Objective:
Write 10 reading and lecture analysis journal entries that employ course materials from each unit.
These reading and lecture analysis journal entries provide you with an opportunity to do the following:
To enable you to understand your learning process;
To deepen the quality of learning, in the form of critical thinking or developing a questioning attitude;
To increase active involvement in learning and personal ownership of learning;
To enhance creativity by allowing you to write about what you found to be interesting or want to know more about;
To free-up writing and the representation of learning;
To provide you a chance to ‘voice’ your ideas and to show that you are learning from course materials and resources;
To foster reflective and creative learning that promotes appreciation for human diversity, pluralism, multicultural, global perspectives, and lifelong learning.
Scope:
Each entry should be single-spaced and about one to two full pagees in length.
After you complete the assigned readings and viewed all other learning resources for a particular week’s lesson, you can select a topic or topics that most interested you, or that provoked a reaction, or that you have questions about and want to process. There is no right or wrong, as each entry will be measured and evaluated on its content, quality of analysis, and clarity of writing.
Note re: citing lectures. If it is Prof. Lee’s lectures, citations should look like this (Lee, “title of lecture”, week #).
Assignment:
Write 10 reading and lecture analysis journal entries that employ course materials from each unit.
The entries must do the following:
Must be one to two full pages in length, single space;
All entries must be in one Word document, as you will submit this file on TurnItIn through iLearn;
You must discuss a topic or topics or question or questions that you have after completing the assigned readings and other learning resources available on iLearn;
You must directly engage with at least three learning resources (one of them must be an assigned reading; the other two can be other readings, videos, land/or lectures) in each entry! [Note: You can impress Prof. Lee by using more than the required three learning resources!] If your entry does not fulfill this requirement, it will result in an automatic 0/10. Please do make sure you engage with a required reading from the unit of the week.
Not meeting required resources above will result in -3 points deduction for each of the two remaining required resource.
You must engage with assigned readings and other learning materials in the course by using proper citations and quotations using MLA, APA, Chicago, or Harvard styles for writing.
You must include a Works Cited that is properly formatted. Omitting a Works Cited will result in -3 points deduction.
You can use outside resources if you investigated a topic further, but not in lieu of the three required resources from each unit.
Writing is important, so make sure you write early and edit. Clarity of writing is important and an important skill to develop. In order to do this successfully, it is recommended that you do not wait until the last minute.
Be thoughtful in each entry. Provide analysis and link/connect as many class resources as possible to each entry. This is your chance to show that you have read the assigned readings, watch the videos and lectures, and have thoughtfully and creatively reflected on the data, ideas, and arguments of all learning materials.
There is no right or wrong “answers” in this assignment. You will be evaluated on the quality of the content.
All late submission will receive -3 points deduction; each additional day is -3 points per day.
Please see the Rubric for Writing Assignments for more information on how writing is evaluated.
Tip: Be aware of only summarizing: this assignment calls for analysis, which means your ability to: apply things you learn in the class to the real world; your ability to synthesize theoretical concepts (unpacking the theory, testing the theory, questioning the theory); your ability to critique arguments, ideas, theories covered in class materials; your ability to offer your own unique insights into an issue; and your ability to put various voices into a dialogue.
For example:A says “…” which confirms B’s notion of ….. but differs from C’s conclusion about….; My experience suggest name-a-concept is valid because….; Name-a-concept argues that… which A, B, and Z validated in their research. However, another school of thought contends….
i dont need a summary, its like a persuasive essay. have arguements in the journal please!
please watch all these 3 videos and articles, and the articles from the files folder.
American Civil Religion and Race
Manifest Destiny (MD)
“the doctrine of MD translates American exceptionalism into action. MD is the doctrine that Euro-Americans had a God-given right to conquer and colonize North America, and eventually to civilize and imperialize Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines” (Christopher Buck, 32).
Protestantism is superior to Catholicism, legitimate conquest of territory of Mexico (Christopher Buck, 36).
The doctrine of MD was popularized and normalized during the period of the Great Awakening (1725-1750) (Christopher Buck, 32)
Manifest Destiny relies on Biblical motifs:
Israelite persecution (Persecution of the Puritans)
Chosen-ness
Deliverance (in America, the new land, the new Eden)
Puritan settlers selected people of God
Race and Manifest Destiny
“Curse of Ham” myth = One of Ham’s descendants, Cush is black, Black slaves were curse… fated to be slaves.
Ham was Noah’s youngest son, and Canaan was one of Ham’s sons. Canaan gets punished for Ham’s delict (breaking the law, an offense).
Black Exodus myth/story
Black slaves were the new oppressed people (they are the Israelites)
America is the new Egypt
Civil Religion in America
Robert Bellah
Manifest Destiny is American civil religion
Worship of America, is American civil religion
Where are Asian Americans and their religions on the American civil religion landscape?
Does America need civil religion?
Do we need civil religion?
What’s wrong with Bellah’s model of civil religion?
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return to Articles and Chapters
Civil Religion in America
by
Robert N. Bellah
Acknowledgement:
Reprinted by permission of Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, from the issue entitled, “Religion in America,” Winter
1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, pp. 1-21.
At the beginning of a reprint of this essay (Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief:
Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1991, p. 168), the author wrote:
This chapter was written for a Dædalus conference on American Religion in
May 1966. It was reprinted with comments and a rejoinder in The Religious
Situation: 1968, where I defend myself against the accusation of supporting
an idolatrous worship of the American nation. I think it should be clear from
the text that I conceive of the central tradition of the American civil religion
not as a form of national self-worship but as the subordination of the nation
to ethical principles that transcend it in terms of which it should be judged. I
am convinced that every nation and every people come to some form or
religious self-understanding whether the critics like it or not. Rather than
simply denounce what seems in any case inevitable, it seems more
responsible to seek within the civil religious tradition for those critical
principles which undercut the everpresent danger of national self-idolization.
While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith, and others
that church and synagogue celebrate only the generalized religion of “the
American Way of Life,” few have realized that there actually exists alongside
of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and well-
institutionalized civil religion in America. This article argues not only that
there is such a thing, but also that this religion-or perhaps better, this
religious dimension-has its own seriousness and integrity and requires the
same care in understanding that any other religion does.[i]
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same care in understanding that any other religion does.[i]
The Kennedy Inaugural
John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address of January 20, 1961, serves as an
example and a clue with which to introduce this complex subject. That
address began:
We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of
freedom-symbolizing an end as well as a beginning-signifying
renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and
Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed
nearly a century and three quarters ago.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands
the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and to abolish all
forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for
which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe-the
belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the
state but from the hand of God.
