Vol. 5 No. 5 (September
2006)
Uncommon
Denominator
The Newsletter of the Commonweal Institute
http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/
“These
dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny
is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow
men.”
–
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, first inaugural address
CONTENTS
Talking Points: Great Awakenings
Wit and Wisdom:
Condi and the Lions of Monotheism
Check It Out:
“The Denial Industry”
Featured Article: “Empires with Expiration Dates”
Happenings:
Monthly round-up
Endorsements: Joan Blades
Get Involved:
Spread the word; become a contributor
In a September 12 meeting
with a group of conservative journalists, President Bush suggested that the
United States might be experiencing a “Third Awakening,” or widespread
resurgence of religious faith and expression similar to earlier such revivals
in American history. Bush, offering his views on the causes of this
apparent trend, predictably linked it to anxieties generated by the ongoing
“war on terror”:
“A lot of people in
Aides hastened to
emphasize that Bush did not see this “confrontation between good and evil” as a
religious war between Christianity and Islam. “He’s drawing a parallel in terms
of a resurgence, in dangerous times, of people going
back to their religion,” one aide told the Washington Post. “This is not
‘God is on our side’ or anything like that.”
Nonetheless, his
Manichean language suggests that Bush does see the conflict as some kind of
religious war, and himself – as he has revealed in other contexts – as the
leader of the forces of good. In the President’s mind, evidently,
everything gets drawn back inexorably into the great vortex known as the “war
on terror.” He toned it down in a press conference three days later,
avoiding talk of war and good and evil, but the garbled language signaled that
he didn’t quite believe in his own backpedaling: “And so I was wondering out
loud with them. It seems like to me that something is happening in the
religious life of
This is not really about
President Bush, though, but about the “awakening” he perceives. For might he actually be right? Certainly, a glance
through the headlines would seem to support the claim that the country is
undergoing a broad-based rise in religious expression: “faith-based”
initiatives are increasingly popular, religious schools report higher
enrollment, more and more political candidates
campaign on the basis of their spiritual beliefs, and so forth. If these
developments constitute more than just passing trends, what might be some of
the deeper causes, and the long-term consequences?
As always, a little bit
of history is in order, and that history might lead to conclusions somewhat
different from the President’s.
Scholars of American
religious history have generally pointed to at least three major “awakenings”
(a problematic but convenient term). The first, from the 1730s to the
1750s, saw an outpouring of religious sentiment up and down the Eastern
seaboard, with a new emphasis on the emotional as opposed to the rational side
of religious experience. The second, from about 1820 to 1850, radically
expanded the number of Baptist and Methodist churches, particularly in the
South and
Contrary to what some
might believe, these upswings in religious feeling, expression, and observance
are not mystical events brought about through supernatural agency.
Rather, they are social phenomena driven by a confluence of identifiable
cultural forces, and there are certain structures and patterns that
characterize such awakenings. Some central features, briefly sketched
out, include:
* Enabling communications
networks. During the First Great Awakening, news of the revivals
passed from one community to another through newspapers, pamphlets, and the
public mails, which formed a newly vibrant print culture indispensable to a
widespread social transformation. The Second Great Awakening was able to
occur over a vast geographic territory for these same reasons, but also because
of the expanding network of travelable roads. By the time of the Third
Great Awakening, magazines were ubiquitous, and the
* Reaction to rapid scientific,
intellectual, or cultural change. Much of the energy of the
awakenings in American history has come from the anxiety people feel when the
world around them is changing in ways they either do not understand or do not
like. In the mid-eighteenth century, that meant the decline of
traditional Puritanism under pressure of the transatlantic Enlightenment.
During the antebellum decades, it was the rapid expansion and diversification
of American society, and in the late nineteenth century the challenge posed by
natural science, particularly Darwinism, to traditional religious
beliefs. Since the 1960s, numerous forms of cultural instability or
transformation have appeared, the most significant being globalization and the
advance of secular individualism, or what some have termed “moral
relativism.”
