US Christianity's Cold War baggage

As a plug for the recently released paperback edition of  American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, David Campbell and Robert Putnam published an essay summarizing that book in  Foreign Affairs a few months ago (Mar/Apr 2012).  As the article reveals, the book is not yet another slamming the religious right. It is instead an historical and social scientific analysis of the intersection of religion and politics in post-WWII US.  But their analysis still blames the religious right for politicizing religion, and as "religion and politics have become entangled," they write, "many Americans, especially younger ones, have pulled away from religion.  And that correlation turns out to causal, not coincidental."

Campbell and Putnam rightly begin in the 1950s, when religiosity surged:

more Americans than ever were attending religious services, more churches were being built to accommodate them, and more books of Scripture were being sold and read. But in President Dwight Eisenhower's America, religion had no partisan overtones. Ike was as popular among those who never darkened the door of a church (or synagogue, and so on) as among churchgoers.

But then those tumultuous Sixties came along, and its "aftershocks" in the 1970s, with declining religious adherents among Catholics and liberal Protestant denominations, and a polarization that we now call the "God gap" between liberals and conservatives, and between Democrats and Republicans.

With "In God We Trust" on our currency, dollars could
 not be anything but the truth.  From retronaut.co

But I would say that the early Cold War years really set this all up.  President Truman, and even more Eisenhower after him, linked religion to the struggle against communism--the faithful versus godless atheism.  In 1952, the Senate endorsed the fervently anticommunist Billy Graham's revival on federal grounds.  Eisenhower, with much public fanfare, began his cabinet meetings with prayer (led, interestingly, by Ezra Taft Benson, Agriculture Secretary and and one of the Apostles of the Mormon church).  Ike also started the practice of an annual prayer breakfast (1953), and signed laws adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance (1954) and making "In God We Trust" the national motto and a message on currency (1956).  His administration also set up an "Ideological Subcommittee on the Religious Factor" in the National Security Council in order to think up ways to use religion as a "cold war instrument," and it created civil-military training programs like "Militant Liberty" that relied on Protestant evangelicals to instruct soldiers and citizens on the religious foundation of their nation's cold war mission (these programs would soon morph into Campus Crusade for Christ and the Christian Embassy).

Citizens were doing their part, too, with pastors writing sermons on the evils of communism, the Eagle's Club putting the Ten Commandments on courthouse lawns (with the support of Cecil B. DeMille's money), the YWCA declaring that "Christian ideals" were a crucial component of the US's cold war armory, and the fundamentalist International Council of Christian Churches sending bibles over the Iron Curtain on balloons.

This early cold war religiosity was so thorough that in 1954 the New York Times would report that at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, "The President led millions of Americans in observance of a Memorial Day of prayer for peace as the best means of keeping faith with the nation’s war dead..."  The reporter couldn't possibly have known that in fact millions did pray along with the President.  It didn't matter.  The story was so eminently believable.  And it is no surprise that the following year the Republican National Committee would declare Eisenhower the "spiritual leader of our times."

In other words, the courtship between the Republican party and evangelicals really began in the 1950s, and this post-war religious surge was wrapped up in a cold war understanding of the US's mission in the world. Because this took place when the US had just come off a grand victory, and was enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity and military superiority, I'm thinking this cold war religiosity imprinted the WW II and early Baby Boomer generations with a new norm connecting Christianity, patriotism, and anticommunism.

This imprint was so powerful that, for many, that's the way it always used to be, or should be.  However, the "aftershocks" of the sixties and seventies (all those protests and movements--civil rights, women's, anti-war, counter-culture--along with the Kent State shootings, Watergate and the Church hearings) exposed the earlier halcyon years as just a blip of seeming content consensus in a much longer national history. But jeremiads since the "Reagan revolution" in the early 1980s have kept reviving it, along with the other new norms that appeared at the time: nuclear families (heterosexual of course) living in single-family homes in subdivisions, men as breadwinners and women at home, car ownership as necessity and rite of passage into adulthood (meaning we need cheap gas!), and socioeconomic mobility as likely for all rather just possible (at least for working and middle class whites).

And note that the lines of cultural conflict are running through many of those elements of the Cold War supposedly apolitical "civil religion" that the Eisenhower promoted--battles over prayer in government settings, over the Ten Commandment monuments on courthouse lawns; over the prayer breakfast; over the "under God" clause added to the Pledge, and over evangelical activities at the US Air Force Academy.