And it concluded:
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or of the world, ask of
us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice that we shall
ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with
history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land
we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on
earth God’s work must truly be our own.
These are the three places in this brief address in which Kennedy mentioned
the name of God. If we could understand why he mentioned God, the way in
which he did, and what he meant to say in those three references, we would
understand much about American civil religion. But this is not a simple or
obvious task, and American students of religion would probably differ widely
in their interpretation of these passages.
Let us consider first the placing of the three references. They occur in the
two opening paragraphs and in the closing paragraph, thus providing a sort
of frame for more concrete remarks that form the middle part of the speech.
Looking beyond this particular speech, we would find that similar references
to God are almost invariably to be found in the pronouncements of American
presidents on solemn occasions, though usually not in the working messages
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presidents on solemn occasions, though usually not in the working messages
that the President sends to Congress on various concrete issues. How, then,
are we to interpret this placing of references to God?
It might be argued that the passages quoted reveal the essentially irrelevant
role of religion in the very secular society that is America. The placing of the
references in this speech as well as in public life generally indicates that
religion “has only a ceremonial significance”; it gets only a sentimental nod
that serves largely to placate the more unenlightened members of the
community before a discussion of the really serious business with which
religion has nothing whatever to do. A cynical observer might even say that
an American President has to mention God or risk losing votes. A semblance
of piety is merely one of the unwritten qualifications for the office, a bit
more traditional than but not essentially different from the present-day
requirement of a pleasing television personality.
But we know enough about the function of ceremonial and ritual in various
societies to make us suspicious of dismissing something as unimportant
because it is “only a ritual.” What people say on solemn occasions need not
be taken at face value, but it is often indicative of deep-seated values and
commitments that are not made explicit in the course of everyday life.
Following this line of argument, it is worth considering whether the very
special placing of the references to God in Kennedy’s address may not reveal
something rather important and serious about religion in American life.
It might be countered that the very way in which Kennedy made his
references reveals the essentially vestigial place of religion today. He did not
refer to any religion in particular. He did not refer to Jesus Christ, or to
Moses, or to the Christian church; certainly he did not refer to the Catholic
church. In fact, his only reference was to the concept of God, a word that
almost all Americans can accept but that means so many different things to
so many different people that it is almost an empty sign. Is this not just
another indication that in America religion is considered vaguely to be a
good thing, but that people care so little about it that it has lost any content
whatever? Isn’t Dwight Eisenhower reported to have said “Our government
makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith-and I
don’t care what it is,”[ii] and isn’t that a complete negation of any real
religion?
These questions are worth pursuing because they raise the issue of how civil
religion relates to the political society on the one hand and to private
religious organization on the other. President Kennedy was a Christian, more
specifically a Catholic Christian. Thus his general references to God do not
mean that he lacked a specific religious commitment. But why, then, did he
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mean that he lacked a specific religious commitment. But why, then, did he
not include some remark to the effect that Christ is the Lord of the world or
some indication of respect for the Catholic church? He did not because these
are matters of his own private religious belief and of his own particular
church; they are not matters relevant in any direct way to the conduct of his
public office. Others with different religious views and commitments to
different churches or denominations are equally qualified participants in the
political process. The principle of separation of church and state guarantees
the freedom of religious belief and association, but at the same time clearly
segregates the religious sphere, which is considered to be essentially
private, from the political one.
Considering the separation of church and state, how is a president justified in
using the word “God” at all? The answer is that the separation of church and
state has not denied the political realm a religious dimension. Although
matters of personal religious belief, worship, and association are considered
to be strictly private affairs, there are, at the same time, certain common
elements of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share.
These have played a crucial role in the development of American institutions
and still provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life,
including the political sphere. This public religious dimension is expressed in
a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that I am calling American civil religion.
The inauguration of a president is an important ceremonial event in this
religion. It reaffirms, among other things, the religious legitimation of the
highest political authority.
Let us look more closely at what Kennedy actually said. First, he said, “I
have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our
forbears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago.” The oath is
the oath of office, including the acceptance of the obligation to uphold the
Constitution. He swears it before the people (you) and God. Beyond the
Constitution, then, the president’s obligation extends not only to the people
but to God. In American political theory, sovereignty rests, of course, with
the people, but implicitly, and often explicitly, the ultimate sovereignty has
been attributed to God. This is the meaning of the motto, “In God we trust,”
as well as the inclusion of the phrase “under God” in the pledge to the flag.
What difference does it make that sovereignty belongs to God? Though the
will of the people as expressed in the majority vote is carefully
institutionalized as the operative source of political authority, it is deprived
of an ultimate significance. The will of the people is not itself the criterion of
right and wrong. There is a higher criterion in terms of which this will can be
judged; it is possible that the people may be wrong. The president’s
obligation extends to the higher criterion.
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obligation extends to the higher criterion.
When Kennedy says that “the rights of man come not from the generosity of
the state but from the hand of God,” he is stressing this point again. It does
not matter whether the state is the expression of the will of an autocratic
monarch or of the “people”; the rights of man are more basic than any
political structure and provide a point of revolutionary leverage from which
any state structure may be radically altered. That is the basis for his
reassertion of the revolutionary significance of America.
But the religious dimension of political life as recognized by Kennedy not only
provides a grounding for the rights of man that makes any form of political
absolutism illegitimate, it also provides a transcendent goal for the political
process. This is implied in his final words that “here on earth God’s work
must truly be our own.” What he means here is, I think, more clearly
spelled out in a previous paragraph, the wording of which, incidentally, has a
distinctly biblical ring:
Now the trumpet summons us again-not as a call to bear arms,
though arms we need-not as a call to battle, though embattled we
are-but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in
and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”-a struggle
against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease
and war itself.
