Here's a link to a shorter version of this that appeared in Touchstone...
The title of Will Herberg's classic 1955
book, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (PCJ) is odd, memorable, and descriptive.
Herberg describes three "ways of belonging" in 1950s America with
respect to religion—through the three dominant religious groups: P, C, and J. In
the past, I’ve focused most of my thoughts on P, but he helpfully describes C
and J at length too.
Over the years, I've read and reasoned
myself into much of what Herberg describes—the prevalence of an American Civil
Religion (ACR), built on varying senses of religion. So, on the one hand, I
can't believe it's taken me so long to read PCJ.
On the other hand, it's comforting to know that I gained my
(apparently-accurate) sense of the decade without direct help from specialists.
(My primary blog posts on this topic: a review of Revolutionary Road here; a
review of Biblical Literacy here;
miscellaneous posts here, here, here, here, and here; and a
few posts on the surprising immorality of WWII soldiers: here, here,
and here.)
Herberg's goal is to explain the immense
religiosity of the 1950s (almost everyone was a "believer" of some
sort), but the relatively light religious meaning which often accompanied the
religiosity. In other words, he documents a "yes, but..." with
respect to religious membership, belief, and practice—and seeks reasons for the
paradox.
Herberg cautions against explaining it away
too quickly—particularly as bogus religion. "The paradox is there and it
would be misleading to try to get rid of it by suppressing one or the other
side of the apparent contradiction...They are honest, intelligent people who
take their religion quite seriously." (15) And so, he works to develop the
two sides of this strange coin.
Yes, we're religious!
Herberg devotes all of chapter 4 to the
"yes" part of the paradox. He notes that the data are not especially reliable.
But the measured changes are significant; the statistics all tell a similar
story; and they comport with the popular sense of these times. In a word, "the
trend is so well-marked that it overrides all margins of error." (60)
Herberg describes the basic metrics of religious
belonging and identification. Church membership and surveys on perceptions of
one's "active membership" were at historically high levels.
(Tellingly, the latter was significantly greater than the former!) Also up:
Sunday School enrollment and church construction, particularly in the suburbs (61-63).
The Scriptures were distributed at record rates and 80% thought that the Bible
was the "revealed word of God." (13-14)
Religious leaders were well-respected,
ranking third after business and government leaders in 1942 and first in
1947. Books, mass media, and intellectuals (from popularizers like C.S.
Lewis to professional theologians [66]) treated religion as popular and
respect-worthy. Universities started or extended their "Religious Studies"
programs. “Even if much of the interest in religion is vogue or fashion, the
fact that vogue or fashion now runs in favor of religion rather than against it
is surely itself a fact of considerable importance for our understanding of the
time." (68)
Negatively, few people identified as
atheists or even agnostics. There weren't any popular atheists—the likes of which
we see today and saw in the first third of the 20th century. "It is a
far cry indeed from the 1920s, when religion and the churches were in retreat,
faith was taken as a sign of intellectual backwardness or imbecility, and the
initiative had passed to the 'emancipated debunkers and the superstititions of
the 'Babbitts' and the 'Bible Belt'. That age has disappeared without a trace...[it
is] well-nigh impossible to imagine what those days were like..." (66)
All of this was as difficult to imagine for
a 1950s sociologist as it is for an observer today. "The new status of
religion as a basic form of American 'belonging'...has led to the virtual
disappearance of anti-religious prejudice, once by no means uncommon in our
national life...Religion has become part of the ethos of American life to such
a degree that overt anti-religion is all but inconceivable." (276)
"Godless" was "a powerful
epithet"—as a signal of opposition to the “godless Communists” and their
threat to us. And "at least nominal public acceptance of religion
tends to be a pre-requisite to political success." (65) All except one
Senator reported a religious affiliation (although five merely listed
"Protestant"). Religion of some sort was nearly universal and
generally expected as a cultural norm.
But not usually that kind of religious!
