Religion in America: The Basics

Michael Pasquier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317617747
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Religion in America: The Basics is a concise introduction to the historical development of religions in the United States. It is an invitation to explore the complex tapestry of religious beliefs and practices that shaped life in North America from the colonial encounters of the fifteenth century to the culture wars of the twenty-first century. Far from a people unified around a common understanding of Christianity, Religion in America: The Basics tracks the steady diversification of the American religious landscape and the many religious conflicts that changed American society. At the same time, it explores how Americans from a variety of religious backgrounds worked together to face the challenges of racism, poverty, war, and other social concerns. Because no single survey can ever satisfy the need to know more and think differently, Religion in America prepares readers to continue studying American religions with their own questions and perspectives in mind.

1

Introduction

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), a sociologist and cultural critic of American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, offered incisive and at times controversial commentary on the role of religion in the United States. Well known for his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois made a distinction between the concepts of “church” and “religion.” A church, he wrote in his magazine The Crisis in 1933, is an organization that regulates the creedal beliefs, worship practices, financial obligations, and ethical goals of a group. He saw churches as human institutions grounded in social reality, complete with all the hopes and frailties that come with any human endeavor. Religion was for Du Bois a theory about the ultimate concerns of humanity and moral questions of right and wrong. Such a theory of religion permitted Du Bois to recognize the plurality of truth claims, the dangers associated with confessional exclusivity, and how the influences of religious beliefs and practices extended well beyond the walls of churches.

The lives of most interest to Du Bois were those of African Americans. In a chapter of The Souls of Black Folk entitled “Of the Faith of the Fathers,” Du Bois identified African American churches “as the social center of Negro life in the United States.” He described the historical development of African American churches in the contexts of both slavery and emancipation, always mediated by the prevalence of national trends in race and politics. And he ended the chapter with a kind of religious proposition of his own, one that challenged African Americans to organize against a society with a past, present, and future steeped in white supremacy. Although always suspicious of religion, Du Bois couldn’t help but notice the power of religion to change the world, for better and for worse.

Suffice it to say that Du Bois thought a lot about the American experience of religion. Given the pervasiveness of religion in the United States today, it’s likely that many of us have given considerable thought to the same, although from our own personal perspectives and educational backgrounds. Like Du Bois, we all come to the subject of religion in America with certain expectations, prejudices, blind spots, and priorities. We all have our own theories of religion, some of them more or less refined according to professional standards that reflect the academic disciplines of history, sociology, psychology, and anthropology, to name a few. Moreover, we all carry with us some knowledge of American history, usually with an emphasis on the political contours of America’s past and a relatively thin understanding of the role of religion in that past.

The goal of this book is to introduce you to the academic study of religion in America and invite you to explore the complex tapestry of religious groups and movements throughout American history. We’re going to follow in the footsteps of Du Bois – and many others – by putting religion in conversation with other aspects of American society, including themes like history and memory; colonialism and nationalism; politics and law; race and ethnicity; gender and class; science and technology; and fundamentalism and pluralism. We’re going to see how religion works for some and against others, just as Du Bois so poignantly demonstrated in his many writings on the subject of race and religion. And we’re going to end with more questions than answers, for this is but a basic introduction to religion in America. Indeed, the success of this book depends on our ability to extend the investigation of religion in America well beyond these pages we turn in our hands.

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION

Religion is a modern concept. It is an idea with a history that developed, most scholars would agree, out of the social and cultural disruptions of Renaissance and Reformation Europe. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, at a time of unprecedented political transformation and scientific innovation, it became possible for people to differentiate between things religious and things not religious. Such a dualistic understanding of the world was simply not available in such clear terms to ancient and medieval Europeans, to say nothing of people from the continents of North America, South America, Africa, and Asia. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a scholar of comparative religion, thus distinguished between those “throughout history and throughout the world [who] have been able to be religious without the assistance of a special term,” and those who “mentally mak[e] religion into a thing, gradually coming to conceive it as an objective systematic entity.” Scholars usually describe this dualistic understanding of the world in terms of “religion” and “secularism.” Put simply, the tension between secular and religious worldviews is one of the things that makes us modern.

Our study of religion in America begins at this critical juncture in early modern history, at which point we see the peoples of Europe, Africa, and Native America encountering and transforming one another in dramatic and sometimes destructive ways. Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s critical historical approach to the concept of religion sets us on a course to discover how attitudes toward religion changed throughout American history. His historical methodology also challenges us to consider how today’s scholars fit within this long history of conceptualizing, and indeed imagining religion in certain ways. “For this reason,” the scholar of comparative religion Jonathan Z. Smith wrote, “the student of religion, and most particularly the historian of religion, must be relentlessly self-conscious” of how and why we define religion. In order for us to take a self-conscious approach to the study of religion, we must have some knowledge of the historical development of the modern idea of religion.

Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) and Max Weber (1864–1920) were pivotal figures in the sociological investigation of religion. In his 1912 book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim argued “that religion is an eminently social thing” comprising the basic building blocks of “beliefs and practices which unite [people] into one single moral community.” Ten years later, Weber insisted in his book The Sociology of Religion that religious thoughts and behaviors were connected to larger economic and material forces in society, which in turn created ethical systems for communities to follow. Taken together, the social theories of Durkheim and Weber have influenced several generations of scholars of religion, some of whom have focused on the study of religion in America. The sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, in particular, have led the way in describing “the history of American religion” as “the history of human actions and human organizations, not the history of ideas,” a conclusion made in the 1990s but with connections back to the revolutionary ideas of Durkheim and Weber.

Of course, ideas and personal experiences do matter to the study of religion, which is why we have psychological theories of religion. Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and William James (1842–1910), two of the founding architects of the field of psychology, are critical to our understanding of individual religious experiences. Freud, in his 1927 book The Future of an Illusion, called religion “the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity,” a phrase that reminds us of Karl Marx’s claim that religion “is the opiate of the masses.” Stemming from his work in psychoanalysis, Freud likened the appeal of religion to emotional, nonrational, and childlike attachments. William James, on the other hand, resisted the inclination of Marx and Freud to reduce religion to a drug or a neurosis, proposing instead a pragmatic theory of religion that accepted the truth and value of religious experiences insofar as they were verified by believers. James’s sensitivity to personal aspects of religion was on display in his 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he defined religion as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”

James, although revolutionary in his thoughts about religious experience, was a product of his time and a reflection of the culture in which he lived. The child of wealthy parents and the brother of the American novelist Henry James (1843–1916), he came of age at Harvard and associated himself with people like Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), later a great philosopher, and Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841–1935), later a Supreme Court justice. His ideas about the suddenness and extraordinary quality of individual religious experiences, according to the scholar Ann Taves, said something about the interconnectedness of Protestant notions of individual agency and psychological notions of the self in America. While James’s unique attention to personal forms of religion opened scholars to new avenues of investigation, it also mitigated the importance of social networks that nurtured religious beliefs and practices in the United States and abroad. By situating James’s theory of religion in its particular context, Taves did what any good historical anthropologist would do, which is to provide a close reading of how human thoughts and actions shape, and are shaped by, culture.

Many of today’s leading scholars take anthropological approaches to the study of religion. Chief among their influences is Clifford Geertz (1926–2006), an American-born and Harvard-trained anthropologist, who described religion as a cultural system of symbols that establish moods and motivations in people; provide them with a general order of the universe; and then cloak those conceptions with a veneer of factuality in ways that seem utterly realistic and true. With this definition of religion in mind, Geertz insisted that the anthropological study of religion requires “an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper” and “the relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological processes.” In other words, Geertz was saying that religion does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, religion is akin to art and science in the way in which it is integrated into the social, psychological, and cultural fabric of life. The role of the anthropologist, then, is to provide a “thick description,” or interpretive analysis, of particular cultures.

What follows in this book is a careful reflection on the historical development of religion in America, while keeping in mind the social, psychological, and cultural dimensions of change over time and through space. Such a balanced approach to the study of religion in America will not only introduce you to key people, ideas, events, and movements, but also train you to think critically about how we use the term “religion” in light of other factors that influence both the subject of inquiry and those who inquire. Indeed, if we return to our three examples of American theorists of religion – the sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, the psychologist William James, and the anthropologist Clifford Geertz – we see how the line between the inquired and the inquirer is not always clear in American religious history. All three men were skeptical of religious truth, while at the same time keenly aware of the real-world consequences of religion. Du Bois was especially illuminating on this point. Writing for both black and white audiences in the era of Jim Crow, but no less relevant to audiences today, Du Bois reassures us that we “ought not be puzzled by [our] religious surroundings,” as long as we take a critical and respectful approach to the study of religion in America.

STUDYING RELIGION IN AMERICA

The study of religion in America is a multidisciplinary endeavor. It is also a contested topic of considerable debate and revision. Commenting on the diversity of America’s “religious heritage” in his 1966 book A Religious History of America, Edwin Scott Gaustad noted how “the achievements of man are too rich to permit a sterile cynicism; yet the depravity of man is too evident to justify a soft sentimentalism.” It is somewhere in this middle ground between cynicism and sentimentalism that we begin Chapter 2 with a discussion of key trends in the historical interpretation of religion in America. We ask the question: How have scholars and citizens narrated American religious history? We find answers in the development of the academic fields of “church history” in the late nineteenth century and “American religious history” in the late twentieth century. We also locate them in America’s “civil religion” and the various ways in which religion has been memorialized in the public sphere. Controversies over such portrayals of religion in America reinforce the point that the legacy of religious entanglement in both scholarly circles and public squares is a live matter for all of us, and therefore one that requires careful historical evaluation.