The whole address can be understood as only the most recent statement of
a theme that lies very deep in the American tradition, namely the obligation,
both collective and individual, to carry out God’s will on earth. This was the
motivating spirit of those who founded America, and it has been present in
every generation since. Just below the surface throughout Kennedy’s
inaugural address, it becomes explicit in the closing statement that God’s
work must be our own. That this very activist and noncontemplative
conception of the fundamental religious obligation, which has been
historically associated with the Protestant position, should be enunciated so
clearly in the first major statement of the first Catholic president seems to
underline how deeply established it is in the American outlook. Let us now
consider the form and history of the civil religious tradition in which Kennedy
was speaking.
The Idea of a Civil Religion
The phrase “civil religion” is, of course, Rousseau’s. In chapter 8, book 4 of
The Social Contract, he outlines the simple dogmas of the civil religion: the
existence of God, the life to come, the reward of virtue and the punishment
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existence of God, the life to come, the reward of virtue and the punishment
of vice, and the exclusion of religious intolerance. All other religious opinions
are outside the cognizance of the state and may be freely held by citizens.
While the phrase “civil religion” was not used, to the best of my knowledge,
by the founding fathers, and I am certainly not arguing for the particular
influence of Rousseau, it is clear that similar ideas, as part of the cultural
climate of the late eighteenth century, were to be found among the
Americans. For example, Benjamin Franklin writes in his autobiography,
I never was without some religious principles. I never doubted, for
instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made the world and
govern’d it by his Providence; that the most acceptable service of
God was the doing of good to men; that our souls are immortal;
and that all crime will be punished, and virtue rewarded either here
or hereafter. These I esteemed the essentials of every religion;
and, being to be found in all the religions we had in our country, I
respected them all, tho’ with different degrees of respect, as I
found them more or less mix’d with other articles, which, without
any tendency to inspire, promote or confirm morality, serv’d
principally do divide us, and make us unfriendly to one another.
It is easy to dispose of this sort of position as essentially utilitarian in
relation to religion. In Washington’s Farewell Address (though the words
may be Hamilton’s) the utilitarian aspect is quite explicit:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,
Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that
man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labour to subvert
these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the
duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the
pious man ought to cherish and respect them. A volume could not
trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it
simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation,
for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which
are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us
with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be
maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the
influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason
and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can
prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
But there is every reason to believe that religion, particularly the idea of
God, played a constitutive role in the thought of the early American
statesmen.
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statesmen.
Kennedy’s inaugural pointed to the religious aspect of the Declaration of
Independence, and it might be well to look a that document a bit more
closely. There are four references to God. The first speaks of the “Laws of
Nature and of Nature’s God” that entitle any people to be independent. The
second is the famous statement that all men “are endowed by their Creator
with certain inalienable Rights.” Here Jefferson is locating the fundamental
legitimacy of the new nation in a conception of “higher law” that is itself
based on both classical natural law and biblical religion. The third is an
appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions,” and the last indicates “a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence.” In these last two references, a biblical God of history who
stands in judgment over the world is indicated.
The intimate relation of these religious notions with the self-conception of
the new republic is indicated by the frequency of their appearance in early
official documents. For example, we find in Washington’s first inaugural
address of April 30, 1789:
It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my
fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the
universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose
providential aids can supply every defect, that His benediction
may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the
United States a Government instituted by themselves for these
essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed
in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted
to his charge.
No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible
Hand which conducts the affairs of man more than those of the
United States. Every step by which we have advanced to the
character of an independent nation seems to have been
distinguished by some token providential agency..
The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a
nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which
Heaven itself has ordained.. The preservation of the sacred fire of
liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are
justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked on the
experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.
Nor did these religious sentiments remain merely the personal expression of
the President. At the request of both Houses of Congress, Washington
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the President. At the request of both Houses of Congress, Washington
proclaimed on October 3 of that same first year as President that November
26 should be “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer,” the first
Thanksgiving Day under the Constitution.
The words and acts of the founding fathers, especially the first few
presidents, shaped the form and tone of the civil religion as it has been
maintained ever since. Though much is selectively derived from Christianity,
this religion is clearly not itself Christianity. For one thing, neither
Washington nor Adams nor Jefferson mentions Christ in his inaugural
address; nor do any of the subsequent presidents, although not one of them
fails to mention God.[iii] The God of the civil religion is not only rather
“unitarian,” he is also on the austere side, much more related to order, law,
and right than to salvation and love. Even though he is somewhat deist in
cast, he is by no means simply a watchmaker God. He is actively interested
and involved in history, with a special concern for America. Here the analogy
has much less to do with natural law than with ancient Israel; the equation
of America with Israel in the idea of the “American Israel” is not
infrequent.[iv] What was implicit in the words of Washington already quoted
becomes explicit in Jefferson’s second inaugural when he said: “I shall need,
too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as
Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing
with all the necessaries and comforts of life.” Europe is Egypt; America, the
promised land. God has led his people to establish a new sort of social order
that shall be a light unto all the nations.[v] This theme, too, has been a
continuous one in the civil religion. We have already alluded to it in the case
of the Kennedy inaugural. We find it again in President Johnson’s inaugural
address:
They came already here-the exile and the stranger, brave but
frightened-to find a place where a man could be his own man. They
made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice, written in
liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes
of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall
flourish.
What we have, then, from the earliest years of the republic is a collection of
beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and
institutionalized in a collectivity. This religion-there seems no other word for
it-while not antithetical to and indeed sharing much in common with
Christianity, was neither sectarian nor in any specific sense Christian. At a
time when the society was overwhelmingly Christian, it seems unlikely that
this lack of Christian reference was meant to spare the feelings of the tiny
non-Christian minority. Rather, the civil religion expressed what those who
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non-Christian minority. Rather, the civil religion expressed what those who
set the precedents felt was appropriate under the circumstances. It reflected
their private as well as public views. Nor was the civil religion simply
“religion in general.” While generality was undoubtedly seen as a virtue by
some, as in the quotation from Franklin above, the civil religion was specific
enough when it came to the topic of America. Precisely because of this
specificity, the civil religion was saved from empty formalism and served as
a genuine vehicle of national religious self-understanding.
But the civil religion was not, in the minds of Franklin, Washington,
Jefferson, or other leaders, with the exception of a few radicals like Tom
Paine, ever felt to be a substitute for Christianity. There was an implicit but
quite clear division of function between the civil religion and Christianity.
