Civil Religion for a Diverse World

Civil Religion for a Diverse World

Alice Baskous
REL-5389
November 22, 2021

Cultural diversity, sometimes known as multiculturalism, has its benefits but also challenges in a world undermined by political polarization, conspiracy theories, terrorism, far-right extremism, zealotry, and lingering national grievances. How effectively does civil religion coexist with diversity? Is civil religion for everyone, and does it have resonance with people who are not White or Christian? Is “wokeism” a part of civil religion? And is there a future for the harmonious existence of civil religion in America and beyond? I believe that civil religion as it exists now encompasses multiculturalism which has become a part of the national identity of many western democracies, and is not intended to be exclusive. The notion of civil religion is corrupted by radical demonstrations such as the 2021 U.S. Capitol Attack and other deeds of violence said to be done in the name of patriotism and religion; but there still hope for a people united by the shared beliefs, ideals, traditions, and values which civil religion entails.

On July 22, 2011, a 32-year-old far-right Norwegian extremist by the name of Anders Behring Breivik committed a set of gruesome attacks that would result in the deaths of seventy-seven people: sixty-nine of whom were shot and killed, and most of whom were adolescents from the Workers’ Youth League. A few hours before going on his carefully planned out, politically and ideologically motivated killing spree, he e-mailed a fifteen hundred page manifesto to one-thousand and two different email addresses, many of them belonging to politicians and journalists. In this manifesto, entitled “2023 – A European Declaration of Independence”, he professed he wanted to save Norway from multiculturalism, feminism, and a “Muslim invasion” which he and other far-right extremists consider a demographic threat. The main motive for the attacks was purportedly to draw attention to his manifesto.

At 3:17 p.m., Breivik parked a white van carrying a 950-kilogram bomb outside the government quarter in Oslo, and then drove in a separate car to Utøya, an island 38 kilometers northwest of Oslo city center owned by the Labor party’s Workers’ Youth League. At 3:25 p.m. the car bomb exploded, killing eight people – six women and two men. At 5:17 p.m. Breivik arrived at Utøya by boat, dressed as a policeman and carrying an arsenal of weapons in a suitcase. Four minutes later, he opened fire, first killing a guard and a camp organizer, then proceeding to hunt down mostly teenagers and youths, shooting many of them at close range. The rampage lasted for more than an hour. At 6:34 p.m., Breivik surrendered to armed police, and he was taken into custody.

The serial killer who had committed the deadliest shooting spree ever carried out by a single person, was found criminally sane and sentenced to 21 years in prison – Norway’s maximum sentence. The term can be extended indefinitely if he is still deemed a threat to society. Since being imprisoned, the killer has self-identified as a fascist, a Nazi, and a practitioner of Odinism. Despite Brevik’s claims that solitary confinement in a three-room cell is a form of abuse (he filed a 2016 lawsuit against the Norwegian Correctional Service), his cell in the high-security wing of Skien prison is equipped with video game consoles, a television, a DVD player, an electronic typewriter, newspapers, and exercise machines. In August 2021, Breivik filed for parole, but he has been indited again. Courts will soon decide whether to reverse or uphold the District Attorney’s refusal of parole.

July 22, 2011 was a day that shocked both Norwegians and the world. Few would have expected a culture so rich in traditions and yet strongly egalitarian and based on democratic principles such as respect, humility, simplicity, and interdependence would produce a killer such as Breivik. Such a horrendous incident in the midst of a country globally famous for being happy and peace-loving has led many to ask whether there is more hate brewing beneath the surface of Western democracies, and what must be done to apprehend, counter, and mitigate the influence of extremism.

The extremist threat has not disappeared. In October, Austrian police uncovered an arsenal of 50 weapons and 1,200 kilograms of ammunition, along with Nazi paraphernalia and a quantity of gunpowder, when they raided the home of a suspected neo-Nazi in the town of Baden. Neo-Nazism in Europe is characterized by both anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim racism and has been linked to organized crime and drug trafficking. European far-right extremism, a persistent problem, is said to be on the rise. It mainly proliferates online or underground, although there are ideological overlaps with Identitarian groups and established far-right parties such as the Austrian Freedom Party, the National Rally in France, and the Northern League in Italy. Controversies surrounding COVID lockdowns, vaccinations, various COVID-related restrictions, and unhappiness with current political systems have provided a fertile breeding ground for far-right conspiracy theories and the proliferation of extremist beliefs.