After a critical analysis of the history and memory of religion in America, the book is structured chronologically from the colonial period to the present. In Chapter 3 – “Religion and Colonialism in Early America, 1400s to 1770s” – we consider the cultural collision of the religious beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans, as well as the role of religion in the development of a national identity leading up to the American Revolution. Chapter 4 – “Religion in a New Nation, 1770s to 1860s” – covers the explosive growth and diversification of Christian adherence during the early nineteenth century, due in no small measure to the religious lives of enslaved African Americans and European immigrants. Chapter 5 – “Religion in a Modernizing America, 1860s to 1920s” – picks up with the aftermath of the Civil War and its dramatic impact on the religious organizations of both black and white Americans. It continues with the ongoing immigration of non-Protestant (Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu) people to a modernizing United States, combined with an exploration of how Native Americans reacted to government oppression from religious perspectives. In Chapter 6 – “Religious Diversity in a Globalizing America, 1920s to 2010s” – we track how religion played a role in the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War, followed by the impact of religion in the civil rights, feminist, and antiwar movements of the 1960s. Moreover, we see how a new era of immigration contributed to the religious diversity of the American religious landscape, with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and non-European Christians populating much of the United States. And we conclude with a critical reflection on the shape of American religious pluralism in the twenty-first century. By the end, we’ll have taken an inclusive approach to the study of religion in America, one that embraces the flexibility and fluidity of religious identities throughout American history.

Some might say that a book of this size on a topic of such complexity can only get us in trouble at the next cocktail party or family dinner. And I’d tend to agree, but only if we fail to recognize that the cumulative effects of these chapters, while not comprehensive, do provide us with ample historical context and theoretical tools for further inquiry into the diversity of religion in America. The net result of reading this book, I hope, is that we will think critically about the concept of religion, recognize the impact of religion in American history, and continue to pursue our own investigations into past and present features of religion in American life. These are not modest goals. But they are achievable if we again consider the path taken by W. E. B. Du Bois, a person who welcomed new ideas and applied them to his critical analysis of the world around him. After all, “There is but one coward on earth,” Du Bois wrote in his 1940 autobiography Dusk of Dawn, “and that is the coward that dare not know.” Of course, we won’t know everything there is to know about religion in America after reading this book, but we’ll have a running start.

FURTHER READING

Major books that have shaped the academic study of religion include W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 [1903]); Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995 [1912]); Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993 [1922]); Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion (New York: W.W. Norton, 1961 [1927]); William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Penguin, 1982 [1902]); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1991 [1959]); and Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

2

THE HISTORY AND MEMORY OF RELIGION IN AMERICA

Americans like to quote from Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 book Democracy in America. It’s seen by some as a “one-stop-shop” for insight into the character of a new and expanding nation that, according to the 25-year-old Frenchman, served as a model of democratic principles for the world to aspire to. Originally commissioned by the French government to study the American prison system, Tocqueville was so “struck” by “the general equality of condition among the people” of the United States that he enlarged the scope of his inquiry to include all of “American society.” He was especially interested in knowing how America’s democratic experiment might translate to Europe’s “Christian nations.”

Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America with a firm belief in divine providence. He argued that the spread of democracy was a gift from God, and that the United States was the nation that best represented the progress and promise of God’s will on earth. Tocqueville began his book with a description of the geography of North America before European colonization, a vast and beautiful landscape that “seemed prepared to be the abode of a great nation yet unborn.” As for the native inhabitants of the continent, Tocqueville believed that they were “placed by Providence amid the riches of the New World only to enjoy them for a season; they were there merely to wait till others came.” The “others” who came, according to Tocqueville, were Anglo-Saxon colonists from England, the most important being the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth with “their national characteristics … already completely formed.” The Pilgrims were Puritans, a Protestant sect described by Tocqueville as “not merely a religious doctrine, but corresponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories.” Why did the Puritans leave their homeland for North America? According to Tocqueville, it was to “live according to their own opinions and worship God in freedom.”

Despite his belief in the power of God to spread democracy, Tocqueville still recognized the “great evils” aimed at people of Native American and African descent. “I believe that the Indian nations of North America are doomed to perish,” he wrote, while “oppression has, at one stroke, deprived the descendants of Africans of almost all the privileges of humanity.” He foreshadowed the expansion of the United States to the Pacific, and with it the continued displacement of Native Americans and expansion of African slavery. He also anticipated “great calamities” between Northern and Southern states over slavery. But he wrote little ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The History and Memory of Religion in America
• 3. Religion and Colonialism in Early America, 1400s to 1770s
• 4. Religion in a New Nation, 1770s to 1860s
• 5. Religion in a Modernizing America, 1860s to 1920s
• 6. Religious Diversity in a Globalizing America, 1920s to 2010s
• 7. Conclusion
• Index