fundamental choice to be a citizen of a Republic that recognizes that all persons, no matter how different otherwise, are equal and have rights to life, liberty, and happiness. In this belief is the expression of a civil religion (or civic culture) that could provide the origin story, the values, and the foundations that would unify the nation beyond the world religions while at the same time permitting and even commemorating the diversity of beliefs and traditions of peoples who came to America recently or much earlier. This civil religion also built in a recognition of and a process for change and renewal of the grounding and founding belief system.
The standard of religious liberty was one of Jefferson’s crowning achievements that flows from the founding principle of a democratic Republic. This is both the freedom to practice whatever religion one chooses and also the freedom from religion so that no person has to adhere to any established religion or any religion at all. The principle of universal human dignity and equality surpasses and indeed overcomes cultural sameness. A democratic Republic is inclusive of cultural, ethnic, sexual, religious identities. It is a unity in diversity, pluralism not assimilation — e pluribus unum.
Three stories are identified by historian and political scientist Rogers Smith as best portraying the consensus of the American democratic Republic:
1) The story of progressive democracy, i.e. humanity’s evolution to democracy from ancient times, through the trials of monarchy, into the Enlightenment discovery of reason, the ability to think, in every person. This universal ability to reason and choose is the basis for human equality and for self-government finally realized in the 18th century and perfected ever since. John Dewey is the best recent representative of this story. Progressive democracy means growing inclusion so that all who live or work here, whatever their gender, origin, ethnicity, or status who want to be citizens have full citizenship rights and responsibilities as collectively the sovereigns that rule the nation.
2) The story of cultural pluralism, e pluribus unum, beginning with the gathering of tribes into one civilization, past wars of religion that were resolved by policies of religious liberty as practiced in America by John Winthrop. The best contemporary teller of this story is Barack Obama who wove his very mixed cultural background into the multicultural makeup of the American and world populace. This recognizes the principle of citizenship that underlies as well as celebrates the diversity of religious, philosophical, and even language persuasions.
3) The story of universal rights. The third and overarching story, Rogers Smith calls the Declaration story: All persons created equal with inalienable rights including life, liberty, and happiness. This best articulator of this story is Abraham Lincoln who incorporated the ideals of the Declaration into the constitution to achieve a more perfect union, a union that recognized the equal rights of former slaves, of women, of children, of persons with disabilities, with diverse traditions and life-styles. This is also the story expanded to the world through the declaration of human rights at the United Nations led by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Hebrew Scripture scholars theorize that Israel was born of twelve tribes that became one nation by sharing their stories and their gods around the shrine of Shiloh until they had one story with one God. Some of the texts of the Scriptures date back to the 8th century BCE and the whole was codified in the third or second century BCE. Clearly one of those tribes had a story of escaping from slavery in Egypt which became a very central story to all the others.
Through shared stories and myths, families and tribes become one nation or world. Their all-embracing story expresses an identity, an ideal, and an ethos by which people live and act as members or citizens of that nation. The main traditions that historians have identified in the course of the founding and evolution of America include 1) the liberal tradition crystalized in the Enlightenment (self-governance founded on universal reason), 2) the republican tradition in which many self-governing publics become one nation (e pluribus unum), and 3) the social justice tradition (found in Judeo-Christian social gospel and prophetic teachings) that articulates a mission to assist those who are not enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These correspond to the three stories Rogers Smith cited above.
3. The Fourth Tradition
However, there is a fourth tradition indigenous to the history of the American Republic. Rogers Smith calls it the ascriptive tradition which identifies “the true meaning of Americanism with particular forms of cultural, religious, ethnic, and especially racial and gender hierarchies.” This is a counter tradition of inegalitarian ideologies supported by myths of gender and racial supremacy that was largely unchallenged by the early American revolutionaries and which largely benefitted those who were on top of the social, economic, and political hierarchies.
The ascriptive tradition was present in the founding with the belief that God created the white man superior in intelligence. By His will European men of the Christian religion developed the character for self-government and the struggle against evil that was inspired by diabolic forces. This tradition is a foundation for nationalism, political tribalism, and racism and has been a part of American history from its beginning. It is an ongoing and recurring tradition in contradiction to and compromise with the other three traditions.
