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.