SNAFUBAR on American Civil Religion

Research and writing for the show is done by Liam Salcuni and Roman Sotomayor (who also co-hosted today's episode.)

SNAFUBAR is produced by Abigail Smithson and brought to you by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Works Cited:

• Haberski Jr. - God and War: American Civil Religion since 1945, 2012
• Ebel - G.I. Messiahs: Soldiering, War, and American Civil Religion, 2015
• Keeler - Sacred Soldier: The Dangers of Worshiping Warriors, 2024
• Gorski - American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present, 2017
• Bacevich - Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars, 2022
• Rousseau - The Social Contract, 1762
• Bellah - Civil Religion in America, 1967
• Prothero - The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation, 2012
• Hedges - I Don’t Believe in Atheists, 2021
• De Tocqueville - Democracy in America, 1835
• Something to Believe In by Bret Michaels
  

Machine Transcription:

ANNCR: You are about to embark upon the great crusade. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. Only the dead have seen the end of war. We will accept nothing less than full victory.

HART: You're listening to SNAFUBAR at Cal Poly Humboldt. Hello, and welcome to the SNAFUBAR. I am Sara Hart, multidisciplinary humanities scholar who comes to this material from religious studies and from a lifetime surrounded by u.s. Veterans.

SOTOMAYOR: And I'm Roman Sotomayor, a writer/researcher here for SNAFUBAR. I'm the proud grandson of a world war two veteran civilian volunteer at the Arcata Veterans Hall and Cal Poly Humboldt humanities alum.

HART: Oh my gosh, in the number of years and amount of just labor that Roman has done at the vets hall here in Arcata is pretty astounding. We should just take a minute. Civilian volunteer doesn't quite carry the weight. Friend of the hall. Okay, so today we're kind of, we're extracting ourselves a little bit from the SNAFUBAR proper.

HART: We want to do a little bit of an explainer here to explore the concept of American civil religion. This is a concept that Roman and Ihave talked a lot about, that we work a lot together on, and that sits in the background of a lot of the work that we do here in the SNAFUBAR. So this episode, like our military lingo episode, offers some, you know, insight into the deeper frameworks that we've used to shape this podcast.

HART: And we hope that it'll offer a little bit of an insight into a concept that we are. You really, really goes a long way to shape the way that united states engages in warfare.

SOTOMAYOR: It's also kind of self-serving, right? I mean, you teach a class on this very topic called America's living myths of war and peace, and this episode will assist the students in framing out the world of American civil religion is no accident.

HART: Yes. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. That's, that's right. Religious studies 300 here at Cal Poly Humboldt America's living myths of war and peace. It's my favorite class. I've taught it for nearly ten years, and we're always looking for ways to help frame out these really sick concepts that have a lot of that carry with them, a lot of conceptual weight that we don't always know what to do with, like religion, American civil religion.

HART: What exactly is that? Right. So, Roman, you were a student in this class, and,

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. So, you know, shout out here for students, if you're tenacious and passionate about a topic, let your faculty know. You know, you might find someone who brings you into the world and the scholarship and ultimately, you know, really changes the course of your life.

HART: My life would be different without Roman, helping in nearly every, every aspect of it. Tenacious really is the key word there, though. Roman knocked on my door so many times. I mean enough to really almost become a permanent part of the office. Office furniture? Yeah.

SOTOMAYOR: You know, Ithink Iwould be a good desktop organizer in another life. You know, like a little wooden caddy that helps sort everything into the right place.

HART: Awesome. Yes. A little bit of the type-a. In the strongest of ways. We depend on it here in the SNAFUBAR. Okay, so let's go ahead and jump into American civil religion.

SOTOMAYOR: Let's start with the most obvious question here. First, sarah, what is civil religion?

HART: Okay. Right. So our concept of civil religion, we're going to do a lot of heady background here. And we're going to try to make it street level where we can. Right. So let's start with it something a little heady. So our concept of civil religion really originates from john's shock, rousseau's the social contract. He Called it civic religion.

HART: What rousseau proposed was a set of civic beliefs that would bind social cohesion and public morality together. And in the naming alone, you can sort of see how it was conceived as something that would drive civic engagement or, you know, really a deeply engaging community and persons and politics and community action, a religion of the citizen, is what he was sort of aiming at.

HART: This was conceived of as separate from institutional or personal religion, and it was a much more civic or, or almost like politiCal force.

SOTOMAYOR: So a civil religion and one's personal religious belief could exist simultaneously, either twisting together like a sort of dna structure with two strands that connect in various places or completely apart, but running parallel with one another.

HART: Yeah. Absolutely. Though i, you know, I have to imagine it was it would always be sort of the former. I mean, our ideas and our beliefs, they tend to collide and enrich and challenge each other all the time. It seems odd that someone could hold two deeply personal beliefs that never converse with one another. That's not impossible.

HART: But, you know, it's unlikely, Ithink, given our human nature. So Ido want to see them sort of bumping into each other, interacting and sometimes conflicting.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And again, a personal belief system and a civic belief system bound up with one another.

HART: Right? Civil religion is its own quasIreligious and sacred set of ideals that are connected to national myths, rituals, values and symbols which form a sense of collective identity and moral a moral lens for a community.

SOTOMAYOR: It's a very cosmopolitan idea.

HART: Yeah. Cosmos, right. And it has to be. You can see how important this concept was in 1762 wayback machine, when rousseau was writing. At this time, the seven years war was coming to an end, he saw a massive social upheaval when rousseau's the social contract or his, his other emile, or on education when those books were first published, you know, they're publicly burned.

HART: They're banned in the republic of geneva, where he's from. He's exiled from his home for these ideas, where he argued against the divine right of monarchs and for individual freedoms. So he's kind of a modern dude, really, in a in the 18th century world he's living in, rousseau writes, this is this is a little bit of a, lengthy quote.