Under the doctrine of religious liberty, an exceptionally wide sphere of
personal piety and voluntary social action was left to the churches. But the
churches were neither to control the state nor to be controlled by it. The
national magistrate, whatever his private religious views, operates under
the rubrics of the civil religion as long as he is in his official capacity, as we
have already seen in the case of Kennedy. This accommodation was
undoubtedly the product of a particular historical moment and of a cultural
background dominated by Protestantism of several varieties and by the
Enlightenment, but it has survived despite subsequent changes in the
cultural and religious climate.
Civil War and Civil Religion
Until the Civil War, the American civil religion focused above all on the event
of the Revolution, which was seen as the final act of the Exodus from the old
lands across the waters. The Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution were the sacred scriptures and Washington the divinely
appointed Moses who led his people out of the hands of tyranny. The Civil
War, which Sidney Mead calls “the center of American history,” [vi] was the
second great event that involved the national self-understanding so deeply
as to require expression in civil religion. In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote
that the American republic has never really been tried and that victory in the
Revolutionary War was more the result of British preoccupation elsewhere
and the presence of a powerful ally than of any great military success of the
Americans. But in 1861 the time of testing had indeed come. Not only did
the Civil War have the tragic intensity of fratricidal strife, but it was one of
the bloodiest wars of the nineteenth century; the loss of life was far greater
than any previously suffered by Americans.
The Civil War raised the deepest questions of national meaning. The man
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The Civil War raised the deepest questions of national meaning. The man
who not only formulated but in his own person embodied its meaning for
Americans was Abraham Lincoln. For him the issue was not in the first
instance slavery but “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and
so dedicated, can long endure.” He had said in Independence Hall in
Philadelphia on February 22, 1861:
All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as
I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which
originated in and were given to the world from this Hall. I have
never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the
sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. [vii]
The phrases of Jefferson constantly echo in Lincoln’s speeches. His task was,
first of all, to save the Union-not for America alone but for the meaning of
America to the whole world so unforgettably etched in the last phrase of the
Gettysburg Address.
But inevitably the issue of slavery as the deeper cause of the conflict had to
be faced. In his second inaugural, Lincoln related slavery and the war in an
ultimate perspective:
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses
which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which,
having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to
remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war
as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we
discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which
the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn
with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was
said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the
judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
But he closes on a note if not of redemption then of reconciliation-“With
malice toward none, with charity for all.”
With the Civil War, a new theme of death, sacrifice, and rebirth enters the
new civil religion. It is symbolized in the life and death of Lincoln. Nowhere is
it stated more vividly than in the Gettysburg Address, itself part of the
Lincolnian “New Testament” among the civil scriptures. Robert Lowell has
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Lincolnian “New Testament” among the civil scriptures. Robert Lowell has
recently pointed out the “insistent use of birth images” in this speech
explicitly devoted to “these honored dead”: “brought forth,” “conceived,”
“created,” “a new birth of freedom.” He goes on to say:
The Gettysburg Address is a symbolic and sacramental act. Its
verbal quality is resonance combined with a logical, matter of fact,
prosaic brevity.. In his words, Lincoln symbolically died, just as the
Union soldiers really died-and as he himself was soon really to die.
By his words, he gave the field of battle a symbolic significance that
it has lacked. For us and our country, he left Jefferson’s ideals of
freedom and equality joined to the Christian sacrificial act of death
and rebirth. I believe this is the meaning that goes beyond sect or
religion and beyond peace and war, and is now part of our lives as
a challenge, obstacle and hope.[viii]
Lowell is certainly right in pointing out the Christian quality of the symbolism
here, but he is also right in quickly disavowing any sectarian implication. The
earlier symbolism of the civil religion had been Hebraic without any specific
sense of being Jewish. The Gettysburg symbolism (” . those who here gave
their lives, that that nation might live”) is Christian without having anything
to do with the Christian church.
The symbolic equation of Lincoln with Jesus was made relatively early. W.
H. Herndon, who had been Lincoln’s law partner, wrote:
For fifty years God rolled Abraham Lincoln through his fiery
furnace. He did it to try Abraham and to purify him for his
purposes. This made Mr. Lincoln humble, tender, forbearing,
sympathetic to suffering, kind, sensitive, tolerant; broadening,
deepening and widening his whole nature; making him the noblest
and loveliest character since Jesus Christ.. I believe that Lincoln
was God’s chosen one. [ix]
With the Christian archetype in the background, Lincoln, “our martyred
president,” was linked to the war dead, those who “gave the last full
measure of devotion.” The theme of sacrifice was indelibly written into the
civil religion.
The new symbolism soon found both physical and ritualistic expression. The
great number of the war dead required the establishment of a number of
national cemeteries. Of these, Gettysburg National Cemetery, which
Lincoln’s famous address served to dedicate, has been overshadowed only
by the Arlington National Cemetery. Begun somewhat vindictively on the
Lee estate across the river from Washington, partly with the end that the
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Lee estate across the river from Washington, partly with the end that the
Lee family could never reclaim it,[x] it has subsequently become the most
hallowed monument of the civil religion. Not only was a section set aside for
the confederate dead, but it has received the dead of each succeeding
American war. It is the site of the one important new symbol to come out of
World War I, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; more recently it has
become the site of the tomb of another martyred President and its symbolic
eternal flame.
Memorial Day, which grew out of the Civil War, gave ritual expression to the
themes we have been discussing. As Lloyd Warner has so brilliantly analyzed
it, the Memorial Day observance, especially in the towns and smaller cities
of America, is a major event for the whole community involving a
rededication to the martyred dead, to the spirit of sacrifice, and to the
American vision.[xi] Just as Thanksgiving Day, which incidentally was
securely institutionalized as an annual national holiday only under the
presidency of Lincoln, serves to integrate the family into the civil religion, so
Memorial Day has acted to integrate the local community into the national
cult. Together with the less overtly religious Fourth of July and the more
minor celebrations of Veterans Day and the birthdays of Washington and
Lincoln, these two holidays provide an annual ritual calendar for the civil
religion. The public school system serves as a particularly important context
for the cultic celebration of the civil rituals.