Herberg devotes all of chapter 5 to the
"but" part of the paradox. He opens with survey data on
nearly-universal "belief in God", but then notes that the question is
superficial and asks what “belief” means (85). Christ's birth was rated 14th among
important events in world history. Half of those surveyed could not name one of
the four Gospels. "The Bible can hardly be said to enter into the life and
thought of Americans quite as much as their views on divine inspiration and
their eagerness to buy and distribute it might suggest." (14)
Americans also saw themselves as virtuous—a
form of works-righteousness—while not imagining that religion would have any
"real effect" on their ideas or conduct in politics or business
(86). In sum, Herberg compares this to "a kind of secularized
Puritanism, a Puritanism without transcendence, without sense of [our] sin or
judgment [against us]." (94) The religion which "prevails among
Americans today has lost much of its authentic Christian (or Jewish)
content...It is this secularism of a religious people, this religiousness in a
secularist framework, that constitutes the problem posed..." (15) How to
explain it?
Late in the book, Herberg concludes:
"It is only too evident that the religious characteristic of America today
is very often a religiousness without religion, a religiousness with almost any
kind of content or none, a way of sociability or 'belonging' rather than a way
of reorienting life to God. It is thus frequently a religiousness without
serious commitment, without real inner conviction, without genuine existential
decision. What should reach down to the core of existence, shattering and
renewing, merely skims the surface of life, and yet succeeds in generating the
sincere feeling of being religious." (276)
The
American Way of Life and American Civil Religion
Religion must be defined to some extent
negatively—as eschewing certain beliefs, avoiding certain behaviors, and even,
as opposition to “the other.” (87-88) This certainly fits the political context
of the 1950s, with its concerns about the Communists. (Consider McCarthyism,
the “Red Scare”, and Alger Hiss vs. Whittaker Chambers—all difficult
phenomena for moderns to fathom.) Herberg notes survey data, where Americans
were asked when they "obeyed the law of love under certain special
conditions": 90% said yes with respect to another religion; 80% with
respect to race; and 78% with respect to business competitors. Most
interesting: only 27% said yes about Communists (89).
Of course, a refusal to love Communists
doesn't fit Christianity or Judaism, but it lines up nicely with an American
Civil Religion (ACR)—what Herberg labels "the American Way of Life" (AWL).
At an institutional level, this faith calls for democracy, the Constitution,
free enterprise, "equalitarianism," and economic competition. At a
personal level, this faith emphasizes self-reliance, merit, character,
sincerity, and thrift. It relies on optimism—a hopeful focus on education, progress,
and the future (92, 94). It is idealistic and moralistic—with "its symbols
and its rituals, its holidays and its liturgy, its saints and its
sancta..." (92)
In other words, the AWL was
"essentially an idealized description of the middle-class ethos."
(94) It's noteworthy that most Americans have traditionally seen themselves as
middle-class—at least until recent years, as the growing social problems of the
lower income classes have become much more prominent (a la Charles Murray in Coming Apart).
Understanding the 1950s as an Outlier
vs. the Norm
Another surprising observation is that the
1960s were not the start of a long downward trend for American religion after centuries
of exceeding popularity. Instead, the 1950s were a surprising aberration in our
country's religiosity. We've always been a relatively religious people,
compared to other countries (at least in the West). But the 1950s were a
dramatic increase from previous decades, not the end of a long period of
closely following God.
In particular, the early-20th century
featured considerable antagonism toward religious faith (including some famous
atheists)—in light of the claims of Evolution, the scholarship of biblical
criticism, the popularity of Progressivism, as well as the allure of materialism,
the opportunity for increased mobility, and a frequent desire to live outside
of God's will.