HART: So there's a purely civil profession of faith, the content of which should be fixed by the sovereign, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments that are needed for to be a good citizen and faithful subjects. Okay, so what are these social sentiments that are needed to be a good citizen and a faithful subject? He's asserting that there are such things, and he goes on to say, now that they're no longer are and no longer can be any exclusive national religions.

HART: Tolerance should be given to all religions that tolerate others, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of citizenship.

SOTOMAYOR: Okay, but why not just say civic philosophy or citizen ethics, something more heady and secular sounding like that? I mean, you say civil religion and it makes people nervous, doesn't it? I mean, if I'm secular, Iprobably will want to turn away from something that uses a religious framework. And if I'm religious, i'd be wary of sacrilege.

HART: Right. And, you know, and this is this is, Ithink, in a lot of ways, the main point here and definitely worth talking about in the and there's a lot of books that try to get it. This sideways. Roman, you and Ihave looked for a lot of these. We've sort of dug them from the different places on the bookshelf where they live.

HART: Yeah, it's not its own coherent bookshelf. People get to it from different directions, different, disciplinary points. So there's this. There's a book by American sociologist philip gorskIwho's pretty great, Called American covenant, and he addresses this argument for why he continues to use the much debated term civil religion. He argues that civil religious tradition does have a genuine religious meaning, and that phrases like, quote, politiCal culture or, quote politiCal cultures trend toward suggesting a what he Calls a unified culture as opposed to multiple and competing traditions.

HART: And they can feel, quote, too static and un historiCal. On the one hand, he's saying, like politiCal culture suggests that you're all unified, you're not. And somehow civil religion is not going to suggest a unified worldview in the same way. And Ithink that hits us a little funny because we think of religion maybe as a like increasingly dogmatic, rigid institutional structure that frames our belief.

HART: Yeah, right. And so Ithink one of the things that we'll try to do, and one of the things that we always that we find ourselves doing in class a lot is trying to back away from this rigidly institutional vision of religion. We know that definition is changing. We've seen it in every poll, all the polling data that comes out every time it comes out shows that we have an increasing in America, an increasing number of what they Call nones in o ness.

HART: Or like none of the above, people who say, what religion are you? And they say none of the above, right? We Call them nones. And that number is just it seems to have plateaued somewhere around 30, 30 to 33%, depending on who you ask. But it has been skyrocketing for a while. And so there's this tendency to be like, okay, people are recognizing that religion is rigid and they don't want any part of it because it's not like individual.

HART: And what gorskIis getting at here seems to be kind of an opposite point, right?

SOTOMAYOR: We're remembering that there's also intra within religion disagreements, right. Which is what he's talking about.

HART: Yes. Right. Like everybody. And this is part of like you think about the sort of classic country church where everybody's going to come together to the one place that they all can easily get to a kind of congregationalist model where everybody's going to the same church. You're not going to agree with all these people, like you're not going to agree with them even about theologiCal points.

HART: You're not going to agree with them about ritual points. You're definitely not going to agree with them about how to keep your front yard, or how to raise your kids, or you know what kind of music you should be listening to, or how late you should be listening to it. But they all find this space to worship together under kind of a horizon of shared values.

HART: Some symbols, some language, a community. And that's what he's getting. So what he's seeking here is an account that contains what he Calls, quote, a narrative that tells us where we came from and where we're headed, not just what our commitments are. It embeds our values and commitments within particular stories of civic greatness and collective failure. That's a great quote.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And so then, like any religious tradition, it's built upon these stories, these myths, they tell us who we are, who we could be, and importantly, what direction we should strive toward. And like any religious tradition, you know, as we've been saying, it's all wrapped up in debate around what these stories mean. So yeah, I'm with you in, but is it actually still religious then?

SOTOMAYOR: I mean, are we just using the word religious because we didn't find any other word satisfactory? Or is there actually something sacred here?

HART: Right. I mean, and that's also it depends on the person, doesn't it? It's not so different from other forms of religion. And in that sense, you got all kinds of people within each religion operating at different degrees of commitment. And this, this, you were just referring to different degrees of belief, of faith, of practice. You know, maybe you've got a deep conviction in your spiritual tradition.

HART: Nothing's ever going to sway you. And you strive to live by that, every day, by that certain creed. Or, you know, you could be sitting in the same room, but maybe you're less convicted, but nevertheless draw inspiration from find truth in the teachings and the stories of your faith. Like there's a whole range and spectrum there.

SOTOMAYOR: Let's just jump back to rousseau real quick. And he seemed to feel that civic religion should be compulsory. Either you get with it or you get out, he wrote. Quote. While it can't compel anyone to believe them, it can banish from the state another who doesn't believe them, banishing him not for impiety, but for being antisocial, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and if necessary, sacrificing his life to his duty.

SOTOMAYOR: I mean, that's pretty intense.

HART: That's for sure. Right? And Ican remember that when rousseau was writing, you know, it was it was an intense time for us in this discussion of American civil religion. You know, you'll see we break away from this idea of it as required a little bit. We are nationally, Ithink, disinclined to all things that are prescriptive.

HART: Right. We're not going to do what you tell us to do, what Ido, what Iwant. That's liberty. Right. I think that's deeply built into the American consciousness, and Iwould say a primary tenet of American civil religion. So let's take a look at the specifiCally American civil religion.

HART: We'll start here with the author of the 1835 book democracy in America, who many of you may have heard of out there. Listeners, alexis de tocqueville. Today, de tocqueville's text is one of the kind of holy books of American studies. He sought to critiCally examine democracy in the united states and how it managed to overcome the tyranny that surrounded his home nation of france.

HART: So he went on this roadshow. He went on a tour of what at the time was the largest part of America, which was like, this is 1835. Westward expansion was just kind of starting. You know, we were like, out in what we think of mentally is the kind of prairie zones yet. So he's mostly along what we would think of as the eastern seaboard, the delta region and all that.