Within the U.S., there is heightened political polarization which culminated in the 2021 United States Capitol Attack. On January 6, a mob of pro-Trump supporters, disgruntled by the results of the 2020 presidential election, stormed the Capitol building in order to delay the Electoral College vote count and persuade Congress to overturn the election of Joe Biden. In the course of the riot, the Capitol was vandalized and looted, and Capitol Police officers as well as reporters were assaulted as rioters attempted to find lawmakers to capture and assault. The incident is widely considered an insurrection or a failed coup d’état as participants sought to prevent a legitimately elected president from assuming office. Many believe it was fueled by far-right extremism and Christian nationalism.

In the midst of all this turmoil, it is not easy to believe in the “city on a hill”: a harmonious society glued together by a set of shared beliefs, values, and experiences. After 6 January, the United States certainly did not look like the perfect paradigm of democracy it was intended to be. Over fifty years ago, when Robert Bella penned “Civil Religion in America” in 1967, he affirmed that a well-institutionalized civil religion in America exists alongside of the churches that is not religion per se but a “religious dimension” or creed. This creed relates to both politics and personal lives and testifies to the “common elements of religious orientation” (Bella 1967, 3) shared by most Americans. According to Bella, the public religious dimension is characterized by a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals which he called American civil religion, a phrase that has its roots in Rousseau’s The Social Contract where the dogmas of civil religion are outlined. These dogmas include: the existence of God, the life to come, the reward of virtue and the punishment of vice, and the exclusion of religious intolerance (Bella 1967, 5). Since the early-nineteenth century, American civil religion has been activist, moralistic, and social rather than contemplative, theological, or spiritual. It is involved in both imminent moral and political issues; and it accepts world civil religion as a fulfillment, not a denial, of American civil religion.

Bella was concerned that self-interested parties would distort civil religious themes to justify wrongdoing. For instance, the theme of America as the New Israel was used to abet the slaughter of innocent Native Americans. The theme of manifest destiny was invoked to justify imperialist conquest. The author stated, “On the domestic scene, an American-Legion type of ideology that fuses God, country, and flag has been used to attack non-conformist and liberal ideas and groups of all kinds” (Bella 1967, 14). Perhaps nothing is ever quite new. The same problems that afflicted the Vietnam-era world of Robert Bella also manifest themselves in the 21st century.
Can civil religion be considered a cure to some of the ills of modern society? The idea looks good in theory.

Leon Miller in “Religion’s Role in Creating National Unity” stresses that civil religion helps to shape the shared values of a culture into a sense of national unity. He affirms that it benefits a secular pluralistic society as a means of expressing “the Sacred Canons of democracy” (Miller 2009, 91). The European Union will need to establish shared values to promote unity and avoid becoming disjointed with no sense of universal civic identity. The author states that Eastern, Central, and Southeastern Europe are especially in need of civil religion to counter the bipolarity of competing cultures.

He highlights a definition of civil religion taken from “The Church and Civil Religion in the Nordic Countries of Europe”, written in 1984, which maintained that the central function of civil religion is to legitimate civil institutions by means of a pattern of symbols, ideas, and practices. Like Bella’s civil religion, this version is also “known through its observance of rituals, holidays, sacred places, documents, stories, heroes, and other behavior in or analogous to recognized historical religions” (Miller 2009, 92). Miller’s premise is that many European countries have different cultures that enrich and vitalize them, but old historical wounds need to be healed for diversity to develop in a beneficial and progressive way.

On average, civil religion in Eastern Europe is a form of social expression that is founded on a deep appreciation for liberty, democracy, and pluralism. It helps plurality by creating more public tolerance and showing “sensitive respect” for cultural integrity. It always acknowledges the unique character of every culture.

While Miller sees the idea of civil religion as beneficial to the problem of disunity in the European states, Chris Allen contends that the crisis of multiculturalism in Europe is entirely contingent on answering the “Muslim Question”. Discussions about the multiculturalism crisis are evaluated in terms of how they feed into and reinforce Islamophobic discourses.