The slogan for Eisenhower's first presidential campaign was "I Like Ike" (see TV ad here), and some still really long for him and his time, when what are now considered conservative Christian attitudes were dominant, or even national norms.  Thus we still hear some throwing "socialism" or "communism" (or now, "redistribution") at people or ideas they deem evil, 20 years after the end of the cold war.  It's no surprise that presidential candidate Rick Santorum talked about taking the country back to pre-Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) days when states could ban the use of contraceptives.  This imprint is why the crisis in the home construction and car industries was devastating not only in terms of lost jobs and livelihoods, but because the house and the car have been the core of the American Dream since the early cold war years.  The imprint is why Fox's Bill O'Reilly brought on Charles Krauthammer to help viewers understand "the decline of America in the context of the Republican debate."  This was a goofy way to put it--I'm sure O'Reilly didn't mean to imply that the GOP debate was in part reflecting the decline, but the term set up the title of Krauthammer's section "Can any of the GOP candidates restore America?"

Ron DiCianni's Praying for Peace

But in terms of religion, the imprint has weakened, or rather, it appears to have remained with an increasingly smaller slice of the US electorate.  That was clear when efforts by some conservative evangelicals to make George W. Bush another "spiritual leader of our times" did not get farther than the kitschy art of Ron DiCianni.  It was evident in the minor firestorms that broke out over discoveries of a "religious factor" in the global war on terror (President Bush calling the war on terror a "crusade," military intelligence briefings with bible verses on their covers, bible verses inscribed on rifle sights, among others).  It was obvious in President Bush's ultimately failed effort to lure support for his global war on terror by obliquely framing it as divinely sanctioned mission. "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty," he announced shortly after 9/11, "have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."  Or a year later, cribbing wildly from the Gospel of John, he declared that

Ours is the cause of human dignity: freedom guided by conscience and guarded by peace.  This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind.  That hope drew millions to this harbor: That hope still lights our way.  And the light shines in the darkness.  And the darkness will not overcome it.

A 2006 Baylor survey reveals one reason why that this framing got so little traction.  Only a quarter of evangelicals agreed with the proposition that "God favors the United States," and overall, less than a fifth of Americans agreed with it.  But it was not just that fewer conservative Christians were buying the notion of a providential role for their country.  As Campbell and Putnam, the entire religious landscape has dramatically shifted.  Since the 1970s, an increasing number of people report no religious affiliation (from 5-7% to 19% in 2011), and this trend is even stronger among the "millennials," those under 30 (33% in 2011).  The reason, according to Campbell and Putnam, is that

. . .To them, "religion" means "Republican," "intolerant," and "homophobic." Since those traits do not represent their views, they do not see themselves -- or wish to be seen by their peers -- as religious.
     Our data support this theory. By tracking individuals for five years, between 2006 and 2011, we found that Democrats and progressives were much more likely to become nones than were Republicans. The religious defections were concentrated specifically among those Americans who reported the greatest discomfort with religion-infused politics, regardless of their own partisan loyalties. In effect, Americans (especially young Americans) who might otherwise attend religious services are saying, "Well, if religion is just about conservative politics, then I'm outta here."

So the "God-gap" is growing, not just between ideological stances and party affiliations, but also between generations.  But the term "God-gap" can mislead us--the dropping number of people identifying with this or that Christian denomination does not necessarily mean religiosity or interest in spiritual matters has dropped precipitously--we can read it as greater religious pluralism.  Its this growing pluralism that has permitted a Mormon to become the GOP candidate for president.  But it also means the Republican party will have a hard time with the growing number of voters who do not adhere to a Christian orthodoxy rooted in a Cold War Manichaeism.

Latest poll reports 47% of Americans can chew gum but walk only "poorly" at the same time, the rest are awesome at it

Unless you're lobotomized you've heard of the secretly taped video Mother Jones recently released (accessible here).  Most of the press has been about his characterization of 47% of Americans as slackers, and therefore will never vote for him, the uber non-slacker.  But Ruben Navarrette (at CNN) focuses on this Romney comment:

My dad, as you probably know was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico... and, uh, had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this ... I mean I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino.