HART: But he really does take it on the road and try to understand what's going on with Americans. And then he writes this book in democracy in America. De tocqueville lays the groundwork for the idea of American civil religion, though it wasn't known by this name at the time. He argue that religion in the united states served as the driving force for the moral foundation of democratic life, and that the separation of religion from the state made religion more trustworthy than places like france, where the church held politiCal power and he saw religion as a force that put checks on the potential dangers of democracy.

HART: Right. So he really saw this relationship between American democracy and religion as inherent, like those two things went together, he wrote. Religion is no less the companion of liberty in all its battles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.

HART: Yeah, it's a big also that last line again, the safeguard of morality is religion and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom. It's like a little bit heavy handed on the morality of the union in a way that just those words, Ithink contemporary American listeners, a lot of them are like, don't do i?

HART: Why is it so there's a Callback here to aristotle, who often pondered what might happen if democracy became perverted into, demagoguery. Right. So de tocqueville saw religion as a way to avoid this, or at the very least, the power of religion as a moralizing force.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And you touched on this a moment ago, but this brings up a conversation we hear of quite often, right? The idea that without religion, morality will collapse. Are we agreeing with that here? Can you can is there a way you can answer that? In a nutshell, a nutshell.

HART: Okay. With so the question without religion would morality collapse? I mean, Idon't know, like my short answer is come on. No, you know, everything Ineed to know Ilearned in kindergarten, right? The golden rule happens all over the world. It wasn't just jesus. It was also confucius. It was also hillel. It was like, we know this, right?

HART: And morality is, would it collapse without the institutional force or structure of religion? I think not, but Ithink the more interesting question for us here in terms of American civil religion is like, why are we so rigidly institutional about the way we understand religion? And if we can get out of that, then Ithink it's much easier to see what American civil religion is, what it offers us, how it functions, how it might be important to understand it.

HART: Like we think of religion as really defined as the churches, temples and mosques, just those things. But if we can think of religion as what binds us, as just like you said, those stories that were drawn to the stories that we're like where we came from and where we're going to this kind of, Idon't know, a guiding light or, a shared community of belief, some shared values, some shared stories that we apply, and the ever changing, unforeseeable and uncontrollable world that we live in, but with some kind of dedication to the things that ennoble us.

HART: Right. If we can see religion is as that, as something that we live through and that lives through us both individually and in community, then Ithink like, yeah, morality dies without religion. Religion is what gives us a sense of meaning and value and purpose, what connects us to our community and the world that we live in.

HART: And, and morality is just, you know, kind of the rules of behavior within that context. If we don't have a sense of meaning, value and purpose, would we? Why would we give a shit about doing the right thing for other people? Right. And so it's only within the frame of meaning, value and purpose that we that morals make sense, that rules for behavior make sense.

HART: So Ithink yeah. So was that a nutshell. Short answer is.

SOTOMAYOR: Big much.

HART: Really about how it's like a very large walnut shelf. How you want to define the words. Right. Okay. Let's, let's, let's stick to the script here. Stick to our points. Robert bellah, who wrote civil religion in America in 1967. So this is going to get us back on track with a kind of like clear delineation of this concept.

HART: Bellah argues that civil religion is the, quote, religious dimension of the politiCal realm. Okay, that it's the founding myth of a politiCal community.

SOTOMAYOR: So what are our myths of the united states, then? I mean, usually when Ihear myths, Ithink about ancient legends, parables or mythbusters. And, you know, when you title the class America's living myths of war and peace, you know, what are the living myths referring to? I mean, Iremember signing up for this class and being like, what are we going to talk about?

HART: Right.

SOTOMAYOR: Everybody was in religious studies.

HART: Is it going to be the mcu? Where are my marvel characters like, that's, you know, as you remember, this is like the first couple weeks of that class is what do Imean by myth? Right. So a living myth is a narrative that shapes the consciousness, values, behaviors, and sense of identity of a community from the past into the present.

HART: We can think of it as like a chain of memory that's, that's narratively projected, right? We can think of it as the stories that cohere us. It exists whether or not those members of a community consciously recognize it as the myth. It's the story, the things that we know to be true, but which are not verifiable. Right.

HART: That's this key point that i, that i, Ithink is really helpful is that there's all these things in the world that we know to be true because we can prove them or we know them to be false because we can disprove them. Right? But when we say we hold certain truths to be self-evident, that's outright saying these are not verifiable truths, right?

HART: And that's the world of myth. Myth is the truths that are not verifiable. So they're generally couched in narrative form, and they often take on really grand, characteristics like thor or fairies or something, but they can equally well be, foundational narratives of a national community who hold certain truths to be self-evident. Now, you know, and they aren't just old stories from a remote and forgotten past.

HART: Their active cultural forces then answer these questions of who a society is, what they believe, what kind of world they think they live in, what kind of world they hope they live in. These myths bring the community together through a shared narrative, a narrative that you see in rituals, symbols, politics, pop culture, national histories, ideologies, all of it.

SOTOMAYOR: Pop culture being a big one here for our modern world. Right? I never feel, more American than when Iwatch independence day. I mean, if Iever need to be motivated, Ijust watch bill pullman speech. And should we win the day? The 4th of july will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day that the world declared in one voice, we will not go quietly into the night.

SOTOMAYOR: We will not vanish without a fight. It's yeah, it's perfect right? I mean, and you intertwine a lot of pop culture in your curriculum, especially poems and songs. Yeah.

HART: I mean, that's right. And that's in a lot of ways the most important part. We need to know those really classic texts that shared vocabulary of a culture. But, you know, according to the study of myth, these stories, all these things shape us, right? Like that is the nature of living myth. We see ourselves reflected in these songs, in these poems, in these paintings, these movies.

HART: Right? They show us who we are and they drive us toward that horizon of who we want to be. We see this often and like explicitly in historiCal films, you know, they come in, they come out in times where we want to believe in something. We want to believe that we could have been better in the past and we can be better in the future, right?

HART: We often picture war this way, like our war stories frame our understanding of the present, even when they're stories told of the past. And it's not just war stories. I we focus on those here, but, now bella claims, quote, the god of the civil religion is not only rather unitarian, he is also on the austere side.

