Explicitly we can come to the conclusion that such phenomena as political religion and religious politics, being based on the social religion, which creates common values for their supporters, affected the development of the American consciousness greatly as well as nowadays it does the same. It reflects the conservative form of state’s ruling with some features of collectivism, since it is mainly based on the protection of traditional family and other religious values, by sharing of which people are more likely to put all their efforts in order to defend everybody, who belongs to their group – from the leaders, secular members of parliament, government, or religious ones, to other members of the community.
Such model is thought to be effective under the unexpected circumstances as well as in aspect of cooperation with government providing certain policy, which needs to be supported by certain groups in order to be applied. Due to the effectiveness and ease of such combination, it is used by the politicians.
The religiosity is thought to lead to better performance of one’s civil duties and simultaneously to functioning of the civil society. Religious doctrine is highly responsive to social and political context (Wright p. 1). Such respond social religion generates at two different levels – collective and individual, leading two performing certain functions at each of them. For instance, at the personal level those could be personal both morality and responsibility, which are the basis for the model of a law-abiding citizen, who at the same time respects the law, since it, similarly to morality, is a system of norms, and is ready to obey it and to be liable for the breach of it, taking certain degree of responsibility for his actions (Lecture p.1). On the other hand, social or collective level, having its roots from the personal one, “generalizes everybody’s morality” in such way that such phenomena as charity, social networking and social support arise (Lecture p.2).
Social religion in the context of a state transforms into religious politics, since sometimes governmental problems need some support from the citizens in order to deal with certain issues, for instance existence of the poor and state’s disability to succeed in overcoming this problem makes people join organizations providing charity or other entities which are aimed at helping those unprotected groups of people. It differs from the political religion which consists in “mobilization of religious institutions for political goals”, while the religious politics is based on people’s voluntarism (Lecture p.3). Its central question is how to activate those religious institutions in order to reach their goals, for instance abolition of abortion, limitation of immigration and so on.
The history has shown many examples of such combination of religion and politics, e.g. those were the Catholic Church and the end of the communism in Poland due to the instructions and support from the church to the greatest movement of Soviet Poland, called Solidarity (Lecture # 3). In this essay we will pay attention to the actions, which could be activated with a help of political religion paying attention to the research, conducted by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, reflected in their work “American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites U.S.” When this grace is thought to be harmonic coexistence of believers and atheists, absolute tolerance, which differs the American polarized society from many others, in which religion was the basis for conflicts, for instance Bosnia and Muslim states. That is despite the fact that “Half of all Americans say grace almost every day, half of all Americans almost never say grace, and only 10 percent are in the middle” (Putnam p. 152)
One of the authors, namely Putnam, explains the consequences of the religiosity or of the “grace saying” of the Americans, whom he, by the way, called “very religious and that religion is a bigger deal in America than in any other advanced nation on earth”, with a help of the triad devout-diverse-tolerant” (Putnam p. 142), when the devout element is mainly influenced by the religiosity. The Americans are the most religious citizenries of the world’s advanced democracies (Perry p.3) Gracesayers’ behavior can be foreseen. The author claims that his views on abortion, or homosexuality, or premarital sex as well as how he voted during the previous elections are known (Putnam p.152). In their work the authors have come to the conclusion that “religious people are a little less tolerant of dissent and supportive of civil liberties, they are more likely to volunteer to help people, to give to charity, to take part in all the forms of civil society”, meaning the religion per se is correlated with being good and doing good and creates the better neighbor and citizen (Putnam p. 174)
Such knowledge of how people will behave and act after certain signal (that is taken from the behaviorism concept) is often used by the politicians, who, thus, create the political religion. Talking about the application of religious politics, we should mention Richard Nixon, who used religious politics as a part of his 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns, willing to split the Democrats and form a new conservative majority, uniting the electorate on the basis of the combination of religion, patriotism and race (Hibbard p.16). They were aimed at stigmatizing of the liberal norms, minorities and other issues, which were the products of liberal revolution as unpatriotic (Hibbard p.16). All that demonstrates how the politicians used the concept of religious politics to influence the electorate’s voting. Republican politicians made it possible to create the religious Right movement, that was concerned about moral values and the members of which were at the same time members of religious organization making it easy for the politicians to govern them (Putnam p.9).
Let’s now concentrate on how religion does affect division or unity of the Americans.
Putnam demonstrates how not adherence of moral and ethical norms almost led to collapse and how “religion per se is often not the thing that actually divides us” (Wright p.1). Authors analyze in the work the Sixties and their impact on the American life. The title to that chapter is “1960s: the Shock: Sex, Drugs, Rock’N’Roll and “God is Dead”, which emphasizes on the decline of the traditional values during the mentioned period. They have characterized that period as such, when “the old foundations of national confidence, patriotic idealism, moral traditionalism, and historic Christian theism were awash” (Putnam, Campbell p. 92).