It's a bizarre conjecture, as if there were a single Latino voting bloc, as if Romney's whiteness has been such a detriment to his political career.  Talk about playing the victim.  Anyway, Navarrette points out that being Latino certainly didn't help Bill Richardson, and adds:

. . .if Mitt really wants to get in touch with his inner Mexican, I think he'll find that it's not all churros and chocolate or pinatas and pan dulce. You see--and you might find this hard to believe, Mitt--but there is still a lot of discrimination in this country against Latinos as whites hunker down and try to hold on to what they have in the face of changing demographics.

This response, though, would probably roll right off Romney's back given his belief that this slacker 47% of Americans see themselves as victims--that's the narrative, people who link inequality to discrimination are simply whining about being victims rather than taking individual responsibility for their position in life.

Doesn't matter that data on structural inequality are readily available.  For example, poverty rates for Black and Hispanic children (something for which these children can hardly be held responsible) are significantly higher than those of whites, respectively 34, 27, and 10% (see p. 16 in this NCES report).  Poverty is associated with physical health, and therefore with the capacity to learn. Impoverished children have lower school completion rates and have more learning disabilities, both which affect employment chances down the road.

This still doesn't matter in this narrative of victimhood where there are no structural conditions, just atomized individuals who manage well a string of circumstances, or don't.  Interestingly, though, Americans as a whole are of two minds about this.  According to a Pew survey, a sizable majority disagree with the statement "Hard work offers little guarantee of success" (see chart below)

Pew Research Center: Trends in American Values, 1987-2012

However, the lower one's income, the more likely she or he would agree that "Success if pretty much determined by forces outside our control (see chart below).  Still, over the years near half of low income people disagree with that statement.

Pew Research Center: Trends in American Values, 1987-2012

However, when asked about whether its "circumstances" or "lack of effort" that explains poverty, more Americans say the former over the latter (46 to 38%).  Predictably, answers vary significantly by gender, race/ethnicity, income education, and party identification. Women, Blacks and Hispanics, low income folks, and Democrats are more likely to attribute poverty to circumstances.  Men, whites, and Republicans are more likely to say lack of effort (chart below)

Pew Research Center: Trends in American Values, 1987-2012

Clearly, the way the question about poverty is framed shapes American responses.  And it also gives us a clue as to why Romney's 47% comment resonates with a broad spectrum of Americans, but also why it got so much criticism.  As well, when put into a simplistic either-or sort of way, we're bound to get a picture of polarization and contradictions.

Let me illustrate with a quick story about a young Latina I know.  Her early years were passed in poverty, in urban projects and shelters, surrounded by addiction.  She moved in with a foster family, already behind in school, and with some severe learning disabilities.  She did earn her high school degree and get a job in a restaurant chain, but she also had a couple of abusive boyfriends, and two children out-of-wedlock, one of whom had serious health problems.  Now in her mid-twenties, she owns a home, has a partner whom she adores, her children are doing well in school, and she is poised to become a manager.

How did she get from the potentially disastrous point A to the promising point B?  Hard work, behavior changes, and perseverance.  Instead of lamenting what she could not do (learning disabilities), she found other intellectual strengths to get her through.  She stopped going out with unemployed guys with shady backgrounds, and found a dependable, caring partner.  Despite her heavy workload, she has remained deeply engaged in her children's lives, including their schooling.  She has bravely taken on managerial roles where she works, even though the training required scared her to death, since it reawakened all that insecurity and angst she had felt for years in school.  She has learned how and where to get help and advice on managing the home and finances.  Through force of will, she has turned her life around.  That's the narrative of individual responsibility (the inverse of victimhood) that Romney touts.

But it's not the whole story, of course.  We could start with observing that the conditions she lived with in those crucial early years of her life meant she had more barriers to achievement than her white middle class schoolmates.  And while, happily, she made it over those barriers, she didn't do this on her own.  She learned and earned her high school degree with care and attention of public high school teachers.  She has enjoyed free childcare from family and friends over the years.  She got a couple of rent-free years by living with her parents.  The court assured her at least some child support.  Medicaid covered much of the expensive healthcare for the children (as well as her two difficult deliveries).  The federal earned income credit allowed her to amass money for a downpayment on a home, and HUD subsidized her mortgage. So this is the other narrative, one of structural inequality.  She started out behind, but a combination of her family's social and financial capital, and local and federal government programs, enabled her to, if not catch up, at least not be so far behind in terms of economic and social stability.

