Roundtable: Haberski Responds to Reviews of *God and War*

I am aware that employing civil religion has a price.  David Sehat’s critique of my book identifies that price: because civil religion gets deployed in multiple ways, scholars who study it can appear to be, at once, frustratingly vague and curiously moralistic.  Art Remillard, a scholar who has also written on civil religion, suggests a resolution to this problem—recognizing competing versions of civil religion is the point to using it.  That, Art notes, is what I attempt to do in God and War, to “chronicle the civil religious discourse of political leaders and public intellectuals form World War II to the present who…struggled to make sense of the human and material cost of war.” Civil religion can help both explain a recurring historical debate about war and describe the rhetorical tactics of that debate.

In God and War I do not embrace a single, normative version of civil religion, and I do not suggest that there is a single set of ideas or principles that if followed would correct American history.  I do suggest that a debate raged over who would determine the meaning of sacrifice in American wars and how that meaning was contested.  In that sense, I use civil religion as a way to describe historical change and conflict, just as I see David organizing history around his term the “moral establishment” and Andrew Hartman chronicling history through the “culture wars.”  Do we all agree on how we define those terms?  Of course not; rather we get interesting studies because we employ contested terms that describe contested histories.    

I am grateful to my three colleagues for reviewing God and War because they all identify in different ways the strengths and weaknesses of my attempt to wrestle with the implications of using civil religion.  And all three provide critiques that allow me to explain my use of civil religion that by necessity gets left out of the book.  There are three basic reasons I use civil religion in God and War.

First, as I researched the topic of religion and war in post-1945 America, I realized that relatively few scholars, until recently, studied the interplay between religion and U.S. foreign policy or, more specifically, religion and war.  There are, of course, plenty of people willing to speak about the relationship between religion and war, but as Andrew Preston’s book Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith makes clear, there was no standard text in this field until Preston wrote it.  His experience and that of William Inboden, who wrote a fascinating book on religion and the cold war, both demonstrated that it is difficult to discuss the influence religion has on American foreign policy without getting bogged down in the intricacies of particular faith traditions, churches, and denominations that draw one away from being able to discuss the more general effect this interaction has had on American history. Unless, that is, one employs civil religion.  In the end, both Inboden and Preston turn to civil religion as well.

Second, as David correctly notes, I look to Robert Bellah’s famous essay, “Civil Religion in America,” for some inspiration.  Yet unlike many scholars who have found Bellah’s essay a model for doing or dismissing civil religion, I use Bellah as a historical actor himself, situating him within a history of debate over the moral implications of war.  In other words, I do not argue that Bellah developed his version of civil religion as a normative standard we must all follow but rather that he stands within a tradition that includes Lincoln and Niebuhr and Herberg and Neuhaus and others who have grappled with the way that in a time of war Americans rely on a particular kind of mixing of religion and politics to understand the sacrifices made in the name of the nation.  And so, I argue in the book that “in the middle of the Vietnam War Bellah had captured the way that war galvanized a moral understanding of the nation—not merely a moral critique of the nation but an accounting of whether the United States might be a force for good to its own people, let alone to other people around the world.” (79)

Finally, I use civil religion to address that contested yet resilient notion in American religious history that America is a nation “under God.” David, in particular, asks me to account for my apparent agreement with Lincoln’s theistic understanding of this notion.  Yet, while I do rely on Lincoln to make a point about civil religion, I don’t think it matters if I agree that he might have believed the nation was united under God. Rather, I bring Lincoln into my argument for two related reasons, he developed a sophisticated understanding of how religion and politics mix in a time of war and this understanding became, especially to the people I look at in the post-1945 period, a touchstone in the debate over civil religion.  I find Lincoln’s thought crucial to my study because through his particular experience with the Civil War he came both to accept and fear the way Americans found in war both sin and redemption. 

This last point is where Andrew and I meet.  I have argued previously that my work on civil religion is like the photographic negative of Andrew’s work on the culture wars.  He points this out in his review: “The culture wars were a war for the soul of America.  Civil religion was recognition that he nation had a soul to begin with.”  And even though I do not seek to prove the actual existence of this “soul,” I can’t escape the fact that historical actors suggest its exists and act on that understanding.

Let me end on a note about my use of irony.  In some cases, irony affords us a sense of detachment from the subject we study and through such irony we gain critical insight.  For example, I find it ironic that American Exceptionalism can withstand repeated failures of America to be the last best hope of the earth.  But the irony I find in civil religion is different because rather than pushing me further away from my subject it draws me closer to it.  This irony asks me to imagine how the Lincoln of the Gettysburg Address who seems to find national redemption in war is also the Lincoln of the Second Inaugural who came to rue the idea that war could redeem the nation.  It is an irony that compels me to address the way Reinhold Niebuhr could be both a hawk and a dove; a patriot and a harsh critic of America. And it is an irony that makes me appreciate the complexities in the debate between Richard John Neuhaus and Stanley Hauerwas over the word “we” in a time of war.  I use civil religion because it captures these tensions better than terms that I find too rigid or deterministic, such as religious nationalism or American Exceptionalism.  I use civil religion because it has an irony embedded within it that forces empathy for historical actors who might otherwise invite an irony of detachment.