* Definition and
assertion of social identity. In response to unsettling cultural
change, religious awakenings provide people with a means of clarifying their
own relation to other people, to the institutions of their society, and to
history itself. They create and reaffirm social bonds, establishing lines
between the in-group and the out-group, between believers and
non-believers. They help like-minded people identify and organize with
each other. Ordinarily, in this process denominational differences become
less important than a sense of shared piety.
* Motivation for
social reform movements. Religious awakenings have long been
associated with a desire to improve the world – to remake society in accordance
with the views of the believers. Such reform can be progressive, even
revolutionary, but it can also be reactionary in nature. The First Great
Awakening, for example, by forging a feeling of common identity among American
colonists, contributed to the political climate leading to the American
Revolution. From the 1830s to the 1850s, religious revivals stimulated an
interest in the major single-issue reform movements of the day, especially
temperance and anti-slavery. In the Gilded Age, the Third Great Awakening
went hand-in-hand with anti-poverty activism and resistance to the abuses of
laissez-faire capitalism. More recently, religious reformism has taken a
decidedly conservative cast, despite the involvement of liberal churches in
protesting the Vietnam War. The greater emphasis since the 1970s has been
on rolling back a culture deemed self-indulgent and on bringing church and
state into closer alignment.
In assessing the impact
of religious awakenings on society, scholars have debated a number of difficult
questions. To what degree do such phenomena either reinforce or undermine
the interests of religious establishments? In what ways do they exert
centrifugal force (i.e., driving people apart) or centripetal force (i.e.,
bringing communities together)? What role do they play in
socioeconomic and/or racial tensions? How significant a role do they play
in challenging theological orthodoxy? This is not the place, obviously,
to address such questions in depth; the point, rather, is that resurgences in
religious expression are always complex and unpredictable in their social
consequences.
To return to the
immediate issue at hand. What seems likely is that we are witnessing a
new phase of the most recent awakening, one possibly connected to the war on
terrorism, but much more involved and potentially more dangerous than President
Bush probably realizes. There are two defining and interconnected
features of this new phase, and both should give us pause.
First, it is
international in scope, thanks to the deployment of global electronic
communications, particularly the Internet. This has several crucial
implications. By allowing for the rapid dissemination of information and
viewpoints, it delocalizes religious revival, making it possible to happen
simultaneously in a range of far-flung places. Moreover, modern
information technology might actually be stimulating an awakening across
national borders by creating anxiety both about the character of modernity and
about the relationship between different cultures. To a greater degree
than ever before, modern human beings are vividly aware of how other people go
about their lives, of what they believe, of what their aspirations and ambitions
are. This can feel threatening – both to the West and to those in
developing countries – and so a reaffirmation of religious identity provides a
kind of psychic stability in the face of global turbulence. Most
troubling, however, the Internet has allowed radical elements to assert
themselves anonymously or surreptitiously, and to organize among
themselves. Awakenings have historically represented a challenge to the
moderate mainstream, but not to the degree we see today. Which brings us to the second major issue.
That is the power of
fundamentalist religion in the current awakening, both in the
The emergence
of multiple awakenings in different societies, therefore, and the influence of
religious fundamentalists on political governance, are obvious causes
for concern. Many countries have gone down this route many times before,
and it leads to religious war. That is why President Bush’s aide quickly
tried to disclaim any such notion. But the language of good and evil,
particularly when linked to politics, allows for little flexibility in solving
social problems, and reinforces the entire structure of thought which has
brought us to this perilous passage in the first place.
The word “awakening,”
therefore, is probably not appropriate. If we are to avoid widening
conflict and social disruption, what people really need to wake up to is the
need for a reassertion of the values of the Enlightenment: rationality,
tolerance, free inquiry, benevolence, secularity.
President Bush pays lip service to these ideas (excepting secularity), but they
don’t seem to exert any actual influence over his administration’s
policies. These are values that need to be reaffirmed not in opposition
to spirituality per se, but in opposition to the fanaticism that can grow
malignantly from upwellings of religious
feeling.