Clearly, these two versions are compatible, yet the way we are talking about inequality makes them incompatible.  Thus we end up with Romney's facile line about that 47%, and responses like that of Navarrette which become more fodder for Romney's victimhood narrative.  I don't expect the campaigns to take this conversation to a more useful place, but we can.

Back-burner or Big Stick: The Demos and GOP on Relations with Latin America

Neither Democrats or Republicans have much worthwhile to say about Latin America. Both  party platforms depict the region as little more than a source of insecurity for the United States. Democrats offer vague promises to continue the war on drugs and organized crime while Republicans clamor for a return to a Reagan-era aggressive stance that treats the region as our private backyard.  Both reveal the condescension most Americans have long applied to the region, when they've bothered to think about it at all.

Here's what the Demos have to say:

In the Americas, we have deepened our economic and security ties with countries throughout the hemisphere, from Canada and Mexico to Brazil and Chile and El Salvador. We have strengthened cooperation with Mexico, Colombia, and throughout Central America to combat narco- traffickers and criminal gangs that threaten their citizens and ours. We will also work to disrupt organized crime networks seeking to use the Caribbean to smuggle drugs into our country. As we collectively confront these challenges, we will continue to support the region's security forces, border security, and police with the equipment, training, and technologies they need to keep their communities safe. We will improve coordination and share more information so that those who traffic in drugs and in human beings have fewer places to hide. And we will continue to put unprecedented pressure on cartel finances, including in the United States.

What's the implicit message of this plank? The whole region is a morass of criminality and violence, a conduit of threats to the United States.  Of course there has been a horrendous stream of violence flowing out of the drug trade, but it is hardly the case that Latin America is entirely awash in it. To reduce the region to this characterization is unjust, misleading, and distracts us from other important ways Latin American countries figure in US interests and opportunities, and the way the US figures into theirs.  There is a passing reference elsewhere in the section on foreign policy to increasing the number of free trade agreements in the region, along with improving commercial airline accords.  But, at least for this campaign, Democrats have nothing to say about strengthening geopolitical alliances, working together to resolve collective problems like global warming, assessing the growing global weight of Brazil (forging stronger ties with China, India, and Russia, in a loose economic association known as BRIC), nor considering the implications of the rise of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), an alternative to the Organization of American States that excludes the US, as well as Canada.

Is this all Latin America is?
Atrocities in Mexico's Drug War

Maybe Latin America is also this?
At a political rally in Guatemala City's Plaza Central, 2011
where we, surprisingly, dodged no bullets, nor stumbled over cadavers.

I realize these issues don't inspire a lot of interest in voters, most who are oblivious to Latin America, apart from those who can afford the tourist destinations.  Still, there could have been at least an echo of President Obama's speech at the OAS's 2009 Summit of the Americas:

All of us must now renew the common stake that we have in one another. I know that promises of partnership have gone unfulfilled in the past, and that trust has to be earned over time. While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms. But I pledge to you that we seek an equal partnership.

Instead, we get a caricature of US-Latin American relations. And if the numbers of words devoted to the region in comparison to those of others matters, clearly, Latin America is on the back-burner in the Democratic Party's mind.

The Republicans note this too, though in stronger terms: "The current Administration has turned its back on Latin America."  While overstated, it has a grain of truth.  Unfortunately, the Republicans turn this grain into statements revealing that the GOP has stepped into a time warp, trapping them in Cold War frame-of-mind, if not earlier, say, the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, by which the US government claimed the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Latin American countries if it thought it in their best interest.

The Republicans started their section on "Strengthening Ties in the Americas" with this imbecilic line:

We will resist foreign influence in our hemisphere. We thereby seek not only to provide for our own security, but also to create a climate for democracy and self-determination throughout the Americas.

What is this "foreign influence?" Ever in need of enemies to fight and generate fear for their constituency, Republicans make the hysterical claim that "Venezuela has become a narco-terrorist state, turning it into an Iranian outpost in the Western hemisphere."  Even The National Interest, a journal featuring conservative scholars and pundits, thinks the threat of Chavez overblown (interestingly, the  libertarian think-tank, The Cato Institute, reposted this article). Who actually has the most "foreign influence" over Latin America?  The United States--by far the largest trade partner for most Latin American countries, the predominant source of arms imports, with a military presence in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and Colombia.  Maybe the Vatican places a very distant second given the prevalence of Catholicism in the region, and the always wildly popular visits by the pope.

