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The Bicentennial Book Band
By John M. Mulder

HERE it comes! It's the Bicentennial Book Band, replete with red, white, and blue book jackets, sounding notes of hope, despair, criticism, encouragement, celebration, and renewal. What everyone expected has now begun-that flood of publications about the nation's 200th birthday, how the churches should celebrate it, and what there is to celebrate.

The band is a colorful and diverse crew, ranging from study guides for use in local churches to scholarly analyses of religion and politics in America. In contrast to what most historians have observed about the holy (or unholy, depending on your perspective) alliance of religion and patriotism in American history, this band is made up of muted trumpets, muffled drums, and only an occasional unfurled banner.

For the truth is, as all of these authors realize, that this is a poor time to be cheering over our nation's history and future. The cumulative effects of political assassinations, Vietnam, racial strife, radical protest movements, Watergate, world hunger, and economic dislocation have left the American people caught in a whipsaw out of which disillusionment and apathy seem the only sane responses. And yet, in the spirit of activist but somewhat untheological American religion, none of these authors is content to retreat, and in a time of national and international crisis, each issues a new call for some form of Christian responsibility for the political and social order.

I

Among the guides for adult education study, the best seems to be Paul S. Minear's, I Pledge Allegiance: Patriotism and the Bible. ¹ Lucid, provocative, and well-developed for group use, Minear makes constructive and creative use of passages from the Bible, what he calls "that controversial collection of un-American writings" (p. 17), and urges that these Bible passages be set against a variety of Bicentennial "problems"- civil religion, civil disobedience, poverty, national security, etc. Perhaps not unexpected from a New Testament scholar but in striking contrast to the pattern of political sermons in American history, Minear's selection of Bible passages for study comes exclusively from the New Testament. Implicit in this seems to be a rejection of the Old Testament idea of Israel as elect nation for the New Testament conception of the church, the people of God span-

John M. Mulder is Assistant Editor of THEOLOGY TODAY and Assistant Professor of American Church History at Princeton Theological Seminary.
¹ Philadelphia: Geneva Press, 1975. Paperbound, 141 pp. $2.65.

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ning all races and nations. But the issue is not discussed directly, despite its importance. Minear's study guide is noteworthy for the attempt to take Bible study seriously during the Bicentennial and in its use of stimulating examples from contemporary political and social life. Discussions based on this book will not be dull.

Another guide, which develops many of the same themes as Minear's but does so within a historical context, is The Nation Yet to Be: Christian Mission and the New Patriotism ² by James Armstrong, United Methodist Bishop for the Dakotas. Armstrong's book is intended to be used with a leader's manual by LaVonne Althouse, The Parish and the Patriot: A Professor Creative Celebration . ³ By itself, Armstrong's book is heartening in its candid appraisal of the role of churches and religion in American history. At a time when I suspect virtually every denomination will be taking credit for the establishment of religious liberty in America, Armstrong faces up to the ambiguous record of tolerance and intolerance in the churches' past and maintains, I think correctly, that American religious liberty must be seen more as an accident than a product of conscious intention by broad-minded, freedom-loving churches . ⁴ That is not to say that the legacy of religious liberty is not to be cherished, and Armstrong persuasively links religious liberty to a wider concern for diversity and cultural pluralism. Armstrong concludes his book on an up-beat note, including an honor role of "Christian patriots" (Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Woodrow Wilson, Archibald Cox, and Mark Hatfield, among others) as well as a rewriting of Thomas Jefferson's famous prose into "A Declaration of Interdependence." It's strange how Jefferson, that old Deist and "infidel," can be vilified by one generation of Methodists and canonized by another. Ms. Althouse's leader's manual has many valuable suggestions for discussion and for integrating Bicentennial themes into the worship life of congregations. It even includes, in good Puritan fashion, a proposal for congregations to formulate "a covenant," recollecting what God has done in history, what the congregation faces, and what it will do. John Winthrop's heart would be strangely warmed.