The Civil Religion Today
In reifying and giving a name to something that, though pervasive enough
when you look at it, has gone on only semiconsciously, there is risk of
severely distorting the data. But the reification and the naming have already
begun. The religious critics of “religion in general,” or of the “religion of the
‘American Way of Life,'” or of “American Shinto” have really been talking
about the civil religion. As usual in religious polemic, they take as criteria
the best in their own religious tradition and as typical the worst in the
tradition of the civil religion. Against these critics, I would argue that the civil
religion at its best is a genuine apprehension of universal and transcendent
religious reality as seen in or, one could almost say, as revealed through the
experience of the American people. Like all religions, it has suffered various
deformations and demonic distortions. At its best, it has neither been so
general that it has lacked incisive relevance to the American scene nor so
particular that it has placed American society above universal human values.
I am not at all convinced that the leaders of the churches have consistently
represented a higher level of religious insight than the spokesmen of the civil
religion. Reinhold Niebuhr has this to say of Lincoln, who never joined a
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religion. Reinhold Niebuhr has this to say of Lincoln, who never joined a
church and who certainly represents civil religion at its best:
An analysis of the religion of Abraham Lincoln in the context of the
traditional religion of his time and place and of its polemical use
on the slavery issue, which corrupted religious life in the days
before and during the Civil War, must lead to the conclusion that
Lincoln’s religious convictions were superior in depth and purity to
those, not only of the political leaders of his day, but of the
religious leaders of the era.[xii]
Perhaps the real animus of the religious critics has been not so much against
the civil religion in itself but against its pervasive and dominating influence
within the sphere of church religion. As S. M. Lipset has recently shown,
American religion at least since the early nineteenth century has been
predominantly activist, moralistic, and social rather than contemplative,
theological, or innerly spiritual.[xiii] De Tocqueville spoke of American
church religion as “a political institution which powerfully contributes to the
maintenance of a democratic republic among the Americans”[xiv] by
supplying a strong moral consensus amidst continuous political change.
Henry Bargy in 1902 spoke of American church religion as “la poésie du
civisme.”[xv]
It is certainly true that the relation between religion and politics in America
has been singularly smooth. This is in large part due to the dominant
tradition. As de Tocqueville wrote:
The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who,
after having shaken off the authority of the Pope, acknowledged
no other religious supremacy: they brought with them into the
New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe
than by styling it a democratic and republican religion.[xvi]
The churches opposed neither the Revolution nor the establishment of
democratic institutions. Even when some of them opposed the full
institutionalization of religious liberty, they accepted the final outcome with
good grace and without nostalgia for the ancien régime.
The American civil religion was never anticlerical or militantly secular. On
the contrary, it borrowed selectively from the religious tradition in such a
way that the average American saw no conflict between the two. In this
way, the civil religion was able to build up without any bitter struggle with
the church powerful symbols of national solidarity and to mobilize deep
levels of personal motivation for the attainment of national goals.
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Such an achievement is by no means to be taken for granted. It would seem
that the problem of a civil religion is quite general in modern societies and
that the way it is solved or not solved will have repercussions in many
spheres. One need only to think of France to see how differently things can
go. The French Revolution was anticlerical to the core and attempted to set
up an anti-Christian civil religion. Throughout modern French history, the
chasm between traditional Catholic symbols and the symbolism of 1789 has
been immense.
American civil religion is still very much alive. Just three years ago we
participated in a vivid reenactment of the sacrifice theme in connection with
the funeral of our assassinated President. The American Israel theme is
clearly behind both Kennedy’s New Frontier and Johnson’s Great Society. Let
me give just one recent illustration of how the civil religion serves to
mobilize support for the attainment of national goals. On March 15, 1965,
President Johnson went before Congress to ask for a strong voting-rights
bill. Early in the speech he said:
Rarely are we met with the challenge, not to our growth or
abundance, or our welfare or our society-but rather to the values
and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved nation.
The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And
should we double our wealth and conquer the stars and still be
unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a
nation.
For with a country as with a person, “What is a man profited, if he
shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul.”
And in conclusion he said:
Above the pyramid on the great seal of the United States it says in
Latin, “God has favored our undertaking.”
God will not favor everything that we do. It is rather our duty to
divine his will. I cannot help but believe that He truly understands
and that He really favors the undertaking that we begin here
tonight.[xvii]
The civil religion has not always been invoked in favor of worthy causes. On
the domestic scene, an American-Legion type of ideology that fuses God,
country, and flag has been used to attack nonconformist and liberal ideas
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and groups of all kinds. Still, it has been difficult to use the words of
Jefferson and Lincoln to support special interests and undermine personal
freedom. The defenders of slavery before the Civil War came to reject the
thinking of the Declaration of Independence. Some of the most consistent of
them turned against not only Jeffersonian democracy but Reformation
religion; they dreamed of a South dominated by medieval chivalry and
divine-right monarchy.[xviii] For all the overt religiosity of the radical right
today, their relation to the civil religious consensus is tenuous, as when the
John Birch Society attacks the central American symbol of Democracy itself.
With respect to America’s role in the world, the dangers of distortion are
greater and the built-in safeguards of the tradition weaker. The theme of the
American Israel was used, almost from the beginning, as a justification for
the shameful treatment of the Indians so characteristic of our history. It can
be overtly or implicitly linked to the ideal of manifest destiny that has been
used to legitimate several adventures in imperialism since the early
nineteenth century. Never has the danger been greater than today. The
issue is not so much one of imperial expansion, of which we are accused, as
of the tendency to assimilate all governments or parties in the world that
support our immediate policies or call upon our help by invoking the notion
of free institutions and democratic values. Those nations that are for the
moment “on our side” become “the free world.” A repressive and unstable
military dictatorship in South Vietnam becomes “the free people of South
Vietnam and their government.” It is then part of the role of America as the
New Jerusalem and “the last best hope of earth” to defend such
governments with treasure and eventually with blood. When our soldiers are
actually dying, it becomes possible to consecrate the struggle further by
invoking the great theme of sacrifice. For the majority of the American
people who are unable to judge whether the people in South Vietnam (or
wherever) are “free like us,” such arguments are convincing. Fortunately
President Johnson has been less ready to assert that “God has favored our
undertaking” in the case of Vietnam than with respect to civil rights. But
others are not so hesitant. The civil religion has exercised long-term
pressure for the humane solution of our greatest domestic problem, the
treatment of the Negro American. It remains to be seen how relevant it can
become for our role in the world at large, and whether we can effectually
stand for “the revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought,” in John F.