Allen affirms that it is not only those on the radical fringes of the European political landscape, like Breivik, who have taken issue with multiculturalism. In October 2010, Angela Merkel stated that in Germany, attempts to live side-by-side in a multicultural society have failed. David Cameron said few months later in February 2011 that Britain had failed to provide a common vision to its different communities and cultures to which all feel they would want to belong. He then said, “We’ve even tolerated those segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values…Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular Liberalism”. The same week, Nicolas Sarkozy remarked, “We have been too concerned about the identity of the person that was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him”. Multiculturalism is a physical and demographic reality across twenty-first century Europe, but it is perceived sometimes as being a problem, a challenge, and a threat.

The values behind multiculturalism are not unlike those already existing in European liberal states, and therefore, the notion of multiculturalism was quickly embraced in Western Europe. The author states that the result was “a range of different concrete social and public policies being implemented which sought to guarantee a variety of different rights and privileges for minority communities” (Allen 2014, 217). Kymlicka, whose work is quoted by Allen, states that the different models of multiculturalism based on liberal views required freedom within minority groups, and equality between the minority groups and the majority. However, where the minority is illiberal, the majority is not able to prevent individual rights violations within that group and is forced to accept them. The author explains that underpinning attacks against multiculturalism in Europe, were disguised attacks against Muslims and Islam. He reveals:

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Following a series of highly publicized terror raids and an additional number of failed or thwarted terror attacks, debates about the roles and responsibilities of Muslims and Islam intensified. Consequently, questioning has continued and has sought to ask whether Muslims can be – or indeed, ever will be – an integrated part of a modern, egalitarian society. Maybe the question that some had wanted to ask was whether Muslims can – or indeed ever will be – [become] an integrated [part] of a multicultural society? (Allen 2014, 218)

Allen draws attention to the similarities between mainstream secular liberal ideas about Muslims and Islam, and ideas of the far-right. He warns they are not very different. The far-right produces explicit and formally structured anti-Muslim, anti-Islam ideologies, whereas the left embeds its arguments about the “crisis” of multiculturalism within debates relating to immigration, integration, community cohesion and the erosion of liberal values such as free speech and equality (Allen 2014, 219). Because the arguments are not as explicit, they tend to go relatively unnoticed or unrecognized. The notions of “Eurabia” and the “Islamisation” of Europe also find their way into secular liberal discourses, not only those of the far-right. Allen contends that Islamophobia is not a distinctly post-9/11 phenomenon but predates 9/11. That, and other notable terror attacks, was simply adding fuel to the fire.

Allen concludes that “the ideologies of Breivik and others from the far-right milieu are far from extraordinary…. What is extraordinary is the resonance that the ideologies of the political mainstream – the center left and right – has in relation to multiculturalism with those on the far and extreme right” (Allen 2014, 226). He emphasizes that as Europe heads into an era of post-multiculturalism, it is important to not lose sight of the values that first led Europe to embrace multiculturalism and its politics. Even more important is making sure that the antithesis of multicultural values does not rise to take their place.

The greatest threat to Europe – and to ourselves, and to our values and culture – is not the presence of Muslims or Islam, as the likes of Breivik and others from the extreme far-right believe, but the loss of values that lie at the heart of multiculturalism.
Where Europe is wrestling with the crisis of multiculturalism, the liberal idea of “reasonable Islamophobia” – where people believe violent radical acts of Muslim terrorists justify the mistrust of Islam and its practitioners as a whole – and the increasing influence of the far-right milieu; political polarization in the U.S. and “civil racism” pose their own challenges.

Tom Gjelten in an NPR broadcast informs us, “The advocacy of a civil religion took a complicated turn in recent months as the American political idea became linked to Christian nationalism”. He is referring to the 6th of January incident when pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol while calling for prayer, displaying religious symbols, and asserting they were acting in the name of God. The rioters promptly triggered a backlash against religious nationalism in the U.S. While powerful figures in American history like Martin Luther King Jr. frequently quoted Scripture, the use of religious slogans and symbols by people who stand in opposition to the American idea undermines Christianity, religion, and also civil religion.