In the 20th century, the historian, most prominent in exposing the recurring ascriptive story, was Howard Zinn. Zinn contradicted American exceptionalism and triumphalism that began with De Tocqueville’s observations, was written into standard textbooks, and is still written by those who consider themselves celebrants of the winners of history, the champions of military and economic triumph. Zinn, in his People’s History of the United States, told the stories of resistance by slaves who strove for freedom, of workers who confronted their bosses, of women who defied their fathers and husbands, of native American’s who pushed back against the stealth of their lands and forced marches to reservations, of black people protesting Jim Crow, of students rebelling against the dominant doctrine of dominance in the economic or political sectors.
Columbia University Historian Eric Foner also identifies the social justice tradition in opposition to the ascriptive, inegalitarian tradition throughout the American saga. Foner specializes his study on the Civil War and Reconstruction which he regards as the second revolutionary founding of the US. This social justice tradition emerged most strongly in the radical republican movement that led to the 14th, 15th, and 16th amendments which were partially actualized with the Brown Supreme Court decision, the Civil Rights, Fair Housing, and Voting Acts. But they still require action and are in danger of retrenchment again.
A recent history of the US by Jill Lepore follows Rogers Smith’s and Howard Zinn’s lead with evidence of the entanglement and recurrence of the ascriptive tradition throughout the territory and time of Americans. Hers is a story that explains the modern liberal and modern conservative polarization that is experienced in the first decades of the 21st century which has US residents debating the benefits and survival of democratic republican principles, rules, and institutions.
The founding truths of equality, sovereignty, and consent were set within and against the monarchical context of Europe with its conflicting nation states and empires with established religions that sacralized an aristocracy along with the monarchs building armies of conquest and colonialization. These truths were reinterpreted to meet the industrial needs of individual technological creativity, major corporations to concentrate capital, free markets, and a mobile expanding workforce all subject to the rule of law guarding property and contract. But a fast-changing technology and information driven economy, a whole new context challenges these truths.
4. An American Public Theology
Global capitalism, authoritarian governance, and national hegemony are playing major roles in our concerns about the future of democracy, the health of the planet, and the resilience of humanity. But I submit that at root the issue is not economic, governmental, social structural, or psychological. It is theological — which in turn affects our economy, governance, sociology, psychology, and morality. In decline is the public faith that grounds our economy, polity, and culture, which meet our major human desires for life, meaning, and recognition.
Theology is literally the “study of divinities.” Theology today is considered the interpretation in one or more traditions of religious expressions, speech, writings, rituals, and art, using the knowledge of the human sciences including anthropology, linguistics, history, psychology, sociology. Modern theology is an inquiry into the human capacity for transcendence, i.e. passing beyond the ordinary, common sense, or presently known world. Theology questions humankind’s place and mission in the involving universe or, in biblical terms, creation.
In a broad sense, theology examines a culture’s search for and expression of meaning in association. That expression is often in stories, and especially the central narrative, that portray the ideals, the desired future, the ethos, and the identity of the social order and its members. In a democratic republican nation, there is a distinction between the private (household, tribal) culture and the public (trans household and post tribal) culture. This allows for a pluralism of traditions (household gods, personal persuasions, private religions) and a unity of national and world social commitments and institutions.
A public culture and theology stem from a developing central narrative (including the belief system, ethos, and mores) of a national or international social order in distinction from a private culture and theology that may contribute to, but not dominate, the public culture and theology in a democratic republic.
Indeed, the central narrative of a democratic republic concerns the freeing of humanity from private domination in the economic realm. As in the central story of the Hebrew Scripture, this is a narrative of the liberation of humans from the concerns of livelihood so that they can continue, through speech and action, to act out the story of the construction of the free republic. With a public guarantee of liberty from the necessities of life, humans may enter into and shape the republic through which they achieve happiness. That liberation story, celebrated in the Seder meal during the time of Passover, is the Hebrew contribution to the American civil religion.
