In his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. The American civic religion has its own founding myth, its prophets and processions, as well as its scripture-the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and The Federalist Papers. This is because America itself is “almost a religion,” as the Catholic philosopher Michael Novak once put it, particularly for immigrants who come to their new identity with the zeal of the converted. Being called un-American is like being called “un-Christian” or “un-Islamic,” a charge akin to heresy.įrom the October 2018 issue: The Constitution is threatened by tribalism It’s rare to hear someone accused of being un-Swedish or un-British-but un-American is a common slur, slung by both left and right against the other. Since the end of the Obama era, debates over what it means to be American have become suffused with a fervor that would be unimaginable in debates over, say, Belgian-ness or the “meaning” of Sweden. During the Arab Spring, in countries like Egypt and Tunisia, debates weren’t about health care or taxes-they were, with sometimes frightening intensity, about foundational questions: What does it mean to be a nation? What is the purpose of the state? What is the role of religion in public life? American politics in the Obama years had its moments of ferment-the Tea Party and tan suits-but was still relatively boring. Not so long ago, I could comfort American audiences with a contrast: Whereas in the Middle East, politics is war by other means-and sometimes is literal war-politics in America was less existentially fraught. This is what religion without religion looks like. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. As Christianity’s hold, in particular, has weakened, ideological intensity and fragmentation have risen. Meanwhile, the “nones”-atheists, agnostics, and those claiming no religion- have grown rapidly and today represent a quarter of the population.īut if secularists hoped that declining religiosity would make for more rational politics, drained of faith’s inflaming passions, they are likely disappointed. Over the past two decades, that number has dropped to less than 50 percent, the sharpest recorded decline in American history. From 1937 to 1998, church membership remained relatively constant, hovering at about 70 percent. T he United States had long been a holdout among Western democracies, uniquely and perhaps even suspiciously devout. This article was published online on March 10, 2021. Illustration by Paul Spella / Rendering by Patrick White
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