More optimistic, but still restrained in its call to celebration, is Earl H. Brill's The Future of the American Past: A Study Course on American Values. ⁵ This is a six-session study course designed around such ideas as American mission, freedom, equality, and the American

² New York: Friendship Press, 1975. Paperbound, 127 pp. $2.25.
³ New York: Friendship Press, n.d. Paperbound, 48 pp. $1.95.
⁴ For the classic statement of this argument, see Perry Miller, "The Location of American Religious Freedom," Nature's Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 150-62. For a brief but excellent survey of the roots of religious freedom, see Robert T. Handy, "The American Tradition of Religious Freedom: An Historical Analysis," Journal of Public Law, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 3-22, available as a pamphlet from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, 43 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. Cost: $.20. For the period since the Revolution, see Elwyn A. Smith, Religious Liberty in the United States (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972). $10.95.
⁵ New York: Seabury Press, 1974. Paperbound, 96 pp. $2.95.

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dream. Brill's treatment suffers from some distortions of American history and from a near vacuum of theological and biblical resources with which to approach a study of the nation's past and future. It does include suggestions designed to generate discussion, but the overall impact of Brill's treatment is designed less to provoke thought or generate criticism (and incidentally discussion) than to affirm, mollify, and celebrate.

For those who indeed want both sides of the issues, presented in sprightly prose and developed in historical perspective, there is Martin E. Marty's cleverly produced volume, The Pro & Con Book of Religious America: A Bicentennial Argument. ⁶ Instructions are necessary here. If you want the story of the church as the good guys, put on your white hat, pick up the book, and read the "pro" side. There you will learn that America is and has been "a spiritual society," blessed by "historical awareness," "the spirit of community," and "an international ethos." The American people are "religiously tolerant tribes," who offered "a promised land for all races," encouraged "an expressive laity" in the churches, and worked for "the progressive liberation of women." The story of American religion is one of a "humanitarian impulse," "creativity of ethics and morals," theological vitality, and opportunities for prophetic wisdom.

But now you are only half-way home. The object is to exchange your white hat for black one, turn the book over, and read the "con" side, where you will find the other side of the story. There you will find that Americans and their churches are materialistic, afflicted with historical amnesia, lonely individualists, provincial and nationalistic, intolerant, racist, dominated by clerics and males, self-seekers, theological morons, expedient ethicists, and worshippers of the status quo.

There are, of course, different rules. You may read the "con" side first, so that you end up with the affirmation of the "pro." Or, you can confuse yourself continually by reading a "pro" chapter, then a "con" chapter, then a "pro" chapter, etc. Altogether, 24 chapters to be divided up as you see fit and as long as your ego does not plunge into schizophrenia. What's going on here? Is this mere cleverness? Or an example of Marty's Lutheran dialectical thinking? Marty himself persuasively argues that the Bicentennial is not an occasion for another of America's much vaunted compromises but a time for confronting the deep and at times ugly paradoxes of America's past. "I believe," he says, "that if people can live with contradiction and paradox, they will learn more from the extremes of national life than from carefully balanced and comprised paragraphs" (p. 11, no matter which way the book is turned).

If you want your study along historical lines, and if you want a sense of humor and what it means to be human and inhuman in American history, Marty's book is the one to use.

⁶ Waco, Texas: Word Books, 1975. 143 pp. (pro), 149 pp. (con). $6.95.

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Roman Catholics may utilize an excellent study series, Liberty and Justice for All. ⁷ In many respects, it presents an interesting contrast to the voluminous Protestant materials in its unabashed attention to social and political issues and its relative lack of attention to the issues of national purpose, meaning, or identity. For example, even David Tracy's essay on "Nationhood" concludes with the observation that "the dialogue with America becomes, as it should, the focus on Catholic life in 1976" (p. 21). Subsequent essays on ethnicity and race, the neighborhood, work, and family suggest the persistence of what John Cogley has called the "ghetto mentality" of American Catholicism ⁸ as well as the preservation and cultivation of a Catholic identity apart from American culture. Many Protestants, implicitly and at times explicitly, still assume a largely Protestant culture and a sense of moral trusteeship for an entire national ethos. That's a heavy burden for anyone to bear, and the tone of the Catholic material seems inherently wiser and more realistic.