"Religion is taken very seriously in
present-day America, in a way that would have amazed and chagrined the
'advanced' thinkers of half a century ago, who were so sure that the ancient
superstition was bound to disappear very shortly in the face of the steady
advance of science and reason. Religion has not disappeared; it is probably
more pervasive today, and in many ways more influential, than it has been for
generations. The only question is: What kind of religion is it?" (281)
Prior to the 20th century, religious
faith was not as significant either. Consider basic historical norms—the
popularity of saloons and brothels; the frontier and the Wild, Wild West; the
treatment of Indians and slaves. Religion and religious community were
necessarily fractured as the frontier was being settled and as transportation
was a challenge outside of the cities.
"Religious and moral conditions of
frontier life were everywhere described as deplorable." (117) The Kentucky
legislature got rid of its chaplain in 1793 (117). Church membership was
10-15% at the beginning of the 19th century; grew generally (but at varying
rates) throughout the century; and was about 36% by the start of the 20th
century. It was 46% by 1926 and then 60% in 1953 (61).
On Cause and Effect
Herberg argues that both sides of the
paradox emanate from the same set of factors (73-77). In moral terms, the
decades coming into the 1930s were a mess in many ways. Then, the U.S. experienced
the terrible years of the government's decade-long Great Depression and our
time in World War II. Emerging from all of this, what did people want and what
in their context drove them to some sort of religious faith?
-Striving for peace and normalcy—after emerging
from one eschatological threat (World War II) and quickly entering another
(against the "godless" Communists);
-reaching for meaning and even
transcendence, including some legitimate religious revival;
-a correlative post-war emphasis on marriage
and family;
-greater income and the temptations of
materialism in the post-WWII healthy economy;
-the strength of the African-American
church in the face of continued persecution;
and
-the decline of secular faiths such as politics
and science/progress.
All of these would seem to be a compelling
part of any explanation.
But Herberg focuses on the dynamics of immigration—either because it was a
novel, complex argument that required lengthy explanation or he saw it as the
primary determinant. In a word, the third generation of immigrants—after
immigration flows had been drastically reduced—led to a perceived need to “belong”
and an embrace of religion as a means to that end.
Herberg opens his case here by noting that
nationalism is a relatively new idea (24). The development of and a greater
emphasis on nationalism creates psychic and sociological trouble for
immigrants. Who are they? How do they fit? Language, ethnicity, and religion
were obvious possibilities. The first generation was prone to focus on
country-of-origin (25-28), while the second generation was more focused on
their new country (28-35). For the latter, religion was generally of less
interest—and prospectively, something to be rebelled against.
But the perspectives and struggles of the
third generation are at the heart of Herberg's story. How do they see
themselves? They're American, but perhaps not fully. They have a background
that could be ignored or downplayed, but is this ideal? They don't see a need
to rebel against the first generation—and ironically, might choose to rebel
against the second generation by returning
to religion. And they're about as prone as “natives” to follow the AWL/ACR—part
of which is adherence to a religion. The most likely candidate was the religion
of one's grandparents. And so, in the search for identity, religion (of a real or
civil sort) became quite attractive.
Beyond that, Herberg notes the dynamics of
immigration reform—that a continuation of open immigration had obscured these waves,
by adding succeeding waves.
With the great reduction in immigration around the turn of the century, this final,
large 3rd-generation—which came of age in the 1950s—added considerable
impetus to embracing religion as a key part of a greater existential need to
belong.
Faith in What?
In the 1950s, Eisenhower and Congress added
“In God We Trust” to the money and “under God” to the Pledge. But which “God”
did we trust? Under which God was our nation’s faith? As Herberg restates his
thesis and concludes, he wonders if the faith of what might be called “the
non-religious religious” is about faith in faith (281). He
sees American faith as "so innocently man-centered. Not God, but man—man
in his individual and corporate being—is the beginning of the spiritual
system...it is not man who serves God, but God who is mobilized and made to
serve man and his purposes...In this kind of religion [there is] no sense
of transcendence..." (284-285)
A related problem: religion is used to
serve other values rather than vice versa. For the AWL, faith is valued because
it helps "promote ideals and standards that all Americans are expected to
share...Secularization of religion could hardly go further." (96) In
contrast to the state-sponsored churches in European countries, "the
variety and multiplicity of churches was almost the original condition and
coeval with the emergence of the new society. In America, religious pluralism
is thus not merely a historical and political fact; it is, in the mind of the
American, the primordial condition of things, an essential aspect of the AWL,
and therefore in itself an aspect of religious belief." (98-99)
But this must lead to trouble: "Civil
religion has always meant the sanctification of the society and culture of
which it is the reflection”; it is “incurably idolatrous”; and it “validates
culture and society, without in any sense bringing them under judgment."