HART: Much more related to order, law and right than to salvation and love him, even though he is somewhat deist in caste, he is by no means simply a watchmaker. God is this dsta notion. We'll just throw in here, the like the people who talk about a deist god, they have this vision of a god that's kind of a philosopher mechanic who lives in some far away scape and sets up the earth to run like a watch and then walks away and watches it, you know?

HART: Right. Okay, back to bella. He and he's describing the god of civil religion. He is actively interested and involved in history with a special concern for America. Right. This is, again, the god of the American civil religion that bella is talking about. This god is involved in the history a little bit more like the hebrew bible is god, if we think about it.

HART: Right? Right. Like thumbs on the sCales of history.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah, yeah. Punishing and choosing.

HART: Paving the way. Feeding. You know. Right. Scolding. Yeah. Yeah. All of it. Right. So bella uses speeches made by presidents, national memorials, and also a lot of bibliCal texts, heavily bibliCal. This is 1967. America was at that time predominantly, overwhelmingly a bibliCal culture. Protestant, catholic, jew. That was the like. Those were the three parts of the pie.

HART: Very little, statistiCally speaking. Other than that, definitely not in the dominant culture. Okay, so bella uses these speeches, a lot of presidential speeches, national memorials, national holidays to demonstrate the existence of this unitarian god.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And when you say that, when bella says here that he's this civil, religious god, Imean, in the united states is perceived as interested in involved in history with a special concern for Americans. I mean, we have a question of nationalism and American exceptionalism here, right? Yeah. The god is on our side. I can see people being uncertain about this idea as one that simply is a religious fervor or devotion to a nation, a god that's on our side and only our side.

SOTOMAYOR: And isn't that dangerous?

HART: I mean, isn't everything, though, right down to, like, cashews are poisonous? A way.

SOTOMAYOR: To subvert the question, i.

HART: Think. And Isay, you know, it's easy to just write it off and say like, no, you know, we're not going to do this like this. God can't possibly have a special concern for America because that makes us parochial and like, really overbearing, ideologiCally imperialistic in some ways. Like we're missionaries for some nationalistic right that we know we're on the better end of it.

HART: And there's absolutely a thread through American history where that's true, where you've got some nationalistic fundamentalists who believe that, you know, god is on America's side, and that means god's not on anyone else's side, right? Like and that. Yeah, it's definitely true. Right. But there's there's also that side where you're like, is it? I guess what Iwould ask is, is it possible the, the experience of Americans has also opened itself to an understanding of this notion of a special concern for America.

HART: Understanding that is a Calling to an awareness of great privilege and a Calling to a better future. It is super easy to say, look, once god's on your side, that's it. You know, you're you are now like you're now just never going to see other people with the kind of independent dignity that they deserve. Right? It makes me think of bob dylan.

HART: Who in the room is thinking of bob dylan. Right. That is because on our side, he'll stop the next war. Right? Although the other version of that is that if god's on our side, we'll start the next war. So it's just it's on how he's feeling, right? That's that's what Iwant to get out. There's an ambiguity in the way that we approach the notion that we might be divinely inspired.

SOTOMAYOR: We have to grapple with it.

HART: We have to grapple with it. And then we might pull that back out from the hebrew bible version of things to this grappling or wrestling notion, as opposed to kind of an accepting theologiCal dogma. Right? You don't get to it. Just take it. You got to you got to wrestle with it. So bellah recognized this, too. He argued that, quote, the dangers of distortion are greater and the built in safeguards of the tradition are weaker.

HART: He touched on the treatment of native Americans and manifest destiny as an example of this. And those are some really serious indictments of this American exceptionalism. Right. And for him, that danger was very real when he was writing in 1967, at a time when war was like a reality on our television screens. And the civil rights movement brought conflict to the home front.

HART: For bellah, this demonstrates a theologiCal crisis.

SOTOMAYOR: What is a theologiCal crisis? Why does that matter to our topic?

HART: You know, and Imean, we could get picky here language wise, but what we mean by theologiCal crisis is the moment in time where the prevailing religious or spiritual frameworks no longer seem adequate to explain the realities that people face. The u.s. Has experienced many of these crises within American civil religion. And typiCally in times prior to, during or after war.

HART: So there's this American theologiCal theologian whom we love in this snafu, barr, one of the 20th century's leading public intellectuals and the man who composed what would come to be known as the serenity prayer, reinhold niebuhr. And he saw these crises as crucial to addressing illusions of American innocence and the idolatry of nationalism. He said, look, take a look at the points of crisis, because those are the points we're going to learn the most about yourselves, or you might inspire yourselves to do better.

HART: He challenges the notion that nations or humans are capable of pure moral action. Like maybe we're just not and we should just give ourselves a break for that. If the us adopts an image of itself as a righteous chosen nation, then it will surely collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, as shown as we can see pretty clearly through, you know, the enslavement of humans, imperialism, racism, war, economic injustice, like so many things.

HART: Right? The myth of redemptive violence, this notion that we can, like, kill our way to peace or that like, yeah, good can be got through. If Ibludgeon enough heads in, the righteous will prevail, right?

SOTOMAYOR: God wants me to purge my enemies.

HART: God wants me to purge my enemies with. You know, with enough blood will come peace, right? Redemptive violence and moral innocence. This is one example that niebuhr likes a lot. They can't come together. The only way out of this is a moral reckoning. So which is always going to involve sitting with some contradictions, as niebuhr cautioned, quote, when the pretensions of virtue mask the lust for power, theology must speak, even if it is only to say, remember that you are dust.

SOTOMAYOR: Ecclesiastes.

HART: Write the good stuff into dust. You will return.

SOTOMAYOR: Nothing new under the sun, right? Never in his theology. His christian realism here really echoes in examining these contradictions throughout history. You know, what way is the us going to go in terms of civil religion will remain one that upholds personal freedoms, that drives the country toward realizing equal rights for all that enshrines the theology of martin luther king jr.