The Christian contribution is grace, that is, undeserved love and forgiveness that is the source of radical equality. Hannah Arendt thinks that this civic virtue illustrates human transcendence beyond the cycle of vengeance without which the human condition is doomed to endless war and self-destruction. Reconciliation over retaliation can make possible the unification of a nation and of the world into a public. She also cites the Christian notion of “miracle” as a political event which contradicts the natural predictable trend of self-interest and domination by the strong over the weak. In the free assembly of the “little ones” deemed powerless, natural law is transcended and the unexpected occurs.
Humans organizing as equals for a state of freedom and justice is the higher power that breaks the physical laws of thermodynamics. The static quantity of energy, the dissolution of entropy, and the ultimate uniformity of the universe is transcended. Individual organisms consciously interacting increase universal energy, syntropy, diversity, and complexity that exceeds any individual and the sum of all individuals. That indeed is a “miracle” that contradicts the natural order observed objectively. Moreover, this portends the possibility of a transcending cosmic consciousness approaching the notion of the Christ, Buddha, Tao, Brahman, Sufi consciousness intuited by the mystics of many religious traditions.
The American experience with all its contradictions and failures has brought humanity to a new juncture in history, but perhaps one in which the US can no longer be the sole lead. Just as the US took over the torch of progressive democratization of the British and the universal rights of the French. Now the US is passing on the torch not only of progressive democratization but also of universal human rights and cosmic consciousness to the nations and new generations. Could this be the making of a new collective myth? Wouldn’t that be exceptional?
Above we discussed the stories that compete for the central narrative of America’s public faith: Progressive democratization based on reason and choice, cultural pluralism based on the priority of commonweal over private wealth, universal rights and responsibilities in the very nature and structure of human existence. This is the making of a never-ending story by which humans in association achieve meaning towards personal and public happiness.
The US is not a Judeo-Christian nation. However, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish stories have contributed much, and presently the Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, other Eastern religions, and native spiritualities are contributing, to the public faith. They contribute by criticizing the exclusive, arrogant, and idolatrous elements in the American Way of Life in its worship of material wealth by maximizing profits. They also contribute by renewing the public faith’s transcendence over authoritarianism, political tribalism, and nationalism. Many of the religious “awakenings” in US history, including the Civil Rights movement, often using evangelistic Biblical language, critiqued and renewed the American civil religion and its public faith.
A theology, personal or public, has a mission. Missiology is the means of expansion and growth of faith. In a democratic republic, missiology is not a matter of conquest and conversion of infidels. It is not the proselytizing of creedal uniformity and consistency. It is reciprocal engagement, the opening of space for participation, action, and mutual learning (i.e. progressive democratization). It is sharing stories to write one which celebrates our diversity and our unity (i.e. unity in pluralism). It is finding, acclaiming, and exercising the common human existence that identifies our relationship with each other and our world (i.e. inalienable rights and responsibilities).
In the public realm, missiology is the promotion of citizenship through civility, service, and action. It is the expansion of citizenship in what Augustine called the “City of God” and people of our generation call the “transcending universe” or “planetary consciousness” or “Spirit of Love” in which all humans are recognized as persons in tension between past and future, matter and spirit, individuality and sociality, the real and the ideal.
5. The Opportunity in the present Disruption
Each of the three entwining stories, progressive democracy, unity in pluralism, and universal humanism, which narrate the public faith of America has a shadow version. Those shadow versions today are evident in the recurring “fourth tradition” now showing itself again in the political tribalism, racism, and nationalism of “America First,” “Making America Great Again,” “Building the Wall,” “Mega-corporations” uber alles. It appears in the cultural wars, the attack on Islam and immigrants, and withdrawal from the liberal international order.
American exceptionalism becomes a reduction of the public faith to a nationalism in which greatness is measured by the quantity of economic product and the sum of individual material wealth, often labeled the “American dream” protected by military force. Populist authoritarianism guarding ascriptive citizenship, blurs the distinction between private religiosity and public faith often leading to the development of cults of authority figures who preach fixed doctrines and require absolute loyalty. In these ways, the belief in human transcendence beyond the ignorance of individualism, political tribalism, and nationalism is removed from the public faith.