Roundtable: Remillard on Haberski's *God and War*

In Search of a New American Creed
by Arthur Remillard
Saint Francis University (PA)


Halfway through God and War, Raymond Haberski shares his own close encounter with American civil religion. In 1976, on Independence Day, the author and his family joined millions of New Yorkers to celebrate the American bicentennial. “As I look back on it now,” he reminisces, “that celebration seems to stand outside of time” (p. 98). Indeed, in this liminal zone of swelling patriotic pride, crowds of strangers found common ground in their shared history. In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, this sentiment was a welcome reprieve from the otherwise divisive tenor of the time. But if we scratch the surface of this expression of American unity, we find the looming presence of war, as the flashes of fireworks replicate exploding artillery shells. And parades and marching bands merely domesticate images of armed troops and battle formations. War is bloody. War is confusing. War is death. But when war moves from the battlefield to the ritual stage, war is sacred.

God and War investigates the sacredness of armed conflict in America, and the thorny issues that this reality brings forth. Raymond Haberski chronicles the civil religious discourse of political leaders and public intellectuals from World War II to the present who have struggled to make sense of the human and material cost of war. From Truman to Obama, civil religious rhetoric tactically replaces the language of loss with the language of sacrifice—sacrifice for a “higher cause,” a nation “under God.” And in public speeches and print culture, the events of war gain transcendent traction by buoying the narrative of American exceptionalism. But, as Haberski shows, there are always dissenters lurking in the shadows. These prophetic figures often ask whether or not a war is just. Or they doubt those who assume that any military conflict is free from moral hazard. To be sure, the bellicose patriot finds his or her dark twin in the gadfly who refuses to accept the status quo.

It is perhaps fitting, then, that Haberski follows his memory of 1976 with a reference to Reinhold Niebuhr, a central and recurring character in the book. While the theologian had died in 1971, Haberski suggests that Niebuhr’s critique of American idealism resonated throughout the bicentennial year. “A common refrain heard from many leaders,” Haberski explains, “was for the nation to redeem itself through humility, to humble itself before God and by doing so to recall that the United States remained a nation under God’s judgment not merely his Grace—principles Niebuhr preached but had rarely seen followed in his life” (p. 99). Here, Haberski sets forth the central tension of the book, an ideological tug-of-war between grace and judgment, between national pride and collective humility, between blind faith and healthy skepticism. The author situates Niebuhr everywhere and nowhere in this tension, since the theologian’s “Christian realism” both affirmed the necessity of war, and refused to conflate God’s will with political power.

Ambiguity notwithstanding, Haberski’s choice to foreground Niebuhr provides a stable guidepost as he surveys the civil religious territory of God, nation, and war. Some voices express very little Niebuhrian nuance. We hear from Billy Graham and Cardinal Francis Spellman, who, Haberski explains, depicted the Cold War as a “battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness” (p. 64). Similarly, after 9/11, President George W. Bush developed what the author terms, “an absolutist moral theology of the nation” (p. 222). For those sharing Bush’s civil religion, Susan Sontag and her ilk were “un-American” heretics. “Let’s by all means grieve together,” she exclaimed after 9/11. “But let’s not be stupid together” (p. 204). A distinct strength of this book is Haberski’s masterful shifts between competing perspectives. For every reference to George Weigel, Richard John Neuhaus, and First Things, we find counter-arguments from Stanley Hauerwas, Jim Wallis, and Sojourners.

Yet, as the book concludes, Haberski circles back to Niebuhr. He notes that the theologian remains part of the American civil religious conversation, with everyone from Barack Obama to Joseph Loconte of the Heritage Foundation channeling him. War hawks in particular admire Niebuhr’s abandonment of pacifism and advocacy of war in order to temper evil and establish justice. To this, though, Haberski responds, “Niebuhr’s sense of justice did not include endless wars, torture, and preemptive invasions of sovereign nations” (p. 249). Then the author steps out from his historical wizard’s curtain and presents his own civil religious prescription. “Believing in the myths that sustain American civil religion does not require the reduction of civil religion to a theology of war,” he explains. “And critiquing civil religion does not inevitably produce cynicism, for losing national myths can be as dangerous for the health of a people as believing in bad ones” (p. 253). In essence, Haberski calls forth for a new American creed where the voices of both judgment and grace have room to speak, where national pride does not require armed conflict, and where humility always trumps hubris.