SOTOMAYOR: Or will it become one that uses civil religion to sanctify violence and power? The imperial machine? Bellah told us that American civil religion, quote, has often been used and is being used today as a cloak for petty interests and ugly passions. It is in need as any living faith of continual reformation, of being measured by universal standards. And quote.

HART: Exactly. I mean, that's spot on. And the questions of these dark ends are ones that bellah and niebuhr were addressing for niebuhr. And this is a quote religion declares, the modern man is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values. That's neither for him true religion.

HART: And so this is a kind of reframing of those definitions for us, like religion, theology, like pull from the rigid institutional notion that we have. Let him be a little looser for this, true religion for niebuhr, is kind of sitting with discomfort, profound uneasiness about our highest social values. So in a 1991 reprint of his essay, bellah stated, quote, I'm convinced that every nation and every people come to some form of religious self-understanding, whether the critics like it or not, rather than simply denounce what seems, in any case, inevitable, it seems more responsible to seek within the civil religious tradition for those critiCal principles which undercut the ever present danger of national self.

SOTOMAYOR: Idolization very pragmatic. It's very inevitable.

HART: Yeah. I mean, maybe it's a little maybe it's moving the reader a little easy to be handed. But Imean, there's something extremely pragmatic in that about this. We can ignore it. We can say it's wrong or we can just like accept the reality and try to understand it right.

SOTOMAYOR: Grapple with it. Yeah. So for bellah, it's about seeking a different end to the nationalism, specifiCally religious nationalism. Let's break that down a bit more. And Ithink that would be helpful here.

HART: Yeah. I mean, and in American covenant. So gorski, we're going to go back to gorskIhere. He maps out the difference for us because this American civil religion, just to be clear, is not religious nationalism, right? They're not the same thing. There are some really deep thinkers who are going to pit them 100% against each other. So this is gorski.

HART: He says the relationship among religious nationalism, radiCal secularism and civil religion is like the relationship between two powerful clans. And Iknow what you're thinking. You're thinking that was three things. Bear with us. He put it to us this way. We have these two sources of influence, jewish and christian bibles on the one hand, and western secular philosophy on the other.

HART: Both of these feed into religious nationalism, civil religion, and radiCal secularism. Religious nationalism receives influence only from the jewish and christian bibles in the form of the conquest narrative apoCalyptic ism, a kind of chosen. This, purity culture, like kind of a lot of things. Right? But radiCal secularism receives influence only from western secular philosophy in the form of libertarian liberalism, you know, total separation ism, kind of uber rationality.

HART: But civil religion receives influences from both in the form of a kind of prophetic religion and civic republicanism. For gorski, civil religion offers a maximum fusion between both the alternative ways of being, both of these alternative ways of being. So it can also take us, to both religious nationalism and radiCal secularism. It's a balance, right? A yin yang right, in gorky's interpretation, quote, civil religion uses the cement of the common good to bind together the prophetic voice of jeremiad with traditional themes of civic republicanism, and gorskIargues that all of all three of these traditions, civil religion is the oldest.

HART: It's our founding tradition.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And you know, it may be worthwhile to pause here and wonder why radiCal secularism isn't the best option, right? We've kind of been touching on this throughout. I mean, after all, you see, it talked about frequently this notion that with the passage of time, everyone will become an unbeliever, like the nuns that we were talking about. Right.

SOTOMAYOR: And the dark problem of religion will be solved in a book titled Idon't believe in atheists by chris hedges, he argues that fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist secularism are two sides of the same oppressive coin, both fraught with danger, both oblivious to the diverse nature of human beings and both willing to use violent ends to reach their goals.

SOTOMAYOR: And hedges book title is meant to be a little shocking. You know, he does believe in atheists, but this is his main point, right? Two sides of the same oppressive coin.

HART: Yeah. No, Imean, chris hedges, another one of our heroes here in this snafu. We love him a little bit. Yeah, Ithink Imean, Ithink he's really on to something here, you know, that you can be fundamentalists for either side of this, right? This is not just, Ihave to pause here for a second to just remind us all that radiCal secularism is something new under the sun.

HART: That for the vast, you know, vast majority of human history, religious fundamentalism has been the norm, that secular liberal secularism is and is a new thing. You know, that the idea that we can all believe different things and still work together in a shared society, like that's new and so, like, why wouldn't we just keep going into it?

HART: Hasn't it brought us enormous prosperity and peace and pluralism, freedoms that we didn't can't imagine under it? Maybe. Yeah. So.

HART: Civil religion isn't only a balancing point between these two radiCal sort of, polls. It's also the most pragmatic. You know, it allows us a tent to attend to metaphysiCal questions and politiCal questions of freedoms. It connects past and future sacred and secular religious studies. Scholar stephen prothero explores this within his book, the American bible, which is pretty good.

HART: Check it out if you haven't, where he defines popular u.s texts, speeches and events as generating a quote scripture which u.s Americans can turn to and read rabbiniCal as a way to quote, ponder the meanings and ends of their country. And Ithink this is getting at something important like why not radiCal secularism? Because it's freaking depressing.

HART: Because people need a shared sense of meaning. Because that's what humans are. That's what humans have looked like. There's this there's this tendency in us as humans to believe in a shared narrative, and we can say, oh, no, not me. I don't believe in anything. And I'm like, Ilisteners, if you're out there and you want to challenge us, Iwould love to be challenged by this.

HART: Every one of us is a believer in something we might believe in liberty and justice for all, which can't be proven. We might believe in the like independent value and equality of all humans, which can't be proven. We might believe in like a feminist or a communist or an environmentalist or whatever reading of those are. None of those can be proven like those are all are chosen.

HART: Believe we believe in things. You know, the notion that somehow we're not going to believe in things is weird, and the notion that somehow we're going to work together, despite our disagreements toward shared goals without a binding belief in something, strikes me as, idealistic.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And the Ithink the key word here, too, in protheroe is rabbiniCal, right? I mean, having come from a fundamentalist evangeliCal background where everything was written exactly how it means, and you didn't debate it. When Iwent to see a torah study for the first time, Iwas shocked. Yeah, right. I was like, wow, you know, they are debating and arguing with each other about what exactly god meant and what the text meant, and that was just something Ihad never seen or experienced before.

