The holidays are coming. Somewhere in America, at some holiday dinner perhaps, some cantankerous uncle will start an argument about whether America is a religious country. Likely as not the argument will become a two sided “is or isn’t” dispute, probably in terms that correspond to our polarized politics. And that, like so much of our polarization, is unnecessary.
Christmas and Hanukkah are religious holidays. Thanksgiving was initiated by the Pilgrims, a Protestant sect that some contemporaries might have called a cult. Both are part of the fabric of American life, Thanksgiving being uniquely American in this form (Canada has a long Thanksgiving weekend in October). All these holidays involve lots of travel, shopping and décor.
If only as concessions to conscience, there is always an admonition on news and sportscasts, in schools and churches and public gatherings, to remember what we’re thankful for, to recall the true meaning of these holidays. A next step can beckon, to connect these holidays in their role in American life to their religious origins. So – is America a religious nation?
Most Americans are to one extent or another religious, many in the Abrahamic traditions, and most in traditions of love, reverence for a higher power, peace, charity, similar images of morality and justice, and mutual respect among people. If that makes America a religious nation, the answer is “yes.”
But is there a wider sense of “religious nation?” The nation was conceived as a “People” who hold as “self-evident,” which is to say as an article of faith, that all persons are equally endowed with unalienable rights, and that government exists to secure those rights. The unalienable rights, in the Declaration’s words, were endowed in humans by “their Creator.” The capital “C” indicates that that Creator was not some neutral scientifically detected process. Our founding tenets, the Declaration’s creed, rest on an article of faith that arises out of a higher power. It does seem fair to say that America rests on religious principles, even that our conception in the Declaration of Independence arose from Christian, Enlightenment, British-tinged-with French philosophy. By the way, that specific skein of thought is compatible with a wide range of religious traditions – the Golden Rule is found in almost any that have been examined – and anyone can embrace Declaration’s creed. Anyone can subscribe. But does the creed’s fit into a religiously based chain of thought make America a religious nation?
What does it mean to call us a religious nation? The Creator whose self-evident truths we follow is unspecified in name, while our national state, promulgated in the Constitution, prohibits legislation to establish or prohibit religion. Religion rests with each of us in our free choices. We observe religions as a free pursuit of our happiness, an unalienable right that any Creator would certainly approve. Does that mean that we have some duty to choose to be religious? Would opting to be non-religious be un-American? Or are we not a religious nation?
What does it mean to be religious or non-religious? A number of people call themselves atheists. How many of them really mean only that they do not recognize any deity as our various religious establishments worship? How many of them do feel a “Creator,” named (for instance as “nature”) or not, as the source of unalienable rights? Do those people count as religious? If not, don’t they still hold the Declaration’s creed?
Most religions, on the other hand, carry a spirit of revealed ultimate Truth. Can a nation that rules out any law establishing a state religion be reconciled with ultimate Truth? Even if the only constraints on my observance curb practices that violate others’ rights, isn’t a nation that imposes those constraints non-religious? And is that nation legitimate, for the worshipper whose practices do face civic constraints?
Analyzing the question leaves us with two groups for whom the question, whether or not America is a religious nation, makes a meaningful difference. On one hand, any persons who sincerely believe that their rights don’t come from any capital-C Creator will need to reconcile that view with the nation’s conception. They probably would need, first, to decide how we are endowed with unalienable rights, and even how we have come to exist out of the infinitude of quanta and mysteries of dark energy that humans have managed to discern.
On another hand, any persons who think their specific beliefs override the civic protections of others’ rights will need to reconcile themselves with the creed’s mandate to secure rights – everyone’s, equitably. Does these believers’ religion truly require practices that transgress others’ rights? Can’t I swallow tolerance, at least in my public conduct, of others’ conduct that my religion proscribes?
The American nation is based on rights, our free pursuits, and government that secures them. The adamantly un-religious or intolerant are the only people to whom the question “Is America a religious nation?” really makes a difference. And if it comes up, it’s usually after Uncle Bob’s fifth beer. Is there a parallel to the polarized political questions we face?
Happy Holidays.
Common Conviction 