Gjelten maintains that acceptance of the American creed, comprised of shared beliefs and principles, is viewed as “the key to one’s identity as an American” and differentiates the United States from other nations. And believing in the American idea is theoretically open to anyone who comes to the U.S. However, some Americans have been barred from fully participating in social and political life. Professor Lynn Itagaki, whom Gjelten quotes, explains that xenophobia against Asian Americans and attacks on African American civil rights shed light on how “this intrinsic right to be in the U.S., to enjoy its freedoms, is not really for everyone” (Gjelten 2021). The strength and unifying power of civil religion is brought into question.

Itagaki describes the U.S. as fundamentally a “white settler colonialist state”. The founding fathers were slaveholders, and the original Constitution counted enslaved persons as only three-fifths of a free person. According to the professor, the current problem lies not with the founding documents, which are part of the American faith, but with their application. The United States is inclusive as a philosophy but exclusive in practice. Itagaki maintains that there are other great thinkers and texts, such as the Iroquois nation’s Great Law of Peace, Americans need to consider if civil religion is going to work.

Yale’s Philip Gorski defines civil religion as being an evolving tradition, like a river that gets wider with time, rather than a pristine spring one has to return to every time. American scripture needs to be updated in order to remain relevant. One interviewee, Joe from the Scouts, expresses optimism when asked about the feasibility of putting the American idea into practice. He states, “We’re kind of getting closer to that American dream…it’s a history of getting closer from the American Revolution to the Civil War to the Cold War and then now where we’re having discussions about race, LGBTQ [rights], stuff like that” (Gjelten 2021). According to Joe, it’s how we can get closer to the dream of life, liberty, and happiness that matters.

Some believe that liberal ideologies, not conservative ones, represent civil religion the most. Professor Moeller in a YouTube upload entitled “Wokeism” links the fairly recent ideology to civil religion. Wokeism, he maintains, is “a civil religion combining American individualistic liberalism with guilt pride based on ‘identity politics’ and focuses on the curation of identity profiles now penetrating all sectors of society in the West: politics, media, advertising, sports, arts, education, the military and so forth” (Moeller 2021).

First, it defines what people love and hate, and it effects daily life. As an example, Moeller affirms that employers sometimes give their employees diversity and inclusion statements which is essentially an exercise in wokeism. Identity politics, which focused on the empowerment of personal identity, preceded wokeism, appearing in the 1970s. Moeller describes wokeism as a form of renewed and intensified identity politics that is becoming omnipresent.

He refers to a CIA recruiting video to demonstrate how prevalent wokeism is becoming. In the video, a woman who is an “exemplary person” working for the CIA explains that she is “unapologetically me”. She is wearing a feminist tee shirt, describes her immigrant background, and mentions having an anxiety disorder. She is not slim, and she is non-white. Moeller points out that the video combines identity markers in a way that is supposed to advertise how the CIA is “woke”. Comments below the video are cynical about the CIA “torturing people while wearing shirts that portray female empowerment and Black Lives Matter” and treating diversity as a perfunctory exercise. In such a way, Moeller explains, wokeism is problematically used to moralize or whitewash that which is amoral.

Professor Moeller maintains that wokeism is not the same as cultural Marxism, because Marxism is not cultural. It is about class struggle. And woke culture is “deeply embedded in capitalism” because it is heavily and extensively used in advertising. Also, wokeism is not postmodern. Unlike postmodernism, it is extremely normative, redemptive, and constitutes the meta-narrative of our time. Postmodernism avoids simple binaries, which wokeism embraces. It is not a meta-narrative or a redemptive narrative, and it is non-ideological.

Moeller also affirms that wokeism has strong quasi-religious connotations like those of the Awakening, implying a kind of secular Awakening that in fact critiques religion. The “civil religion of the West”, wokeism is a combination of U.S. civil religion and German guilt pride. The civil religious side of it stemmed from post-leftist civil religion which evolved into identity politics. It embodied Bella’s “activist, moralist, and social movement” which represented a shift from theological and transcendent values. Paradoxically, civil religion informed both the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war. It underpins both Black Lives Matter and the War on Terror. This is because there are both conservative and liberal versions of civil religion.