God and War wraps a passionate appeal for a reformed civil religion inside a compelling intellectual history of modern America. The book’s accessibility makes it suitable for the undergraduate classroom. Questions raised by the author will no doubt generate vigorous class discussions. Scholars of American religion will also benefit by carefully reading this book. In addition to offering his own insights, Haberski opens new avenues of inquiry. For example, what would happen if we shifted focus from the metaphorical pulpit to the pew? In other words, what did the civil religion of the “common person” look like in this era? And how would it compare with the intellectuals of Haberski’s study? Yes, the old truism that good scholarship raises more questions than it answers applies to God and War. This book is a fine accomplishment and welcome contribution to the discussion of American civil religion. 

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Editor's note:  This is the third post in a roundtable of review essays on Ray Haberski's book.  Haberski will post a response essay on Thursday.

The Myth of Civil Religion

Does civil religion even exist?

For many scholars who have addressed this strange beast, the answer comes down to whether civil religion has empirical value; in short, whether civil religion acts like a set of laws, standing as a lodestar for generations of people who live under it.  The notion that civil religion functions in this way stems primarily (though somewhat mistakenly) from Robert Bellah's influential 1967 essay, "Civil Religion in America." In that essay, Bellah famously suggested that "American civil religion is not the worship of the American nation but an understanding of the American experience in the light of ultimate and universal reality." It should not be surprising, though, that throughout American history groups have vied to project a single or unified understanding of the American experience based on a particular interpretation of a transcendent faith. As Bellah acknowledged in his best book on American civil religion, The Broken Covenant, he had been too optimistic about the symbolic power of special moments--JFK's inaugural address, MLK's "I have a dream" speech--especially in light of the reality of the interminable Vietnam War and the nefarious activities of Richard Nixon.  Civil religion's moral value seemed utterly bankrupt as Nixon used language similar to Kennedy's while at the same time ordering his dirty tricks and widening the war in Southeast Asia.

And so scholarship on civil religion has tended, since the early 1970s, to follow Bellah's own disenchantment with the term, arguing that civil religion is little more than a dangerous pipe dream.  My S-USIH colleague David Sehat captured this sentiment in the conclusion of his fine book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom, asserting that versions of civil religion are a fantasy when they "share a belief in...a society gathered around a common religious center whose uniform and voluntary support makes possible a harmonious and socially integrated whole." That observation serves David's argument well as he seeks to demolish the idea that there exists a moral common ground that, historically, a moral establishment has attempted to affirm for the good of all Americans.  Rather, civil religion becomes cover for coercion deployed by a moral establishment that David argues has stifled dissent in order to maintain and expand political power.

Few scholars would disagree with David's specific dismissal of civil religion as a normative replacement for American religious conflict.  In fact, conflict has been at the heart of recent scholarship on civil religion.  Ronald Beiner makes clear that civil religion captures the fight within the history of political theory to make religion serve the ends of political authority.  Philip Gorski uses civil religion to chronicle the long-running battle over competing systems of truth and national understanding throughout American history. In this respect, Gorski has undertaken in a book-length study he is writing the most comprehensive reassessment of American civil religion to date.  Richard T. Hughes, a religious historian, calls civil religion a collection of "myths that America lives by."  Hughes writes succinctly that while national myths are those "by which we affirm the meaning of the United States," they are also myths that have been absolutized and thus "confuse the ideals of the creed with the realities of the present moment, and eliminate dissent."

Art Remillard, a historian of the New South, mulled over such trends in civil religion when he produced his book Southern Civil Religions.  Art explains in a recent blog post  that he came to use civil religion to contextualize "the realities of American many-ness."  Again, the emphasis is on the conflict rather than the potential unity that civil religion portends.  What Art discovered in his research on the post-Reconstruction South (or the New South) was a series of civil religions competing with each other to redefine the future "good society" that would follow the sea change wrought by the Civil War.  Moral visions conflicted and overlapped and canceled each other out; but the language and structure of those visions shared enough in common to act like civil religions.  I know that Art continues to think about his use of civil religion and I would like to know more about why the visions of these disparate groups seemed to share similar rhetorical structures.  I think this is where Phil Gorski's future book will be a great help.  His bold claim appears to be that civil religion is normative because has been forged about of certain rhetorical traditions and competing systems of belief.

If, though, there is one reason why civil religion seems a long-suffering term, the reason lies in its popular understanding--or lack thereof.  Intellectual historian Wilfred McClay points out civil religion is very much a "scholar's term...even though it describes a phenomenon at has existed very since the first organized human communities." Thus, importantly, civil religion does not have the popular cache of a term like the "culture wars."  Even though recent scholarship on the civil religion addresses conflicts and structures very much involved in various culture wars, civil religion has been saddled with the limited understanding attached to Bellah's initial essay.  Whereas the Culture Wars clearly defines the sense of conflict that many Americans believe they have been living through for the last forty years, civil religion, when it has been considered at all, has not really risen above the notion of being either a silly myth or a lost chance.

Obviously, I think there is reason to change that perception.  Next week I will propose how.