Scary "foreign influence?"
Gringo Spring Breakers in Cancún.
See one of my favorite Onion videos here:
"Mexico Builds Wall to Keep Out US Assholes"

More scary "foreign influence?'
Pope Benedict's recent visit to Cuba.

And the "create a climate. . ." line?  As if there hasn't already been a surge of democratization since the early 1980s throughout the region, in spite of US support of authoritarian regimes through the 1960s and 1970s?  As if it was the sole responsibility of the US to create this climate--and had the capacity to create it? (Oh, what a climate we created in Afghanistan and Iraq)  The historical blindness and hubris this line requires are breathtaking.

At least the GOP has a few specific proposals, namely continue the US embargo on Cuba. In place since 1962, it has done just a terrific job over the last fifty years in hastening the end of the communist regime (NY Times).  Though imposed by Democratic administration, Republicans would have us lumber along with policy that has only caused the Castro government to hunker down. Similarly, George W. Bush's support of the military coup that briefly ousted Hugo Chavez back in 2002 only assured another anti-American regime in the region. Given the tone of this platform's foreign policy stance, a Romney administration will feature a return of Reagan-era cold warriors or their acolytes, carrying Teddy Roosevelt's "big stick,"and not even bothering to "walk softly."

It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that neither party platform in their statements about the "war on drugs" connects narco-trafficking to the huge maw of demand here in the United States (UN 2012 World Drug Report).  Nor do they recognize ways that US foreign policies might contribute to conditions encouraging migration.  For example, in the 1980s, US support of military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, and of anti-Sandinista guerrillas in Nicaragua (the "Contras"), produced a stream of refugees, many of whom ended up in the US, establishing a migration network that facilitated even more legal and illegal migration in the 1990s and 2000s (Migration Information, see also Migration Policy Institute 2011 Report).  Likewise, while NAFTA in the long run was supposed to contribute to economic growth in Mexico, and thus multiply economic opportunities. But in the short-run, it displaced small and medium agricultural producers who couldn't compete with US producers, thus creating a large swath of people the Mexican job market could not accommodate.  Hence one reason (not the only one, of course) for the spike in illegal migration to the US (Council on Hemispheric Affairs).

I can't expect party platforms to exhibit too much complexity, but I do wish that both Democrats and Republicans would work to cure the myopia that distorts our vision of US-Latin American relations.  Misconceived and unjustified characterizations of Latin America in both party platforms misinform voters, and contribute to unhelpful stereotypes of Latin Americans.  This makes it easier to cast all the blame for illicit drugs and illegal immigration on our neighbors to the south, which in turn makes it harder to have a thoughtful, useful debate about US-Latin American relations.  Silly me, though, for wanting something like that in a presidential campaign.

A parting comment.  I glanced at opinion polls in five Latin American countries about the 2008 presidential candidates, and then Obama's 2010 favorability ratings in five Latin American countries.  Some really interesting, and surprising variation. I would have thought Obama would have fared better in Venezuela than Colombia, and be more polarized in Colombia--but the opposite is true.  And given the high level of ambivalence in 2008, for whatever reason, Obama's popularity has climbed the most in Colombia.  But, as I suspected, Obama gets higher unfavorable ratings in Guatemala and Mexico, where news of the ramped up raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants from these countries has been widely reported.

Winner of US presidential elections that is more desirable for Latin America?
	Argentina	Brazil	Colombia	Guatemala	Mexico	Venezuela
Obama	49.0	53.1	32.1	26.6	36.7	37.6
McCain	4.6	13.0	8.5	13.5	13.7	11.8
Same	46.4	33.9	59.3	59.9	49.6	50.6
Opinion in favor of foreign leaders: Barack Obama, 2010
Very Favorable	12.5	19.6	21.2	13.0	10.6	13.5
Fairly Favorable	61.8	67.5	64.8	55.4	55.3	47.0
Fairly Unfavorable	19.2	9.7	9.4	22.2	18.5	21.6
Very Unfavorable	6.5	3.2	4.5	9.4	15.5	17.9

From LatinoBarametro