Moeller mentions German guilt pride because his theory is that after WW2, West Germany both recognized itself as the successor of Nazi Germany and the crimes it had committed. The symbol of the new Germany which arose after the Cold War was the Holocaust Memorial, a gesture that represented the idea that guilt is inherited and internalized and can never truly be paid off. By accepting guilt, Germany becomes paradoxically morally superior. This kind of “guilt pride” describes wokeism in that “we define ourselves by this guilt and take eternal responsibility for it”.

According to Moeller, wokeism resembles religion in that it is dogmatic and has punitive tendencies. There is no middle ground: one either has to be for it or against it. Wokeism emphasizes ritualistic conformity in that one is obliged to demonstrate one is wiling to conform; and it also enables zealotry. Moeller concludes his video presentation by saying that the job at hand is not to abolish wokeism but to shed light on it so it does not turn into a “fundamentalist frenzy”.

One has to wonder about the new civil religion of the West – at least according to Professor Moeller – that is supposedly so capable of turning into a frenzy, and if that kind of wildness or destructiveness was in the nature of civil religion to begin with. Perhaps a certain amount of violence belies every human endeavor and ideology. But as Allen stated in his article, it is important not to forget the values that created our nations, our belief systems, and who we are. Terms like “wokeism” and “multiculturalism” might fade out of popular use, but the underlying philosophies from which they sprung were meant to change and adapt with the times and should never be forgotten.

In conclusion, a civil religion exists in the world, not just in the United States, that has the power to unify citizens of every culture under one banner even while recognizing the importance of our differences. Civil religion is for everyone, and not just an elite and privileged few. Unfortunately, circumstances corrupted by intense religious, political, and personal zealotry can give even the most elevated, innocuous concept a bad name. Civil religion is sometimes confounded with White religious nationalism, a belief that is informed by the biographical lives of the founding fathers, the glaring lack of civil rights in early America, ultra-conservatism, and cultural injustices that continue to this day.

However, defenders of civil religion, such as Bella, remind us that ideas can be misappropriated. “Wokeism” or “wokeness” are terms sometimes used in a derogatory manner yet basically meaning alertness to racial prejudices. Professor Mueller considers wokeism “a civil religion” that permeates almost every sector of society. In fact, the word underscores a strong and urgent need to be aware of racism, bigotry, and social injustices because they are not gone. Can civil religion, or freedom, or values, or justice exist in tandem with immense injustice? Quite frankly, they cannot, because a theory in word and not act is still just a theory. But there is hope for the future, so long as there are more people like Bella, and fewer like Breivik.

References

Allen, Chris. “Islamophobia and the Crises of Europe’s Multiculturalism.” In New Multicultural Identities in Europe: Religion and Ethnicity in Secular Societies, edited by Erkan Toğuşlu, Johan Leman, and İsmail Mesut Sezgin, 1st ed., 213–28. Leuven University Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qdzxj.13.

Bellah, Robert N. “Civil Religion in America.” Daedalus 96, no. 1 (1967): 1–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027022.

Gjelten, Tom. 2021. “Can America’s ‘Civil Religion’ Still Unite the Country?” NPR, April 12, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/12/985036148/can-americas-civil-religion-still-unite-the-country.

Griffith, R. Marie. “Beyond Diversity and Multiculturalism: Pluralism and the Globalization of American Religion.” OAH Magazine of History 22, no. 1 (2008): 24–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162154.

Knausgaard, Karl Ove. 2015. “The Inexplicable: Inside the Mind of a Mass Killer.” The New Yorker, May 18, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/25/the-inexplicable.

Miller, Leon, and Gordon L. Anderson. “RELIGION’S ROLE IN CREATING NATIONAL UNITY [with COMMENT and REJOINDER].” International Journal on World Peace 26, no. 1 (2009): 91–138. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20752875.

Moeller, Hans-Georg. “Wokeism.” June 9, 2021. YouTube video, 39:07, https://youtu.be/GnUqrF9mAA8.

The Associated Press. 2021. I “Norway’s July 22, 2021, terror attack: a timeline.” July 19, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/europe-norway-oslo-anders-breivik-bd6c9d2efd6ce2148c3d85cb79d73af9.