Finally, the least denominationally-oriented and most general guide to Bicentennial study is Forum: Religious Faith Speaks to American Issues, edited by William A. Norgren. ⁹ Sponsored by Forward '76, a Bicentennial organization operating out of the Inter-Church Center in New York city, this study guide is designed to be used in conjunction ,with the "American Issues Forum," ¹⁰ a program of articles and radio and television programs developed by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Each essay in Forum discusses the church's involvement or lack of it in the development of pluralism, religious liberty, economic equality, political justice, etc. Suggestions for a group discussion are included, but the effectiveness of this guide will depend in part on how widely the "American Issues Forum" is circulated throughout the country.

Incidentally, if you are looking for "Biblical" resources in a new mode or for patriotic quotations for sermons, Orbis Books has two slim volumes that admirably serve the purpose: The Patriot's Bible and The Radical Bible.¹¹ These include apt quotations from various historical figures, and even the Bible itself, which bear on issues of contemporary concern. Also helpful, but without Scriptural material,

⁷ Available from the Committee for the Bicentennial, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1312 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. Paperbound, 60 pp.
⁸ John Cogley, Catholic America (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1973), pp. 13553.
⁹ New York: Friendship Press, 1975. Paperbound, 56 pp. $2.95.
¹⁰ "A descriptive brochure and calendar for the study series is available from the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, Washington, D.C.
¹¹ "John Eagleson and Philip Scharper, (eds.) The Patriot's Bible (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1975). Paperbound, 195 pp. $3.95. John Eagleson and Philip Scharper, (adapt.), The Radical Bible (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1972). Paperbound, 162 pp. $1.95.

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is Voices of the American Revolution, produced by the Peoples Bicentennial Commission. ¹²

II

What emerges from these Bicentennial study guides are several strong impressions. The first is the sense of national limitation, born of Vietnam, the failure of social programs for a Great Society, world hunger, and diminishing natural resources. Gone is Emerson's unlimited and eloquent optimism: "America is a country of the future … it is a country of beginnings, of vast designs, and expectations. It has no past; all has an onward and prospective look." Today, Al Smith's candid expression of American uplift falls on deaf ears: "The American people never carry an umbrella. They prepare to walk in eternal sunshine." The death of American innocence has long been heralded, but it retains a phoenix-like existence. One can only hope that the subdued spirit of this Bicentennial does indeed mark the nation's grappling with the sense of its own finitude and the refusal to resurrect the old dreams of omnipotence.

Somewhat paradoxically, another strong impression is the emphasis upon program and policy, the traditional concern of the American churches with mission and ethical endeavor. Scarcely any of the authors retain the naiveté of the old Social Gospel that a given program will inaugurate the Kingdom of God in America, but if the utopian imagery is absent, there still tends to be an equation of certain forms of social ethics with the Christian gospel. And the equation is remarkably consistent the Christian fights racism and bigotry, opposes war and huge defense budgets, ¹³ works to improve the plight of the poor, seeks to rehabilitate the decaying cities, champions the needs of the Third World.

I have few complaints about the political program, but I must confess some discomfort at the inevitability of the logic. First of all, in much of this material there seems to be no biblical or theological principle for deciding why these issues are important, which are more important than others, or why the Christian should be concerned about them. Secondly, rarely do these discussion guides communicate the ambiguity of many of these problems. For example, it is not at all clear, from a political or even a Christian point of view, exactly what should be done about the welfare crisis in this country or how world hunger can be alleviated. It is this strong instinct to do good rather than to think that has often proved so tragically destructive for the church and for those it purports to help. Many of these Bicentennial calls for mission flounder on the devastating question, "Why?"