Kennedy’s words.
The civil religion is obviously involved in the most pressing moral and
political issues of the day. But it is also caught in another kind of crisis,
theoretical and theological, of which it is at the moment largely unaware.
“God” has clearly been a central symbol in the civil religion from the
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“God” has clearly been a central symbol in the civil religion from the
beginning and remains so today. This symbol is just as central to the civil
religion as it is to Judaism or Christianity. In the late eighteenth century this
posed no problem; even Tom Paine, contrary to his detractors, was not an
atheist. From left to right and regardless of church or sect, all could accept
the idea of God. But today, as even Time has recognized, the meaning of
“God” is by no means so clear or so obvious. There is no formal creed in the
civil religion. We have had a Catholic President; it is conceivable that we
could have a Jewish one. But could we have an agnostic president? Could a
man with conscientious scruples about using the word “God” the way
Kennedy and Johnson have used it be elected chief magistrate of our
country? If the whole God symbolism requires reformulation, there will be
obvious consequences for the civil religion, consequences perhaps of liberal
alienation and of fundamentalist ossification that have not so far been
prominent in this realm. The civil religion has been a point of articulation
between the profoundest commitments of Western religious and
philosophical tradition and the common beliefs of ordinary Americans. It is
not too soon to consider how the deepening theological crisis may affect the
future of this articulation.
The Third Time of Trial
In conclusion it may be worthwhile to relate the civil religion to the most
serious situation that we as Americans now face, what I call the third time of
trial. The first time of trial had to do with the question of independence,
whether we should or could run our own affairs in our own way. The second
time of trial was over the issue of slavery, which in turn was only the most
salient aspect of the more general problem of the full institutionalization of
democracy within our country. This second problem we are still far from
solving though we have some notable successes to our credit. But we have
been overtaken by a third great problem that has led to a third great crisis,
in the midst of which we stand. This is the problem of responsible action in a
revolutionary world, a world seeking to attain many of the things, material
and spiritual, that we have already attained. Americans have, from the
beginning, been aware of the responsibility and the significance our
republican experiment has for the whole world. The first internal political
polarization in the new nation had to do with our attitude toward the French
Revolution. But we were small and weak then, and “foreign entanglements”
seemed to threaten our very survival. During the last century, our relevance
for the world was not forgotten, but our role was seen as purely exemplary.
Our democratic republic rebuked tyranny by merely existing. Just after
World War I we were on the brink of taking a different role in the world, but
once again we turned our backs.
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once again we turned our backs.
Since World War II the old pattern has become impossible. Every president
since Franklin Roosevelt has been groping toward a new pattern of action in
the world, one that would be consonant with our power and our
responsibilities. For Truman and for the period dominated by John Foster
Dulles that pattern was seen to be the great Manichean confrontation of East
and West, the confrontation of democracy and “the false philosophy of
Communism” that provided the structure of Truman’s inaugural address. But
with the last years of Eisenhower and with the successive two presidents,
the pattern began to shift. The great problems came to be seen as caused
not solely by the evil intent of any one group of men. For Kennedy it was not
so much a struggle against particular men as against “the common enemies
of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”
But in the midst of this trend toward a less primitive conception of ourselves
and our world, we have somehow, without anyone really intending it,
stumbled into a military confrontation where we have come to feel that our
honor is at stake. We have in a moment of uncertainty been tempted to rely
on our overwhelming physical power rather than on our intelligence, and we
have, in part, succumbed to this temptation. Bewildered and unnerved when
our terrible power fails to bring immediate success, we are at the edge of a
chasm the depth of which no man knows.
I cannot help but think of Robinson Jeffers, whose poetry seems more apt
now than when it was written, when he said:
Unhappy country, what wings you have! .
Weep (it is frequent in human affairs), weep for
the terrible magnificence of the means,
The ridiculous incompetence of the reasons, the
bloody and shabby
Pathos of the result.
But as so often before in similar times, we have a man of prophetic stature,
without the bitterness or misanthropy of Jeffers, who, as Lincoln before him,
calls this nation to its judgment:
When a nation is very powerful but lacking in self-confidence, it is
likely to behave in a manner that is dangerous both to itself and
to others.
Gradually but unmistakably, America is succumbing to that arrogance of
power which has afflicted, weakened and in some cases destroyed great
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power which has afflicted, weakened and in some cases destroyed great
nations in the past.
If the war goes on and expands, if that fatal process continues to
accelerate until America becomes what it is not now and never
has been, a seeker after unlimited power and empire, then
Vietnam will have had a mighty and tragic fallout indeed.
I do not believe that will happen. I am very apprehensive but I
still remain hopeful, and even confident, that America, with its
humane and democratic traditions, will find the wisdom to match
its power.[xix]
Without an awareness that our nation stands under higher judgment, the
tradition of the civil religion would be dangerous indeed. Fortunately, the
prophetic voices have never been lacking. Our present situation brings to
mind the Mexican-American war that Lincoln, among so many others,
opposed. The spirit of civil disobedience that is alive today in the civil rights
movement and the opposition to the Vietnam War was already clearly
outlined by Henry David Thoreau when he wrote, “If the law is of such a
nature that it requires you to be an agent of injustice to another, then I say,
break the law. Thoreau’s words, “I would remind my countrymen that they
are men first, and Americans at a late and convenient hour,”[xx] provide an
essential standard for any adequate thought and action in our third time of
trial. As Americans, we have been well favored in the world, but it is as men
that we will be judged.
Out of the first and second times of trial have come, as we have seen, the
major symbols of the American civil religion. There seems little doubt that a
successful negotiation of this third time of trial-the attainment of some kind
of viable and coherent world order-would precipitate a major new set of
symbolic forms. So far the flickering flame of the United Nations burns too
low to be the focus of a cult, but the emergence of a genuine transnational
sovereignty would certainly change this. It would necessitate the
incorporation of vital international symbolism into our civil religion, or,
perhaps a better way of putting it, it would result in American civil religion
becoming simply one part of a new civil religion of the world. It is useless to
speculate on the form such a civil religion might take, though it obviously
would draw on religious traditions beyond the sphere of biblical religion
alone. Fortunately, since the American civil religion is not the worship of the
American nation but an understanding of the American experience in the
light of ultimate and universal reality, the reorganization entailed by such a
new situation need not disrupt the American civil religion’s continuity. A
world civil religion could be accepted as a fulfillment and not as a denial of
American civil religion. Indeed, such an outcome has been the eschatological
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American civil religion. Indeed, such an outcome has been the eschatological
hope of American civil religion from the beginning. To deny such an outcome
would be to deny the meaning of America itself.