SOTOMAYOR: And so Ithink that's kind of key here. RabbiniCal, you know, we're arguing about it. The environmentalist, the feminist, the communist, you know, the. Yeah, maybe all three at once. You know, it's like.

HART: The American exceptionalist can. Yeah. Can it be all for one?

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. You know, debating, talking, engaging.

HART: Where we are complicated beings. Right. And for gorski, American civil religion then becomes an antidote to the twinned, hubristic stances. I love that an antidote to the twinned, hubristic stances of radiCal secularism and religious nationalism.

SOTOMAYOR: And it's not all sunshine and daisies, right? I mean, in god, in war, American historian raymond taberskIjr demonstrates the way civil religion can turn, can run us. Excuse me, can run us into dangerous ideals because it is, quote, evocative, elastic and deceptively complex and quote, like any religion, right? It can be used for ends that claim to be getting us closer to those deeply held beliefs.

SOTOMAYOR: But perhaps they're, you know, not ends that really match what we're claiming. We believe in the end.

HART: Yeah. And that's Imean, Ithink we are all Called to engage with the beliefs we hold most dear. And in America, there's a lot of beliefs that nationally we hold most dear. And, and Ithink this is this discussion and these scholars and this concept is asking us to engage those. And, and that's probably what's most relevant for us here today and for, for us generally.

HART: In the snafu, bar harbor key tells us that war is where the perils of civil religion's promise become acutely apparent. Right. It is dangerous because it is war, and that is painful, and there's no getting around that. So. So let's turn and take a look at American civil religion and the war.

SOTOMAYOR: Now that we have a general understanding of American civil religion, we can tease out how it is used, for different ends. We've already touched on this with regards to martin luther king jr, who along with other major figures of the civil rights era, famously used the prophetic voice to Call the us to fully embody the beliefs enshrined in our constitution.

SOTOMAYOR: But what about American civil religion being used as a Call for war? This is the area that's most relevant to our podcast, with how it affects the us way of war and our service members, and this is where we see the snafu occur.

HART: Right? It's kind of like a thematic snafu, right? It's this the reason the Roman and Ihave decided to do this episode is one, because we love talking about this stuff, and too, because this conceptual framework underpins a lot of the other work that we're doing here in the podcast. It's it's there in the background for us when we look at individual instances.

HART: Right? So, with the okay, so how does American civil religion get used for war? How do our beliefs get, implemented or deployed for deployed for how are our beliefs, Called into service for the war effort and we just we know they are you know, we can listeners, you can imagine all of the different ways in which beliefs have been used to motivate behavior at times of war.

HART: And, and so we're just going to kind of do a let's think about the post-cold war region. Right. Let's let's do let's think about the collapse of the soviet union and the end of the cold war. At that point, American, you know, because we could pick any era. And the way that civil religion is deployed is going to be slightly different.

HART: So let's look at this one collapse of the soviet union. How does it come out in the new, you know, post-cold war patriotism moment that we've all been living through. So when the soviet union collapses, this the end of the cold war, American civic engagement enters a pining tutorial phase. Right? And we're still there. We want very much the coherence and the exaltation that an enemy affords, a community whose own sense of purpose is unclear or superficial or fractious, you know?

HART: And so we turn to our televisions, and as they have since the first years of the cold war, those televisions have honored their end of the bargain. The echoes of david hasselhoff's performance at the brandenburg gate. For those of you who are old like me, from an elevated bucket crane and a battery powered light up jacket, let's not forget it's the best.

HART: You know, those memories had barely faded when president george h.w. Bush announced operation desert shield to the nation, right? Broadcasting nationwide, the president struck a tone equal parts kind of pontifiCal and avuncular, sort of perfect for this civil religion tent revival that he was striking up in the life of a nation, he says, were Called upon to define who we are and what we believe.

HART: And if that's not like a little testify, then Idon't know what is. This is our president. He's leading us into war. This is how it's done. Right on cue, Americans, it turned out, wanted desperately to believe. And they seemed to know intuitively that it was time to take stock. Right. An era had ended. A vacuum has emerged as the cold war ended, skIexplains from ribeiro's keep from before euphoria over its conclusion could not match the existential satisfaction of the cold war itself.

HART: Now, the arguments that are periodiCally in vogue that getting rid of religion is somehow gonna get rid of war. They miss this crucial point. Community's required a shared sense of meaning. Community coherence requires shared belief. People are gonna find it, take away their religion. They'll believe in gummy bears like it doesn't matter. There's going to be something, right?

HART: I believe the children of the future. I believe in hugh laurie. I believe in anything. Right. So bush the elder knew this while the American gen pop might not have expressed that requirement in the same historiCally conscious terms or whatever, they super resonated to the need. Released in september 1990, less than a month after desert shield was launched, poison.

HART: Remember the band poison folks poisons yearning war conscious glam rock ballads something to believe in reached number four on the billboard hot 100 in december, just as American forces set down their shield and got ready to bring down a storm.

SOTOMAYOR: Okay, Igrew up riding shotgun with a dad who listened to nothing but classic rock. Something to believe in. Just for our listeners here, it starts with, well, Iseen him on tv preaching about the promised lands. He tells me to believe in jesus steals the money from my hands. The video shows a vietnam veteran who we see sitting in a mental hospital, reacting to images on the tv of televangelism and war.

SOTOMAYOR: At one point, he throws a glass at the tv and shatters it. Right after we see the image of a soldier throwing a grenade and brett michael sings in a time Idon't remember in a war he can't forget. Yeah.

HART: I mean, that's just even, we should all be singing that song. I hope you were all singing in your minds. As Roman said, those lyrics. But the. It gives me the chills, right? That. I mean, if you haven't heard that song in a while, listeners will listen to it. Will pause, come back, you know, but bret michaels, he's Calling out here, right?