We put the phrase “under God” in our citizenship pledge and often advocate the use of religious symbols, but what god or religion are we espousing if we remove the capacity for human transcendence through thinking and acting for further life, liberty, and happiness for all persons of every race, religion, and nation?
The results of this assault on the faith of the people include:
- Replacing progressive democracy with populist autocracy. That means a nation supported not by publics, but by masses under authoritarian rule and/or by corporate sectors run by plutocrats with government support. It means the denigration of free speech where truth loses importance through exercises in and accusations of “fake news” and attacks on critical thinking, science, and liberal education. We lose trust in our democratic institutions and, most of all, in each other.
- Collapse of the public and private realms by reducing the commonweal to private wealth where we have robust corporations and ineffective government, so that economy rules politics and the success of our nation is measured by GDP instead of the private and public happiness of citizens.
- The dignity and equality of all humans is denied with some deemed better than others. A social order in which some are more equal than others, self-actualization stunted, and many lose their sense of transcendence or their ability to cross physically, intellectually, and spiritually restraints
- This resurgence of political tribalism, racism, and nationalism is the collapse of the public faith. The loss of public faith is the spiritual source of our political depression which is experienced personally as feeling bad about ourselves and our associations, economically as less able to compete and get our just due, and culturally as no longer contributing to and participating in the American story.
Depression can be cured once it is recognized. And this is our new opportunity.
The cure of depression as summed up by those who have worked with their own and others depression is ACT. The A stands for Accept the reality or Acknowledge the depression. Then C stands for Consider the options for action in this reality and Choose. And T stands for Take responsibility or Take a step and Try an option.
Depression experts identify that depression is a physical deficiency that be met by medicine and exercise. But more it is a spiritual defect that requires a positive way of talking to ourselves and a transcending consciousness. In other words, we need to renew and advance our positive progressive story. That means our faith in ourselves and each other and our sense of mission as a people.
The standards for membership in the American Republic and the very definition of citizenship are laid out. In the Declaration it is belief that “all persons are created equal and endowed with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In the Pledge it is “liberty and justice for all.” We have a faith in our public domain that is influenced by, but also transcends, all of our personal and private persuasions. That faith is based on democratic republican principles found in our very nature of being human. Its expressions and institutions, the civil religion, change with the development of our language and our world.
That means that I know that you have personal private opinions that work for you in your household and private life. I respect your religious persuasions and ask you to respect mine. I ask you to work with me to transcend, without losing, our tribal traditions so that we may renew our democratic republic as well as our cultural traditions and religion.
I am not an “originalist.” I think originalism in respect to the Constitution or any other Sacred Scripture is based on a fallacious understanding of human thought and language. However, I am willing to discuss with you what I mean by human equality, liberty, justice and the principles of a democratic Republic and listen to what you mean in our context, in our world, in our living together. In this dialogue, which joins all of our unique stories, our consensus will be achieved. In our action together to shape our community institutions we realize our public faith. Even though we might have different ways of and tools for expressing it.
6. The Exercise of Citizenship
In a recent dramatization of the life of Leon Trotsky, he, comparing himself to Stalin, admitted that, yes, they were both monsters. They both killed thousands of people, even many who were associates and followers. They both deceived and destroyed their enemies. The difference is that Stalin really didn’t care about “the idea.”
I think Trotsky meant the revolutionary idea; and for him that was “permanent revolution.” And permanent revolution meant 1) a worldwide change in which workers democratically controlled the means of production, 2) a revolution that was always in process because it could not be finally achieved.
The point I make, avoiding the Marxist language, is that of the “idea.” The idea of America is what some have called the identity or intentionality of America as revealed in its history. The idea is what others have called the civil religion of America, the religion of the public rather than private sphere and what I have called the public faith.
This faith, although expressed in tenets or beliefs, will also be in process and never completed, because it cannot be contained by beliefs at any one time or place. The public faith is in ongoing transcendence of humanity and its project as communicated in citizens’ creative stories that elucidate the trajectory of expanding democracy, inclusion of all persons, and universal rights to life, liberty, and happiness.