Behind the civil religion at every point lie biblical archetypes: Exodus,
Chosen People, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, and Sacrificial Death and
Rebirth. But it is also genuinely American and genuinely new. It has its own
prophets and its own martyrs, its own sacred events and sacred places, its
own solemn rituals and symbols. It is concerned that America be a society
as perfectly in accord with the will of God as men can make it, and a light to
all nations.
It has often been used and is being used today as a cloak for petty interests
and ugly passions. It is in need-as any living faith-of continual reformation,
of being measured by universal standards. But it is not evident that it is
incapable of growth and new insight.
It does not make any decisions for us. It does not remove us from moral
ambiguity, from being, in Lincoln’s fine phrase, an “almost chosen people.”
But it is a heritage of moral and religious experience from which we still
have much to learn as we formulate the decisions that lie ahead.
Endnotes
[i] Why something so obvious should have escaped serious analytical
attention is itself an interesting problem. Part of the reason is probably the
controversial nature of the subject. From the earliest years of the nineteenth
century, conservative religious and political groups have argued that
Christianity is, in fact, the national religion. Some of them from time to time
and as recently as the 1950s proposed constitutional amendments that
would explicitly recognize the sovereignty of Christ. In defending the
doctrine of separation of church and state, opponents of such groups have
denied that the national polity has, intrinsically, anything to do with religion
at all. The moderates on this issue have insisted that the American state has
taken a permissive and indeed supportive attitude toward religious groups
(tax exemptions, et cetera), thus favoring religion but still missing the
positive institutionalization with which I am concerned. But part of the
reason this issue has been left in obscurity is certainly due to the peculiarly
Western concept of “religion” as denoting a single type of collectivity of
which an individual can be a member of one and only one at a time. The
Durkheimian notion that every group has a religious dimension, which would
be seen as obvious in southern or eastern Asia, is foreign to us. This
obscures the recognition of such dimensions in our society.
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obscures the recognition of such dimensions in our society.
[ii] Dwight D. Eisenhower, in Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1955), p. 97.
[iii] God is mentioned or referred to in all inaugural addresses but
Washington’s second, which is a very brief (two paragraphs) and perfunctory
acknowledgement. It is not without interest that the actual word “God” does
not appear until Monroe’s second inaugural, March 5, 1821. In his first
inaugural, Washington refers to God as “that Almighty Being who rules the
universe,” “Great Author of every public and private good,” “Invisible Hand,”
and “benign Parent of the Human Race.” John Adams refers to God as
“Providence,” “Being who is supreme over all,” “Patron of Order,” “Fountain
of Justice,” and “Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty.”
Jefferson speaks of “that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the
universe,” and “that Being in whose hands we are.” Madison speaks of “that
Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny of nations,” and
“Heaven.” Monroe uses “Providence” and “the Almighty” in his first inaugural
and finally “Almighty God” in his second. See Inaugural Addresses of the
Presidents of the United States from George Washington 1789 to Harry S.
Truman 1949, 82d Congress, 2d Session, House Document No. 540, 1952.
[iv] For example, Abiel Abbot, pastor of the First Church in Haverhill,
Massachusetts, delivered a Thanksgiving sermon in 1799, Traits of
Resemblance in the People of the United States of America to Ancient Israel,
in which he said, “It has been often remarked that the people of the United
States come nearer to a parallel with Ancient Israel, than any other nation
upon the globe. Hence ‘Our American Israel’ is a term frequently used; and
common consent allows it apt and proper.” In Hans Kohn, The Idea of
Nationalism (New York: Macmillan Co., 1961), p. 665.
[v] That the Mosaic analogy was present in the minds of leaders at the very
moment of the birth of the republic is indicated in the designs proposed by
Franklin and Jefferson for the seal of the United States of America. Together
with Adams, they formed a committee of three delegated by the Continental
Congress on July 4, 1776, to draw up the new device. “Franklin proposed as
the device Moses lifting up his wand and dividing the Red Sea while Pharaoh
was overwhelmed by its waters, with the motto ‘Rebellion to tyrants is
obedience to God.’ Jefferson proposed the children of Israel in the wilderness
‘led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night.'” Anson Phelps Stokes,
Church and State in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Co.,
1950), pp. 467-68.
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[vi] Sidney E. Mead, The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper & Row,
1963), p. 12.
[vii] Abraham Lincoln, in Allan Nevins, ed., Lincoln and the Gettysburg
Address (Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Ill. Press, 1964), p. 39.
[viii] Robert Lowell, in ibid., “On the Gettysburg Address,” pp. 88-89.
[ix] William Henry Herndon, in Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the
American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1941), p. 162.
[x] Karl Decker and Angus McSween, Historic Arlington (Washington, D.C.,
1892), pp. 60-67.
[xi] How extensive the activity associated with Memorial Day can be is
indicated by Warner: “The sacred symbolic behavior of Memorial Day, in
which scores of the town’s organizations are involved, is ordinarily divided
into four periods. During the year separate rituals are held by many of the
associations for their dead, and many of these activities are connected with
later Memorial Day events. In the second phase, preparations are made
during the last three or four weeks for the ceremony itself, and some of the
associations perform public rituals. The third phase consists of scores of
rituals held in all the cemeteries, churches, and halls of the associations.
These rituals consist of speeches and highly ritualized behavior. They last for
two days and are climaxed by the fourth and last phase, in which all the
separate celebrants gather in the center of the business district on the
afternoon of Memorial Day. The separate organizations, with their members
in uniform or with fitting insignia, march through the town, visit the shrines
and monuments of the hero dead, and, finally, enter the cemetery. Here
dozens of ceremonies are held, most of them highly symbolic and
formalized.” During these various ceremonies Lincoln is continually referred
to and the Gettysburg Address recited many times. W. Lloyd Warner,
American Life (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962), pp. 8-9.