HART: Asking for something to believe in. And the u.s. Found there's something. And this is one of those moments of living myths, like, why was this song so popular at this moment if like, if that's not, primary source documents to look at, then we're missing something huge about how humans construct meaning. By january 19th 90s initiation of hostilities, yellow ribbons already adorned front yard and fence line trees from valley center, California, to somerville, massachusetts.

HART: Right? Americans had found a shared ritual vocabulary, a shared nucleus for the belief in, as bush put it, what's right in what he said was our principles and, end quote, the brave young men and women of our armed forces and their families.

SOTOMAYOR: I remember this not from the 90s, because Iwas only five years old by the time it ended, but from 911 and onward, these those ribbons were everywhere on the backs of cars. You know, we had the gummy yellow wristbands that let everyone know we supported the troops. And it felt so natural. Of course we supported the troops.

SOTOMAYOR: I mean, duh, like they're fighting to keep us free. We just didn't even think about it. Right?

HART: And Imean, that was kind of that elevation of American patriotism and shared ritual. Commitment to that in the public sphere was kind of new since the cold war, in the cold war era, it was rejuvenated, let's say rejuvenated vietnam. It kind of killed it, right in the green lit night vision, though, of desert storms, precision guided missiles.

HART: You know, this was on a tv. You could see it was all green lit, backlit, and it was in the nightly news. You watched them being like, okay, wait, look, let's watch this, this, this precision guided missile hit this particular bunker through a particular window. Like we saw that with dan rather.

SOTOMAYOR: We recreated it in Call of duty modern warfare two. Okay.

HART: This video is great. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, you can see how effective it must have been. Yeah. Right. So Imean, in those America's militaristic faith was sort of rekindled from the fires of an imagined past. And they to. How do you do this? You leapfrog right over vietnam. That's how you do it over the quote, 22 years of mental tears cried by bret michaels suicide, vietnam, va.

HART: Right. That faith rooted itself in what were accepted as the uncomplicated victories of world war two. That's how you do it. Appeasement does not work, bush told the nation in august of 1990. As was the case in the 1930s, an aggressive dictator was poised to destroy our freedoms. Right? This is 1990. This is bush talking. The adversary was clear, as are the heroes.

SOTOMAYOR: And what a weird, twisted reality for vietnam veterans to be living through. I mean, world war two veterans came home. The huge honors whose praise vietnam veterans came home to at best silence and at worst, personal attacks from the general public. They retreated into the margins of society, literally for some, into nature, into the trees up here behind our redwood curtain in Humboldt right now, the pendulum has swung back suddenly to our troops as heroes, and they're watching it all happen in front of them.

SOTOMAYOR: They're they're living the hypocrisy.

HART: Yeah. I mean, Americans ritually expressed a shared moral commitment, right? This is the American civil religion piece, not only the yellow ribbons, but parades and middle school assemblies, bumper stickers, red, white and blue retail campaigns.

SOTOMAYOR: You know, we had a lot of assemblies. I mean, even in elementary school, we went on stage and sang America the beautiful and the national anthem. I mean, Igrew up in a time of deep dedication to the country. It was there. It was everywhere. People in my high school were in jrotc or preparing to enlist after graduation.

SOTOMAYOR: It didn't matter who they were or how they looked. We all wanted to believe in our country.

HART: Yeah, that's right, war was news again. But without the flag draped coffins and the domestic discontent, America supported its troops passing to the future. The tagline for what would become the single nonpartizan issue in American politics today. Now, when desert storm ended 90 days later, that's. Which is quick. Reagan's nine day turnaround is very first rate. Bush presided over the slaughtering of the nation's fatted Calf.

HART: Yeah, Ia good right. It's a proud day for America, president bush the elder says. And by god, we've kicked the vietnam syndrome once and for all. Okay. The once disdained American service member was brought back into the fold. Dutiful, heroic, the consumer on the sidelines. Nationalistic engagement of the first gulf war primed the nation for the full frenzy of militaristic patriotism that took hold after 9/11.

HART: After george w bush stood atop the rubble at ground zero and declared it, quote, our responsibility to history to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. I mean, at this point. Right. Toby keith's courtesy of the red, white and blue is shaping a nation. And that song was on the radio every day, right. Because we'll put a boot in your arm. That's the American way, right? I mean, Ithink Iknow that song by heart.

HART: I definitely know that.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. It's keith's highest certified single in the us. He had American soldier two, which went, oh, and Idon't want to die for you, but if dying is asked of me, i'll bear that cross with honor, because freedom don't come free, right?

HART: Freedom don't come free. And it certainly hasn't for veterans. You know, there are over 4.5 million veterans currently in the united states right now. The bureau of labor statistics reports that over 40% of post 911 veterans have a certified service connected disability. It's impossible to say whether the world's evil has, on balance, been diminished. It is impossible to deny that the hydra of American militarism has added its share to other nations, to our domestic arena, to the service members and to the veterans who return to their families, to the communities.

HART: So we see all of this in our modern formation of American civil religion, right? Like it's just drenched, just that little snapshot of like what happened from one bush to the next, right is like, it's all about belief, it's about evil, it's about good, it's about purpose. Like that is how we see ourselves in times of war. It's how we shape the religion we then live through in times of ostensible peace.

HART: You know, we. So and that's part of what we've seen as today's American civil religion with the sanctified soldier, when they're a soldier. No reflection on this when they come home, largely. I mean, discounting the parades, the honors, the pithy veteran state tweets. Those are great, right? Yeah. What? We, Idon't know how much other than that, that we do slashing va benefits.

HART: I think that's something we do don't talk about.

SOTOMAYOR: I can talk about that. Not gassing. Well, and, you know, through this, Ithink we see that American civil religion has established a sacred covenant with our service members. It's one that the state has routinely broken. It goes all the way back to the founding and continues into today. Patrick henry in 1775 defined the revolutionaries as armed in the holy cause of liberty.