(279) It "comes to serve as a spiritual reinforcement of national
self-righteousness and a spiritual authentification of national self-will...The
temptation is therefore particularly strong to identify the American cause with
the cause of God" (280)—particularly with respect to anti-Communism and especially
in the 1950s. "In its crudest form, this identification of religion with
national purpose generates a kind of national messianism...in more mitigated
versions, it sees God as the champion of America." (280)
Herberg connects this religiosity to ACR:
"This American culture-religion is...the common ground of the three 'faiths'
or a kind of super-religion...the civic religion of the American people." Eisenhower
famously enunciated this: "Our government makes no sense unless it is
founded in a deeply felt religious faith—and I don't care what it is."
(97) At least on the surface, the implications are obvious and troubling for
people of (true) faith. Herberg notes that this "was not indifferentism at
all, but the expression of the conviction that at bottom the 'three great
faiths' were really saying the same thing in affirming the 'spiritual ideals'
and 'moral values' of the AWL." (97) Ike’s comment and his popularity
indicate the pervasiveness of this view in 1950s America.
Herberg argues that "It is but one
more step, though a most fateful one, to proceed from 'the religions of
democracy' to 'democracy as religion' and consciously to erect 'democracy' into
a super-faith above and embracing the three recognized religions." (101) Or
from C.S. Lewis: “Let him begin by treating [politics]
as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan
spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and
gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part
of the ‘Cause,’ in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent
arguments it can produce in favor of” a preferred political position.
To the truly faithful, this should be seen
as idolatry—and of a particularly invidious sort. But the nature of a dominant
idolatry within a culture is that it can be immensely difficult to discern,
avoid, and oppose.
Implications
and Next Steps
What can one expect from this approach to
religion—then or now? First, general and modest ethical behaviors and "the
good life" become more important barometers of faith than creed, theology,
or specific and demanding forms of ethical conduct. This opens the door to various
"social gospels" and multiple forms of "the Prosperity Gospel."
(96-97)
Second, it follows that the disciple-making
model of ministry exemplified by Jesus will be diminished or discarded.
“Teaching them everything” Christ commanded—as in the Great Commission—will
prove optional. Becoming “thoroughly equipped” for “every good work” will be
left to the professionals or the especially pietistic.
Third, to the extent that there is a god
involved, he's often the god of Deism or the even-mushier, contemporary god
of "moral therapeutic deism" (MTD) posited by Christian Smith. (For a connection
of MTD to The Shack, click here.
For a discussion of the contemporary dominance of MTD and ACR, click here.) In
any case, this is clearly not an abiding faith in the Trinitarian God of
Christianity (or any other “true” version of religious faith).
Fourth, “religion thus becomes a kind of
protection the self throws up against the radical demands of faith." (276)
We still see a good bit of this in churches today. Herberg’s sense here is
reminiscent of one line of argument in C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters—the idea of being innoculated from the faith by
dabbling in tepid and reduced versions of it.
Fifth, an interesting (and potentially
troubling) correlation: "a marked disparagement of 'forms' whether
theological or liturgical." (96) We see this in the reforms of Vatican II;
the rapid growth of non-denominational churches; and the emergence of
seeker-sensitive churches. By itself, downplaying liturgy or formal religion is
not inherently troubling. But the move has its downsides and is more bothersome
if it's driven by improper, underlying motives.