¹² New York: Bantam Books, 1974. Paperbound, 248 pp. $1.75.
¹³ It is somewhat ironic that this theme emerges so strongly in the celebration of a violent revolution.

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III

On the positive side, there is a strong insistence in the Bicentennial reading material that once again the church should stand against the world, and specifically the state. Most of the brickbats are saved for the phenomenon of civil religion, an idea which has generated a hot and lively debate inside academia and the church.

The handiest introduction to the entire issue is American Civil Religion, ¹⁴ edited by Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones. Included are the classic formulations of the nation's civic faith by Robert N. Bellah (who coined the term á la Rousseau), Sidney Mead's description of America as "The Nation with the Soul of a Church," Will Herberg's analysis of the American Way of Life, and W. Lloyd Warner's examination of how symbolic celebrations like Memorial Day give meaning to American communal life.

The debate is still considerably confused and confusing, pitting theologians, historians, sociologists, and ethicists against each other, but the subject can be divided into at least four major questions. The first is a question of definition, namely, what exactly civil religion is. The second involves its function in a society, and the third focuses on how it developed in American history. The fourth question is the most arguable: Should there be a civil religion, and if so, what should it be? This last question consistently rears its head and has virtually obscured the others throughout the entire discussion.

Bellah defines civil religion as a body of beliefs, symbols, and rituals that "exists alongside of and rather clearly differentiated from the churches," and in his recent book, The Broken Covenant: Civil Religion in Time of Trial," ¹⁵ he has broadened the context of his definition beyond the merely political dimension to broader cultural values. His concern is plainly to revitalize the common ideals around which a viable American society might be organized. The Broken Covenant also provides a somewhat more developed historical account of civil religion. His heroes are the communal Puritans; the villain is utilitarian individualism which eroded a sense of common national purpose. Written with disarming grace and filled with telling illustrations, Bellah's book has several similarities with Robert Benne and Philip Hefner's Defining America: A Christian Critique of the American Dream. ¹⁶ Largely on the sociological basis that all cultures generate values by which social life is ordered, both books argue that the question is not whether there should be a civil religion but what kind of civil religion there should be.

James Sellers is hardly speaking to the issue of civil religion, but his new book, Warming Fires: The Quest for Community in America," ¹⁷ addresses many of the same problems.Written for a general audience,

¹⁴ "New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Paperbound, 278 pp. $3.95.
¹⁵ "New York: The Seabury Press, 1975. 172 pp. $7.95.
¹⁶ "Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975. Paperbound, 150 pp. $3.75.
¹⁷ "New York: Seabury Press, 1975. 207 pp. $7.95.

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Sellers surveys what he sees as the decline of community in contemporary American life and a loss of the sense of belonging which he claims united people in earlier stages of American history. Sellers formulates his argument in non-theological terms, using many examples from his own experience, and the result is an appealing summons for Christians to recover their communal heritage.

Bellah, Benne and Hefner, and Sellers skim lightly over the historical evidence for their argument. For example, "the quest for community" is a persistent theme in all of American history-from the Puritan divines agonizing over declension and God's "controversy with New England," to the "benevolent empire's" alarm over spreading infidelity, to the social gospel's reaction to the disintegrating forces of urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. To assume, as Sellers does, that we once had it but now we've lost it distorts the way in which "community" represents a perpetual problem for American society and the American churches, not an ideal that we need to recover. Similarly, Bellah, as well as Benne and Hefner, are highly impressionistic in their sketching of the history of American civil religion. Can one argue that such a thing existed prior to the Civil War when sectional, racial, and social antagonisms were tearing the country apart? Or, does civil religion only take hold after the Civil War?