[xii] Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Religion of Abraham Lincoln,” in Nevins, ed., op.
cit., p. 72. William J. Wolfe of the Episcopal Theological School in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, has written: “Lincoln is one of the greatest
theologians of America-not in the technical meaning of producing a system
of doctrine, certainly not as a defender of some one denomination, but in the
sense of seeing the hand of God intimately in the affairs of nations. Just so
the prophets of Israel criticized the events of their day from the perspective
of the God who is concerned for history, and who reveals His will within it.
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of the God who is concerned for history, and who reveals His will within it.
Lincoln now stands among God’s latter day prophets.” The Religion of
Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1963), p. 24.
[xiii] Seymour Martin Lipset, “Religion and American Values in The First New
Nation (New York: Basic Books, 1964), chap. 4.
[xiv] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1 (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1954), p. 310.
[xv] Henry Bargy, La Religion dans la Société aux États-Unis (Paris, 1902),
p. 31.
[xvi] De Tocqueville, op. cit., p. 311. Later he says, “In the United States
even the religion of most of the citizens is republican, since it submits the
truths of the other world to private judgment, as in politics the care of their
temporal interests is abandoned to the good sense of the people. Thus every
man is allowed freely to take that road which he thinks will lead him to
heaven, just as the law permits every citizen to have the right of choosing
his own government” (p. 436).
[xvii] Lyndon B. Johnson, in U.S., Congressional Record, House, March 15,
1965, pp. 4924, 4926.
[xviii] See Louis Hartz, “The Feudal Dream of the South,” pt. 4, The Liberal
Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955).
[xix] Senator J. William Fullbright, speech of April 28, 1966, as reported in
The New York Times, April 29, 1966.
[xx] Henry David Thoreau, In Yehoshua Arieli, Individualism and
Nationalism in American Ideology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,
1964), p. 274.
God-given right to conquer and colonize North America
Civilize the natives
The doctrine of MD was popularized and normalized
during the period of the Great Awakening (1725-1750)
BIBLICAL MOTIFS
Israelite persecution
Chosen-ness
Deliverance
Puritan settlers selected people of God
RACE AND MANIFEST DESTINY
“Curse of Ham”
CIVIL RELIGION IN AMERICA
Manifest Destiny is American civil religion
Worship of America, is American civil religion
QUESTION TO THINK ABOUT
Where are Asian Americans and
their religions on the American
civil religion landscape?
Does America need Civil
Religion?
Do we need civil religion?
American Civil Religion �and Race
Key Concepts
Manifest Destiny
Biblical motifs
Race and Manifest Destiny
Civil Religion in America
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Question to think about
This entry received a 10/10 for fulsome meaningful engagement with assigned reading and original creative analysis.
I originally signed up for this class thinking it would be more of a survey of Asian Religious Traditions – apparently, I was wrong (as stated in the syllabus.) Originally, I was disappointed, but after having completed the first readings and watched the videos, I’m both glad and interested that it is not. I must confess that this class will likely be difficult for me, as a straight white male (otherwise known as “the devil” in these current times) but that doesn’t deter me. I grew up in the Bay Area and feel fortunate to have been raised around a very diverse group of friends. I admit to thinking that racism was something I read about in the history books as it wasn’t something I overtly experienced. In 1996 I joined the military and spent a lot of time in the South (specifically Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia) where I realized racism was still occurring, while watching my friends get treated differently than me depending on what neighborhood we were in. Those feeling came rushing back as I continued the readings today.
One of the recurring thoughts I had today revolved around the people who were writing the history books at the times, and how they were unable to see people that were different from themselves through any lens but their own. In the article by Professor Lee, he explains that “explorers and missionaries have claimed indigenous peoples of the New World ‘lack knowledge of God’ or ‘have … no religion as we understand it” (Lee et. al. 130). This, to me, is one of the fundamental problems we have today: the inability to appreciate someone or something that is different from what we “know” without viewing it through the lens of our own understanding. This still happens today. Those who are writing the history only see it through their own eyes. I know this is not a uniquely American trait, though. As an example, throughout my time in the Navy I had the opportunity to travel through some amazing places. One of which, and I will never forget this, was Nagasaki, Japan. My shipmates and I had the privilege to tour the museum there dedicated to the lives lost in WW II. I will never forget the emotions I felt that day. One thing we all noticed, is that the history that lines the walls of that sacred space was very different than the way we learned it in the States. In our opinions, there were a lot of things completely left out (like the Pearl Harbor invasion for one.) Initially I was a little angry, but it didn’t take very long for understanding to wash over me. The people I met there (including a survivor who happened to be lucky enough to be behind a cement pillar in his workplace) were amazing. I saw them for who they were: human beings. I’ll never forget that day for a couple of reasons: 1) meeting that survivor made the events of that war human to me, and 2) we all (as humans) tell the stories as they relate to us, no matter how different it may be to others involved. I understood why the Japanese people tell the story of WWII differently than we do.
I realized while reading the second article, that I’m not any different – I see things through the lenses I was given, although I’m trying very hard to remove them. I was struck by the understanding that I didn’t think of Indian Americans as Asian, as discussed in the excerpt from Mr. Khyati Joshi where he says, “Even within the developing dialogue on Asian America, Indian Americans are the other, often invisible or marginalized because of the widespread popular understanding of the term “Asian American” to refer primarily or even exclusively to East Asian Americans” (95). When I thought about it, I knew where India was located (as I verified it on Google), but it just never occurred to me as I fell into the trap that Mr. Joshi discussed. Again, seeing things through the lens that I have constructed. This was confirmed even more for me, when I listened to Prof. Lee’s lecture on “Race and Racialization” where he defined race as being a “social construct,” or something of human invention, thus being unstable and changing over time. Today was also the first time I have ever heard the term “racialization.”
I have always considered myself relatively “woke” (to use the vernacular of the day) but I am quickly realizing that I have a lot to learn, and I’m happy to be here to do it. All of the readings today, including the lecture and the video, “A Class Divided” have shown me that, even though I’ve felt for a long time that we, as a society, need to stop seeing things that are different from us through our own lenses only, that I am just as guilty as those I call out. Even after the first day, I’m starting to see things differently – which excites me for the rest of the course!
Works Cited
Joshi, Khyati, “What Does Race Have to Do with Religion?” 2006. Pdf.
Lee, “Race and Racialization”, week 1.
Lee, Jonathan, et. al., “Religion, Race, and Orientalism.” 2015. Pdf.
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