That period led to total instability of the state’s authority, namely it could not satisfy the highest officials. That period demonstrated “the growing controversy about the Vietnam War, racial upheaval and lots of tragic assassinations as well as appearance of a number of massive movements, in particular gay rights, women’s liberation and antiwar movements” (Putnam, Campbell p. 91). In 1966 Time magazine of that time ran a cover story asking “Is God dead?” (Putnam p.144), showing the general situation, when all the old traditions were substituted with the new ones.
The transformation of the attitude towards the religion and to the church as institute is demonstrated by the comparison of the data relating to the issue what people thought about premarital sex – whether it is wrong or not, since it is one of the most known religious norms existing, which the participants of the survey were aware of. Such norm represents even broader set of attitudes and those are sexual morality, pornography, homosexuality and the like (Putnam, Campbell p. 93).
“Not wrong attitude” doubled from 24 percent to 47 percent in the four years between 1969 and 1973 and then reached the number of 62 percent in 1982, when the boomers, the generation of the 60s, constituted 80 percent of the supporters of premarital sex (Putnam, Campbell p. 93).
All the transformation also led to decreasing of the role of the religion. There was a decline of religious observance itself, since the number of the Americans saying that the religion is important to them personally fell from 75 percent in 50s to 52 percent in 1978 and the question whether the religion could answer today’s problems dropped almost to the half of the Americans thinking about its vital role (Putnam, Campbell p. 98).
Church attendance was also among data showing the decrease of the role of religion in personal life. By the way, at the time discussed there was so-called generational gap, or even war, since the boomers differed completely from the previous generation and post-boomer generations, which were rather conservative than boomers on many political, religious and social topics (Putnam, Campbell p. 93).
The issue why the political religion did not work and why people stopped obeying certain moral norms was explained by four general replies: young people were losing interest in formal religion, which was thought to be irrelevant, since it did not support people, who changed greatly; the increase in immorality, crime, and violence could be dealt within the church’s jurisdiction; materialistic distractions were common; church was not keeping up with times, being at the same time involved in political and socials issues (Pitnam, Campbell p.99).
How does political religion, particularly religious institutes, react towards such changes? Differently, but all of them understood that at such time it was impossible to sit quietly on the sidelines (Putnam, Campbell p.94). For instance, among the centralized governance churches, i.e. the Catholics and Protestants(Lecture p.5) there were such famous people as William Sloane Coffin together with Fathers Berrigans, who became prominent in the movements of era (Putnam, Campbell p.94).
In contrast, evangelical branch put much effort in order to gain popularity during that time transforming from highly conservative stream into more liberal that led to its rise during the following decades. However, in general the church could change the direction of the development of that time. For instance, Putnam (p. 145) says that Catholic Church was collapsing, since many people, who declared themselves to be the Catholics, stopped going to Mass; nearly two-thirds of the previous Catholics are no longer practicing Catholics.
However, such period of total liberalization and negative polarization of the society, in the end, stopped satisfying the majority of the Americans. The religiosity of the Americans played its role, influencing the following political decision. That led to creation of the religious Right movement, which used to stand for the traditional values. They chose their own position of criticizing the abortions, homosexuality, meaning that they opposed the concepts, which arose from the sixties and divided the parties.
Such religious vector reached its goal: in 1976 44 percent of the Americans claimed that the role and influence of religion was again high and the religious landscape was beginning to shift again (Putnam, Campbell p. 100). That changed the structure of religious politics, which experienced its rebirth. The majority of the America’s presidents, who were elected at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21 emphasized on their religiosity (Putnam, Campbell p.100). Notwithstanding, rise of the religious Right, which influenced the political terms and issues, was also the subject of the new secular movement, which appeared in 2000s ( Putnam p. 148).
But despite different attitudes toward the religion per se and the existence of great group of people, who do not share these values, created in America, to authors mind, the Grace, the field for debates, during which both positions are appreciated. Statistically, it cannot be said that representatives of one of the groups are completely not tolerant towards the others, since even attitude towards such issue, as civil liberties, which was thought to divide people, has shown that “religious people are a little less tolerant of dissent and supportive of civil liberties, especially for people who disagree with them, than secular Americans” (Putnam p.174).
Hence, we can conclude that those pursuing nowadays as well political goals often rely on traditional moral values; they are aimed at activating of religious groups, creating the state of political religion, with a help of which they achieve their goals. That is what was done during the presidency of Nixon as well as by the religious Right.
Of course, we can talk about the hypocrisy of the politicians, however, from the statehood point of view; such policy can lead to positive results, as citizens’ cooperation and their active participation in civil society, which is the basis of the governmental stability.
Work cited
Hibbard, Scott W. Religious Politics and Secular States Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Print
Lectures
Perry, Michael J. Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print
Putnam, Robert D. American Grace: The Tanner Lectures on Human Values Princeton University, 2010. Retrieved from:
http://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_documents/a-to-z/p/Putnam_10.pdf
Putnam, Robert D., Campbell, David E. American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites us New York: Simon and Schuster. 2010. Print.
Wright, Robert Religious Persuasion The New York Times, 2010 Retrieved from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/books/review/Wright-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