Cushing Strout has attempted to deal with some of these questions in The New Heavens and New Earth: Political Religion in America," ¹⁸ a broad, synthetic treatment of how religion and politics have interacted in American history. In this Bicentennial era, special attention should be drawn to Strout's excellent chapter, "Calvinist Whigs and the Spirit of '76," a carefully-argued exposition of the role of religion in the American Revolution. A skilled intellectual historian, Strout has provided a handy and intelligible illustration of de Tocqueville's paradox that although the American churches were disestablished, they retained a tenacious hold and pervasive influence on American political life. However, Strout's use of "political religion," rather than civil religion, only sidesteps some of the critical problems of interpretation, and the result is a highly readable, but not very deep, analysis of the interaction of religion and the political order in the United States.

This shaky historical foundation for civil religion and its fuzzy conceptual basis has been attacked by John F. Wilson in two probing essays. ¹⁹ Wilson argues that if civil religion does in fact exist, its appearance in American history is episodic, coming to the fore under certain historical conditions and then subsiding. The occasions seem to be primarily periods of conflict. For example, as the sign in the shop

¹⁸ "New York: Harper & Row, 1974.400 pp. $12.50.
¹⁹ "A Historian's Approach to Civil Religion," American Civil Religion, pp. 115-38; "The Status of Civil Religion in America," Elwyn A. Smith (ed.), The Religion of the Republic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), pp. 1-21.

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of a supporter of the Know Nothing Party of the 1840's put it, "We're 200% America. We hate everybody." Such conflict immediately raises the question whether civil religion can in any sense be civil. That is, it seems to be closely related to the suppression of unwanted groups and to issues of political power, all of which involve contending interests. ²⁰ Does every group have its own civil religion? And if so, how can one speak of an American civil religion, especially in a country as pluralistic as the United States?

On at least one issue, Bellah is emphatic and probably correct. "Today," he writes, "the American civil religion is an empty and broken shell" (p. 142). In my own mind, Watergate and Vietnam were the nails that fastened the coffin. Bellah's response to its demise is to call for a new, more chastened, humane, and mature civil religion which will recognize the interrelatedness of American society and the United States' responsibility to the rest of the world. Recalling John Winthrop's famous sermon on the Arbella and the powerful biblical imagery of Israel's covenant, Bellah declares, "We do not know what the future holds and we must give up the illusion that we control it, for we know that it depends not only on our action but on grace. While recognizing the reality of death, we may return to Winthrop's biblical injunction: Let us choose life" (p. 163). Similarly, Benne and Hefner urge Americans to recover a sense of sacrifice in order that they not "destroy or dismiss the civil religion but rather work for its critical reformation and vivification" (p. 120).

The reaction from theologians has been vigorous. The handiest and most sustained criticism of civil religion is contained in the volume of essays, Religion and Political Society, ²¹ edited and translated in the Institute of Christian Thought, a graduate faculty and research center located in Toronto. Three German theologians, Jürgen Moltmann, Willi Oemüller, and Johann Baptist Metz, as well as North Americans M. Darrol Bryand and Herbert Richardson, attack civil religion for its attempt to supplant biblical faith. All the authors reject any identification of Christian eschatology with utopianism and insist that the essential task of Christian theology is one of criticism. They are primarily alarmed that civil religion represents the sacralization of politics, a baptizing of political programs with transcendent value. In their view, the final effect is a deification of political power and a denial of human freedom and cultural diversity.

The advocates of civil religion, Bellah, Benne and Hefner, and Sidney Mead, properly point out that in American history, the civil re-

²⁰ "For attacks on civil religion along this line, see Charles H. Long, "Civil Rights Civil Religion: Visible People and Invisible Religion," American Civil Religion, pp. 211-21, and J. Earl Thompson, "The Reform of the Racist Religion of the Republic," The Religion of the Republic, pp. 267-85. Interesting too is the dissent against civil religion levied by American writers, which is discussed by Leo Marx in "The Uncivil Response of American Writers to Civil Religion in America," American Civil Religion, pp. 222-51.
²¹ "New York: Harper & Row, 1974. Paperbound, 209 pp. $3.95.