True citizens learn, tell, improve, defend, and act out these stories within themselves and all peoples of the world. Citizens are willing to engage with others in the renewing and perfecting of the story. Such a never-ending story that extends to universal participation is guided by faith in the transcendence of the human person and endeavor. It surpasses conservative institutionalism by respecting boundaries and liberal progressivism that opens them by including both.
The American public faith is under siege today in the reactionary recurrence of political tribalism, racism, and nationalism. Like many other moments of American history in which the fulness of our public faith has been threatened, we have an opportunity to add to our story by defeating our genetic inclinations to political tribalism, our acquired fears and hate of others unrecognized as our equals, and the arrogance of power arising from our insecurities. Telling the progressive story of America and safeguarding its institutions, in contrast to the temptations of political tribalism, racism, and nationalism, will carry our story to the generation to come. Relearning the transcending idea of America, in contrast to triumphalism and static literalism, will heal our political depression. Most of all, practicing citizenship through civil speech, service, and action will renew our public faith in our nation, our world, and our selves.
7. A Note on the Coming Elections 2020, 2022, 2024
Both Trump and Bernie are right about the Establishment and its sluggishness to move and its domination by the “successful” as defined in America. Both are populists, as was Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic Party. Both Reagan and Trump put Jackson’s picture in the Oval Office as the president they most admired. Jackson also took on the entrenched government (deep state) and big business (the corporations). He also focused on “the common man” as long as they weren’t black, native American, or female. He was like Trump a real estate man who made his living by removing Indians and selling their lands.
I remember the talk in the 60s of “down with the Establishment” — that pressed for and gained from the Vietnam War and from the redlining by lenders ensured by the Federal Housing Authority. But I realized then as I do now that the establishment also includes ongoing institutions which we all need — government agencies, civil society organization, the press. They just need to be democratic. I learned that change means not destruction but democratization of the Establishment — and yes, some disruption to achieve this. That’s what good organizing of lower income workers should achieve. Accountability is what we need, not the Great Leader leading the Revolution, with an unthinking true-believing populist base, who alone can fix it. On the other hand, I see the mainline press establishment’s hand in undermining Bernie which also disturbs me because I agree with most of his policies.
All my life I worked with and trusted the black and brown community. I’ll stick with their choices and instincts. They have the experience that drive them to the center, that is, to the present with all its inheritances including its understanding of past injustices contrasting with the founding aspirations.
I remember while organizing in Chicago with the Contract Buyers League and living in Lawndale when the Weather Underground came to bring the War home to Chicago during the 1968 democratic convention. They ran down Michigan Avenue throwing rocks to break windows of banks — some of the same banks we were fighting for their redlining policies. The black people with whom we were working in Lawndale thought they (the WU) were crazy. And the black community was right.
Revolution implies circular history. That is Steve Bannon’s myth. It means eternal return as though history repeats itself. Make America Great Again. Go back to the golden ages. Whether it’s the Gilded Age of robber barons (Trump) or the Post World War II New Deal (Bernie). Renewal on the other hand looks to the past to retrieve the values we have learned in our ascent, but also thrusts forward into the future and takes responsibility for critiquing the beliefs of the past and interpreting their values for the present.
Renewal retrieves the values in the founding of the nation but stands them against the contradictions of the present. The abolition, labor, women’s, gay, antitrust, civil rights, human rights, environmental organizations and movements were renewing the values at the founding and also those written into the very nature of humanity towards the good. Renewal is not the setting up of a new transhuman order. Renewal is written into the creative evolution of human existence. Progress is not inevitable. It is chosen. But it can be found everywhere humans organized themselves for the growth and benefit of each other from the very beginning of our species.
Revolution begins with liberation, but often ends with terror and another oppression. Resistance, especially if it is nonviolent, can also liberate and lead to Renewal — renewal of communities, institutions, and nations. Trumpism must be resisted, not because it is incompetent (thank God that it is!), but because it is autocratic and therefore undemocratic.
I no longer espouse liberalism or conservatism, capitalism or socialism. I rather argue and fight for radical democracy. This is government of, by, and for the people as said Lincoln in the beginning of the renewed American Republic in the 19th century. But much more, it is life and action of, by, and for the public. The space where people assemble, speak, and act to transform themselves to innovating agents, rather than patients directed from outside authorities, to citizens in civic society rather than consumers in an economy shaped by aristocrats and plutocrats.