Sixth, all of this is reminiscent of Joseph
in Egypt and the particularly-Jewish question of the extent of the "Egyptianization"
of Joseph. For
any true believer, how does one remain “holy” in the world without removing
ourselves from it? How can we be “in” but not “of” the world?
Seventh, the renaissance of “true faith”
becomes more likely as its false cousin fades—for example, in light of the contemporary
cultural changes resulting from our transition to a “post-Christian” world. In
a Christian worldview, there are tremendous advantages to the diminishment of
false religions such as civil religion, materialism, Progressivism, and so on.
When the false fades, the truth is easier to see. This gives significant optimism
for the years to come.
Herberg provides a
hopeful ending from a non-academic angle that I’ll use to wrap up this review.
While he brings sociological theory and his research skills to bear on these
questions, he's quick to note as a caveat that all of this may be transcended
by the primary subject—our mysterious relationship with a majestic and
unfathomable God (16). From his concluding paragraph: "Even the more
conventional forms of American religion, for all their dubiousness, should not
be simply written off by the man of faith...Nothing is too unpromising or
refractory to serve the divine will...[God] is surely capable of turning even
the intractabilities and follies of religion into an instrument of His
redemptive purposes." (286-287)
At the time, P was 68%; C was 23%; and J was 4% [59].
At first, one might wonder why the Jews get their own chapter as such a small
percentage. But in addition to their disproportionate impact on culture and
society, Herberg makes a compelling case in chapter 8 that their particular
journey in American culture carried disproportionate weight in setting up the
1950s religious milieu. A contemporary survey by the Pew Foundation in
2013 indicates that about one-third of Jews (by ethnicity) are Christian (by
religion). See: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/.
Herberg devotes Chapters 6-8 to each major group
separately. He spends Chapters 9-10 on a compare/contrast and the interactions
between the three: on class (228), education and urban/rural (229, 249), white
vs. blue collar (230), and religious beliefs (235-236).
The church building explosion later had differential
effects for Catholics and Protestants. With greater barriers to exit, when
“demand” declined (especially in urban settings), Catholics were less prone to
close parishes and more likely to suffer through the attendant problems.
Herberg makes a number of interesting claims about 19th
century American religion: The Great Revival (1795-1810) "devastated"
the Presbyterians "just as the Great Awakening" 60 years prior
"made inroads into Congregationalism." (118) In 1830, "the third
of the great evangelical denominations appeared, the Disciples of Christ. This
group was entirely American...arose as a secession from the
Presbyterians." (119) "Mormonism ran directly counter to the basic
pattern of frontier religion: it was hierarchical, collectivistic, in its own
way highly theological." (124)
Herberg pairs Charles Templeton with Billy Graham and
describes other "revivalists" as those who "speak the language
of individualistic piety, which in lesser men frequently degenerates into a
smug and nagging moralism." (134) Templeton would soon became an
atheist—part of Lee Strobel’s narrative in The
Case for Christ.
Herberg explained religious segregation as driven in
large part by internal desires among African-Americans and (correctly)
predicted it would last a long time: "influential groups of Negroes have
developed a strong interest, emotional and social, in the maintenance of
separate Negro churches, and these churches play a more creative role in the
lives of the masses of Negro Americans than does any other segregated
institution." (129)
Herberg notes America's diversity—"the most
diverse in racial and cultural origins of any in the world" (91)—for
policymakers, a practical reason to pursue state vs. federal policy. And he
argues that "Unlike American Protestantism, Catholicism in America never
was a religious movement...a foreign church or rather a conglomeration of
foreign churches, recruited from successive waves of overseas
immigration..." (150)
Herberg compares the Catholic "claim to be the
one true and universal church" with a "deep-lying, though often
unarticulated conception of American social reality...[but they] could not help
but regard American society as intrinsically pluralistic and his own church as
one among several." (166) This also points to the more compelling
understanding of "separation of Church and State": the government may
not do anything that implies “the pre-eminence or superior legitimacy of one
church over another." (99)