“It’s
been reported that Condoleezza Rice is dating a high-level Canadian diplomat.
Sources say you can tell because Rice has an extra bounce in her step and is
giggling a lot as she prepares for the invasion of
“In
the
“I
certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate. “I hope she’s the
candidate, because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary
Clinton,” he said. “If Lucifer ran, he wouldn’t.” – Jerry Falwell, apparently channeling Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez, at a Sept. 22 breakfast session in Washington D.C., to several
hundred pastors and religious activists who had gathered for a “Value Voter
Summit” conference.
If you are concerned
about global warming, and wondering what can be done about it, check out George
Monbiot’s forthcoming book Heat: How to Stop the
Planet from Burning (soon to be released by
“George Monbiot has
written a stunning book. It could easily be titled The End of Hypocrisy,
because Monbiot systematically unveils the denial,
deceit, and self-delusion that are our common responses to the enormous
challenge of global warming. . . . Then with a step-by-step plan grounded
in the latest research he explains how we can achieve a 90 percent reduction –
in our vehicles, factories, retail centres, and homes
– without wrecking our standard of living. When it comes to global warming,
it’s time to stop being hypocrites and get on with saving the planet, and this
book shows us how.” (Thomas Homer-Dixon)
“Avoiding disastrous climate change is the
central challenge of our time. George Monbiot
addresses it with wit, verve, and rigor. He shows that all of our excuses for
inaction are just that — excuses. If you care about the future of the planet,
you should read Heat, and then give a copy to a friend.” (Elizabeth Kolbert)
"An engaging,
lively, and sometimes fiery analysis of the possible technological and
political responses to the crisis of climate change, that starts where so much
of the debate remains stalled. To those who say that the requirements of the
An edited extract from
the section of the book having to do with the efforts by oil companies and
conservative think tanks to discredit the science of global warming appears in
the Sept. 19 issue of the
The following is an
excerpt from Niall Ferguson’s “Empires with Expiration Dates,” which
appears in the September/October 2006 issue of Foreign Policy.
“Empires, more than
nation-states, are the principal actors in the history of world events. Much of
what we call history consists of the deeds of the 50 to 70 empires that once
ruled multiple peoples across large chunks of the globe. Yet, as time has
passed, the life span of empires has tended to decline. Compared with their
ancient and early modern predecessors, the empires of the last century were
remarkably short lived. This phenomenon of reduced imperial life expectancy has
profound implications for our own time.
“Officially, there are no
empires now, only 190-plus nation-states. Yet the ghosts of empires past
continue to stalk the Earth. Regional conflicts from Central Africa to the
Middle East, and from Central America to the Far East, are easily—and often
glibly—explained in terms of earlier imperial sins: an arbitrary border here, a
strategy of divide-and-rule there….
“Today’s world, in short,
is as much a world of ex-empires and ex-colonies as it is a world of
nation-states. Even those institutions that were supposed to reorder the world
after 1945 have a distinctly imperial bent. For what else are the five
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council if not a cozy club of past
empires? And what is “humanitarian intervention,” if not a more politically
correct-sounding version of the Western empires’ old “civilizing mission”?”
Read the whole article at
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3550
TV Appearance - Commonweal Institute President Katherine Forrest will
appear on KMTV television in October. The program, Democratic Television
(DTV), is a half-hour public-access cable TV program produced by the Santa
Clara County Democratic Party (SCCDP) and hosted by Steve Preminger,
The show on which Dr.
Forrest has been invited to appear will address the following issues:
· how
the conservative movement has come to be so dominant in this country
· how
this is affecting politicians and public policy
· examples of how whole large sectors of concern to progressives are
being impacted (e.g., public education, civil justice, role of government)
· what progressives can do about the situation
· concerns about security, disenfranchisement, & the 2006
election
· the
work of the Commonweal Institute.
More information,
broadcast times and channels, and a schedule of events are availabe
at http://www.sccdp.org/dtv.php.
At the
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© 2006
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