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ligion has at times functioned as a source of transcendent judgment on the political order itself. Mead, ever fascinated with Abraham Lincoln, can point to Lincoln's eloquent and moving enunciations of national purpose and how they served to judge the pretensions of both North and South during the Civil War. Similarly, one can recall the numerous and powerful indictments of the individuals involved in Watergate for their failure to appreciate and adhere to the traditional values of American political life.

In the midst of what Martin Marty has described as the uncivil response of the churches to civil religion ²² it is important to identify two issues which have not received sufficient attention. Both have been treated by Herbert Richardson in two, finely-crafted essays. Implicit in all of the arguments for civil religion is the assumption that by creating a common ethos, civil religion has enormous value for the state. Richardson questions that assumption and insists that politics is essentially a matter of procedures, methods, and programs-in other words, the disposition of power. The purpose of politics is basically to solve struggles over power, and the effective state is one which can mediate those struggles peaceably. "Politics does not solve the ultimate questions of life, will not bring salvation, cannot make men happy," Richardson states. "Its goal is more modest, but no less essential. Politics allows persons and groups that have different aspirations to live together in relative peace and to cooperate in limited ways for the sake of specific finite benefits. Whenever politics seeks to be more than this it must inevitably become far less." ²³ At a time of disillusionment over national goals and purposes, Richardson's indictment rings true, for at least part of our contemporary malaise is due to the extraordinary heights to which people's political aspirations were pushed in the 1960's.²⁴ And yet, the issue is by no means settled. Can there be a functioning political order, particularly in a democracy, without common values to sustain it? And should government, in its own interest, try to encourage and inculcate such ideals?

Richardson has also turned the questions around, asking whether civil religion is good for the church, specifically whether it can be reconciled with biblical conceptions of the church. He argues that Christian theology must reject the Old Testament conception of God's covenant with the nation, in favor of the New Testament conception of ecclesia, the people of God. ²⁵ At times, he tends to identify the visible church as the only institutional source of protest against the pretensions of the state and its civil religion, but he has raised in the sharpest possible way the crucial theological issue of whether

^{22 "}Civil Religion and the Churches Behaving Civilly," Theology Today, Vol. 32 (1975), pp. 175-82.
^{23 "}What Makes a Society Political," Religion and Political Society, pp. 100-120.
²⁴ "For a striking illustration of this argument from a secular point of view, see Henry Fairlie, The Kennedy Promise: John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Expectation (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1973).
²⁵ "Civil Religion in Theological Perspective," American Civil Religion, pp. 161-84.

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indeed God does deal with nations. The question has profound importance for biblical theology and political and social ethics. The dangers of appropriating God's covenant with Israel are only too evident in the sordid history of American messianism and illusions of omnipotence. And yet, this hermeneutic will undoubtedly cause problems for many biblical theologians. The cleavage between Old and New Testaments that Richardson proposes is vast. In addition, one can hardly take hope that the church, particularly in America, will be an institutional safeguard against the state. The record of the churches' accommodation to American society is much too plain for that.

The Bicentennial and civil religion pose once again a perpetual dilemma for the church. Sermons can be preached against the identification of religion with politics, of the church blessing the state, of "piety along the Potomac." Such sermons would help to check the possibilities of a "revivified" civil religion. And yet, as the study guides for the Bicentennial clearly demonstrate, the church is being called to apply the Gospel to the social problems of American life, and the danger clearly becomes one of another civil religion, this time promulgated and supported by the churches themselves. The dilemma is not new, nor will it go away. And a fitting way of celebrating the Bicentennial might be to confront it candidly, hoping that out of such discussion, the church might find a path of obedience and faithfulness.