The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

American Inferiority

One of the many paradoxes of the American republic is its self-image as a risk-taking, pioneering, adventurous people. Yet it is none of these. America’s timidity and uncertainty about itself is demonstrated most forcefully in its obsession with religion and its use of religion as a political force. As Katherine Stewart says, the recent turn to the divine has very little to do with religious doctrine, and absolutely nothing to do with Christian ethics. It is a political movement, the purpose of which is to create a feeling of certainty, particularly an existential certainty about American worth, for individuals as well for the nation. As she puts it, the current state of a plurality of Americans have “a longing for certainty in an uncertain world... The movement gives them confidence, an identity, and the feeling that their position in the world is safe.”

But this is not a new phenomenon, neither the uncertainty nor the response to it. America was founded on a deep spiritual uncertainty and a cultural obsession with safety. And it has a traditional way to deal with both: racism. While racism is a by-product of a more subtle malaise stemming from American religious history, it is the symptom through which the underlying disease can be accessed. This, I think, is what is missing from Stewart’s book. Without a recognition of the sociological/spiritual source of the problem, it only appears that the current state of American politics is the result of relatively recent events and concerns. And this is not the case.

It is, of course, misleading to view America religious movements in terms of doctrinal disputes. They have always been political, and always motivated by uncertainty expressed as fear. The so-called First Great Awakening in the mid-seventeenth century British colonies did not incidentally occur contemporaneously with the Stono Rebellion of slaves in South Carolina and the Slave Conspiracy in New York City. These were profoundly disconcerting events. Simultaneously with these revolts, indigenous peoples presented a persistent threat to New England and New York while they were allied with French. Race is what drove white colonists into the revivalist tents. Reassurance was what was sought and received: they belonged and they would prevail, together.

Following a series of post-Independence rebellions in the new United States, which shook the country’s confidence in itself, the Second Great Awakening coincided with intense national debates about the slave trade and the enactment of the fugitive slave laws. The traditionally symbolic event of the movement is the meeting at Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1800. The location is not insignificant. From the time of the American Revolution, there had been continuous warfare by the white settlers with the native Shawnee and Cherokee residents of Kentucky. Cane Ridge was effectively an evangelical Te Deum for victory over the natives, and a celebration of continuing white supremacy in the region.

The Third Great Awakening in the defeated Confederate states corresponds to the period of Reconstruction after the American Civil War. This is the period of ‘Jim Crow,’ the attempt to reverse Emancipation and maintain black serfdom into the 20th century. Church attendance was entirely segregated. Fear of black political power provoked intimidatory pressure on the black churches to refrain from political involvement. According to one leading historian of the period, “,,, in the racial climate of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, ... inter-racial spirituality was considered to be 'unchristian' and 'immoral'.” Inter-marriage among races was prohibited by law in Southern states, with widespread approval from the churches. The complicity of Christianity in the attempts to maintain racial dominance is undeniable.

The 20th century version of these movements is Christian Fundamentalism. Named after a series of essays published just prior to World War I, Fundamentalism, has proven attractive to nativists, racists, and radical evangelicals ever since. The second Ku Klux Klan with its gospel of white nationalism is one of its more prominent artifacts. But so are the racial prohibitions in 20th century Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Pentecostal sects.

The new ‘radio preachers’ of the 1920’s and 30’s like Billy Sunday, and later Father Coughlin, were covertly sympathetic to the Klan and overtly racist in their own views. Even into the 1950’s, the most notable inheritor of the revivalist tradition, Billy Graham, would not take a stand against racism. To the degree that main stream churches succumbed to ‘liberal’ attitudes towards race, radical evangelical emerged to minimise race as an issue, diverting national attention to ‘moral’ issues of abortion, same sex marriage and their version of religious liberty.

Of course, each of these episodes is an arbitrary designation for what is a really a single and consistent culture of fear not religious conviction. There is a similar pattern in all of these historical examples. First, race is rarely mentioned as a motive or a subject of renewed religious fervour. However, neither is Christian doctrine. Aside from the allusion to ‘fundamentals’ in the 20th century (which ultimately could not be agreed upon in any case), concerns about orthodox doctrine were matters for the leaders of these movements not their followers. The attempts to explain persistent popular appeal of religious enthusiasm by reference to doctrinal repair or recovery is ludicrous. Ordinary Christians simply have no idea about the relative merits of double predestination, the number of the saved, or the Virgin birth.

It is historically obvious that American Christianity is a tribal affair. Each of the movements outlined above is an act of reinforcement of (white) tribal solidarity. They all cut across sectarian and associated doctrinal differences. And they very clearly provide comfort in times of social stress. And this stress is always dominantly that of race. James Baldwin attributed American racial attitudes to an inherent feeling of impurity, of inherent and irredeemable sin. I think he’s correct. This is an inherited spiritual condition which instinctively seeks a spiritual therapy. Hence the perennial attraction of the revival, the anti-intellectual jamboree of pure feeling among like-minded, and troubled, souls. The tradition of the revival serves both to hide and to justify racial fear.

Racism typically manifests as fear of the Other. However, it is actually fear of the Self that is at issue. In anti-Semitism, for example, it is clear that ‘The Jew’ has never referred to any Jewish person. It is a construct which is useful to confirm Christian identity by negation, and to simultaneously deny the fear of not being among the arbitrarily chosen group to be spared eternal damnation. Recall that strict Calvinism is the ur-religion of America. This fear of exclusion from membership among the saved is an essential part of the American religious legacy. The relative paucity of the Jewish population on which to project this fear was solved by the presence of the imported black man.

It should not be surprising that race is not an explicit topic among those participating. To admit the issue of race would raise the suspected impurity to the level of consciousness, something far too painful to contemplate. And since theology is simply an alien discipline, the vocabulary used is one of vague ‘values,’ which are to be upheld or recovered. Reading the transcripts of sermons given by the great revivalists from Whitefield in the 17th century to the various mega-preachers of the 21st, the persistent emphasis is consistently on either Pauline faith in the advice of the preacher or the unfortunate influences of ‘alien’ elements in society. These elements are rarely mentioned by name. But they are demons who certainly do not resemble the upright white folk who are part of church-going society. They are black, brown, or red, usually with identifiable accents.

My point is raising the history of Christianity in America is that religion has always been a matter of nationalism in the country. Indeed, religion has always been the principle mode of expression of this nationalism. The network of Christian churches traditionally has formed the political glue holding the republic together. This network has typically controlled local government, including the education system even before independence. And it has always been supported by ‘average’ participants as well as large benefactors. The use of modern technology to communicate within these networks is incidental.

Christianity in America appears more fragmented into sectarian factions than any other country on the planet. Yet intellectual issues of doctrine always give way to the need for political unity in order to exert power. And the one issue that is persistently central as the catalyst for this unity is race. Racial domination is the source and goal of power in America. That the country is deeply disturbed is not an issue. This is not a new condition; it has been so from its roots. Racial fear has been passed along from generation to generation as its principle cultural legacy.

So, I can’t agree with Stewart that “The roots of the present crisis in the American political party system lie at the juncture of money and religion.” The roots are psychological, or, if you prefer, spiritual. Money and religion are merely responses to a feeling of inferiority which is unacknowledged. The country blusters and obfuscates, especially in religion, because it feels unsure. The most visible proof of that feeling is the country’s persistent racism, which acts not as compensation but distraction from the feeling of inferiority. Confronting the religious façade with this fact, continuously and forcefully, is, I think the only hope of doing anything about it.

Postscript 16/11/200: Still going strong: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/op...

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