It was one of those Saturday nights that spills over into Sunday morning. Invited into the home of a main-line Protestant couple in split-level northern New Jersey, the 40ish group was made up of Jews and Roman Catholics from the neighborhood and of visiting Southern Baptists from Texas. After enjoying much conversation and suffering the consequences of too much Tex-Mex, everyone gathered around for a little guitar sing. Many songs later, the evening finally ended with everybody belting out with feeling the old standby “Amazing Grace.”
There is something truly amazing about that—about Jews, Protestants (both main-line and evangelical), and Roman Catholics un-self-consciously singing together about the salvation of “a wretch like me.” There is no doubt that this incident demonstrates religious civility, or peace of a sort, or an amorphous unity. At least an American is tempted to respond triumphantly to it with “Only in America!” And it is not that uncommon an event in the United States today: To the unsuspecting observer, the various religious communities in America appear to be as friendly to each other as fraternity rush chairmen are to their “rushees.”
However, despite such nice religious goings on, all is not peaches and cream in religious America today, nor has it ever been. Uncivil Religion serves as a strong reminder of that. This book contains 10 essays that describe the religious tensions—between Jews and Christians, between Protestants and Catholics, between liberals and conservatives, and between mainstream groups and emerging groups—that have existed and now exist in American public life. These essays on hostility are written by various scholars of American religion (four of the 10, interestingly enough, have been active participants in conferences sponsored by The Rockford Institute Center on Religion & Society in New York). Furthermore, they are introduced by a short piece by Frederick E. Greenspahn and concluded by a longer article by Robert (Habits of the Heart) Bellah. It should be noted that the essays of this book include extensive and scholarly footnotes for the sake of further investigation.
The book gets off to a rousing start with Jonathan Sarna’s chronicle of Jewish-Christian hostilities from a Jewish point of view. Sarna’s article itself might even generate a few hostilities among Christian readers, for he cites many sources that attempt to uncover attacks on the Jewish community everywhere, even in the benevolent and the benign—in all Christian goodwill expressed toward Jews and Judaism, and in Christian translations of the Hebrew Bible. John Murray Cuddihy follows with a fascinating argument: too often, he contends, Jews are depicted as “morally blameless.” Too often the question is posed, “How do bad things [read: anti-Semitic] happen to this good people?” Cuddihy’s sources run from New York Times editorials to Woody Allen to Elie Wiesel. It might be said that this chapter exhibits a degree of courage in an always difficult, complex, and sensitive area.
In chapters by Barbara Welter and Jay P. Dolan, both Protestants and Roman Catholics are found blameworthy for the tensions that have existed between their communities. Some Protestants, it seems, were into spreading nasty lies about what happens behind the locked doors of convents, while Tridentine Catholics were often content to look on members of the “Protestant Revolt” as misguided folk outside the true salvation of The, or Their, Church. Mark A. Noll’s chapter announces the good news of the Protestant-Catholic rapprochement of our day and the not-so-good news of the three presently contending parties (the new party, the old party, and the Americanist party) within the two larger communities.
George Marsden addresses the liberal-conservative wars by focusing on the evolutionist-creationist controversy; there he spots anti-supernaturalist fundamentalists and supernaturalist fundamentalists fighting it out in such a way that reason and diplomacy become impossible. Marsden’s connections between the South, the Civil War, religion, and creationism are especially interesting. Chapters on liberal-conservative tensions also examine the Jewish and Roman Catholic communities.
The book’s last example of Uncivil Religion involves emerging or new religions. Mormonism and the Unification Church are seen as movements that offer a blatant challenge to their host society. When these movements did not accommodate their belief and practice so that they might “fit in,” their host proceeded to label them “cults,” exclude them socially, and then persecute them. Persecution ranged and ranges from legislation to “deprogramming” to the jabs from Saturday Night Live.
These essays are convincing. It is hard not to agree that American religion has had a very uncivil side. Even today Jews, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and non-name-brand types (i.e., “secular humanists” and others) often do not get along famously inside or outside their communities. But the most fundamental tension in American religion today, according to Robert Bellah (and when Bellah speaks, he should be listened to—though not necessarily agreed with), is between those who seek community without significant boundaries (in terms of belief and practice) and those who seek community with significant boundaries. Some of the former might desire a Club Methodist, for example, in which freedom of choice reigns; some of the latter strive for a Methodist church complete with definite commitment and a clear-cut identity. The danger Bellah fears most is that the Club will prove to be more attractive than the Church. If it is, Bellah worries, indeed if it triumphs, it “would destroy both the moral norms that provide the terms for our democratic conversation and the communities that carry those moral norms and ethical concerns, including the religious communities.” It would destroy both Church and society.
Unfortunately, pinpointing and worrying about the demise of religious community with boundaries does not actually create religious community with boundaries (though some might say that a pseudoreligious community has formed around Bellah’s Habits). But still, it is a beginning. And it will certainly contribute to some truly creative and constructive hostilities in American religion, which will, it is hoped, differ greatly from those that have gone before.
[Uncivil Religion—Interreligious Hostility in America, edited by Robert N. Bellah and Frederick E. Greenspahn (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company) $17.95]
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