SOTOMAYOR: And president george w bush echoed this when announcing operation enduring freedom by stating the soldier's cause was just we're protecting freedom everywhere. This type of language appears time and time again, and u.s. War time rhetoric across the politiCal spectrum, too. It's not just limited to any one party.

HART: Yeah, Idon't even know which party we'd try to limit it to. This is seriously the nonpartisan issue. This is this is the new world order. Exactly. But there's no guarantee that these veterans will be taken care of once they finish fighting in our holy wars. You know, just look at the mess the state has made of the pact act, the campus benefits.

HART: And these are just recent examples. It goes beyond soldiers to civil servants, too, as shown with our 911 first responders, which are up. I've been questioned again. Sometimes it seems we and I'm using the generalized national we here. It seems like we like it best when a soldier dies, because then we can make a martyr of them, and we can use their death to further drive support for our wars.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah, washington has a great quote sort of relevant to this in his 1783 farewell address, where he says, and shall not the brave men who have contributed so essentially to these inestimable acquisitions, retiring victorious from the field of war to the field of agriculture, participate in all the blessings which have been obtained. And quote here it seems that you know the state.

SOTOMAYOR: We lost this along the way, right? Participating in all the blessings we don't have that there's that broken covenant made real. One side upholds their oath while the other doesn't. A schism here has emerged in American civil religion, another theologiCal crisis, a belief in identity between what we think we believe and what we're actually performing. Right? Yeah.

HART: What we say and what we do.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah.

HART: Religious historian jonathan ebell names this trope soldier savior in his book gImessiah. It's a trope that he defines as being used to, quote, recognize the suffering, celebrate the heroism, and mourn the death of its soldiers. Our soldiers saints have become little more than figures worthy of canonizing in their deaths and celebrating during their active service. This is the.

HART: This is the critique.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And really, this place of honor often goes, no, you know, into no further examination of the veteran and the trials they faced post service. It goes into no further examination of why we fight these wars in the first place. And it and it's certainly felt by our veterans, right. At least people i've had experience with and people whose books i've read, i've seen how uncomfortable or annoyed they get when someone walks in and thanks them for their service.

SOTOMAYOR: It's an empty platitude that doesn't really mean anything.

HART: Right? And it's it's insufficient to the task of whatever it's aiming for sort of smacks of the obligatory it leaves the person on the receiving end unknown. You know, their service is reified. It's past tense. I think that Ithink that what we hope is that, you know, now might be the time. I think it is the time to leaven that ritual platitude with some authentic civic reflection, some historiCal and situational awareness, some active engagement with the veterans whose lives, purpose, continued service, and individual dignity are increasingly isolated from the civilian communities who nonetheless broadcast their support.

HART: If we do that, we might know what it is a little bit more to practice the support that we proclaim. We support our troops. We support our troops, we support our troops. But don't talk about it too much because you go, you know, Idon't.

SOTOMAYOR: Want to know anything about what your life.

HART: Is, but I want to sail. Is there going to be a Toyota's on sale soon? Okay. If we do that, our ritual proclamations might do more than ease the conscience and subsidize the comfort of a willfully ignorant citizenry at the peak of global power, separated entirely from our wars. Like in knowing and behaving and all of it. If we do that, we might stop sacrificing those who serve on some idealized altar of a superficial American civil religion.

HART: And if we do that, we might just set ourselves on the path to less war, fewer SNAFUBARs andrew bacevich in his paths of descent, which contains testimony from u.s. Veterans joy damianIwrites, quote, our health care, college money and veterans benefits hung in the balance between the ability to play the game and the ability to resist being played right, supporting our troops with more than public pieties.

HART: We might just help give them something to believe in.

HART: So we've talked about how a little bit about the origins of the term civic religion, how the u.s. Developed an American civil religion. We've outlined American civil religion as a midpoint between religious nationalism and western secular philosophy. We've explored American civil religion as an ideology for driving war and the theologiCal crisis that it has created. Or one of them.

SOTOMAYOR: Yeah. And Ithink one of the questions we're sort of asking here is, where do we go from here? You know, with all this, all this that we're seeing are the sCales tilting away from American civil religion towards, you know, religious nationalism or some other form of extreme national patriotism, you know, has American civil religion lost the battle for the hearts and minds of the us?

SOTOMAYOR: Is it is it still worthwhile?

HART: Okay, the answer has to be yes. Like I'm going to go hard. Yes, but let's go to the journalist and veteran Robert Keeler first and sacred soldiers. He offers us some guidance in how to circumvent this vapid worship of warriors. Much of his advice returns to like the same points. Listen to engage with veterans and service members. Pay attention to the policies that are affecting them, the wars that are being fought in your name and on your dime.

HART: Right? There's a whole number of ways to do these all these things, a whole lot of ways. But that's really the key point. Engage. And it might seem like an incredibly simple thing to ask. The nature of its simplicity should Call us to reflect on our own participation in the creation of this snafu. To begin with, keillor would tell us, right, veterans and service members know more about war than most of the civilian population ever will, and their opinions may surprise you.

HART: They might challenge you to think more deeply about u.s. Military industrial complex issues and the battles we fight. Why we fight. They might press you into a deeper sense of civic engagement, and they might help us all to avoid future snafus and to be a little more, have a little more integrity, behaving as we say we believe.

SOTOMAYOR: And we'll get there through American civil war religion. Perhaps, perhaps we'll get there through American civil religion. Yeah. I mean, trying to realize the beliefs we claim to hold.

HART: Yeah. If American civil religion can be a clear articulation of a set of beliefs that bring us together towards shared goals around values that we can hold, we might, Idon't know, look to like the declaration of independence or the preamble to the constitution for some of these things, like it's been written in American civil religion, if it can draw us closer to that.

HART: I think that's our best hope. There's so much more to say. Next time in the SNAFUBAR, folks.

SOTOMAYOR: Thanks for joining us.