Radical democracy does not destroy political, economic, or cultural institutions. It transforms them by challenging their officials and holding them accountable: the politicians, the bureaucrats, the bishops and priests, the presidents and chief executive officers, editors and pundits, teachers and principals. This nation needs not a revolution, but a radical renewal. And so do the churches, universities, and corporations.
To dethrone the king is not enough. We must democratize the nation, along with its work, study, market, worship, health, and living places. Democratization requires the encouraging and organizing of publics — assemblies of workers, students, consumers, neighbors, members, laity, citizens to shape the culture and the structure of the institutions which they choose to use in developing the democratic social order of their nation and world.
That’s what the renewal of this nation is all about.
Notes:
[1] Wolfgang Streek, How Will Capitalism End, Robert Kuttner, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism. Political thinkers Hannah Arendt and Karl Polanyi in many essays and analyses demonstrated the disastrous effects of subjecting politics and the public realm to economics and the private realm.
[2] National Center for Health Statistics, CDC see http://fortune.com/2018/02/09/us-life-expectancy-dropped-again/
[3] Haidt, The Righteous Mind. George Lakoff, The Political Mind.
[4] John Boles, Thomas Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty, Basic Books 2017
[5] Rogers Smith, “Who Are We Americans Now,” See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP_HA6iZFy4
[6] Gerhard Von Rad, Theology of the Old Testament
[7] Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals, Yale University Press, 1999
[8] Howard Zinn, Peoples History of the United States, Harper, 2005.
[9] Eric Foner, See his lectures on the Civil War and Reconstruction at ComumbiaLearn https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSuwqsAnJMtyg3ROpOADVoW1NV5kmskFM
[10]Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States, 2018
[11] Christian grace
[12] Wil Herberg, Protest, Catholic, Jew, 1955. Herberg argued that, while most Americans found the way to be American in their churches and synagogues, the “American Way of Life” or the “civil religion” that was extolled in was actually at odds with the Judeo-Christian religions critique of American idolatry, e.g. worship of material things.
[13] This is a place to acknowledge my American pragmatic and French phenomenological mentors in John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Both challenged absolutism in thought and promoted scientific evidence and experimentation to understand an evolving nature and humanity’s ambiguous place within it. Both affirm the social construction theory of knowledge that takes into account the human communities’ activity in both discovering and constructing the world. Both also acknowledge that human existence is a tension between consciousness and the world. Thus, the permanent ambiguity as a source of both fallacy and truth and therefore a source of continual inquiry and transcendence.
[14] Andrew Sullivan, “Americas New Religions,” New York Magazine, Dec 18, 2018
[15] Russ Harris, The Happiness Trap: a Guide to ACT, 2008
[16] Originalism is a theory of strict literal interpretation which was popularized by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. It is akin to the fundamentalist tradition of interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures of religion. It says what it means and means what it says in the space and time in which it was said. It acknowledges that the meanings of words have context. But at the same time, it teaches that the meaning of the words can be known and does not change.
[17] Netflix, Trotsky, See https://www.rbth.com/arts/329730-trotsky-series-netflix.
[18] Public faith, civil religion, transcending idea, American idea, American experience: I realize that I use these phrases inconsistently. I take my pragmatic and phenomenological mentors’ distinctions between 1) the word as in the act of expressing and discovering the world and 2) the word as expressed, the expression I put out to others in my activity of expressing to the world (parole parlante, parole parlée). I experience my body and in fact our bodies in the activity of expressing to the world. Before I express that corporeal experience in philosophy, art, science, or religion. In the same moment I experience my transcendence, my going beyond the moment. In so far as I am permitting/willing this activity of moving beyond myself and my world, I have faith. I express that faith in beliefs, i.e., fallible ideas always in need of renewal or rejection for better ones. Faith is a willing experience and a transcending idea, in process. The symbolic forms that are constructed in the process are the formulas in science, art forms, and religious beliefs. The philosopher and theologian trying to discuss her experience or our faith before it is expressed in symbolic forms can only point to and try to elicit an analogous experience in any people willing to listen.