Religion, Culture and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States

Religion, Culture and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States Mark Hulsether P APERBACKS RELIGION, CULTURE AND POLITICS IN THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY UNITED STATES BAAS Paperbacks Series Editors: Philip John Davies, Professor of American Studies at De Montfort University; George McKay, Director of Communication, Cultural and Media Studies Research Centre at the University of Salford; Simon Newman, Sir Denis Brogan Chair in American Studies at the University of Glasgow; and Carol R. Smith, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies at the University of Winchester. The Cultures of the American New West Neil Campbell Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality in Contemporary American Film Jude Davies and Carol R. Smith The United States and World War II Martin Folly The Sixties in America: History, Politics and Protest M. J. Heale The Civil War in American Culture Will Kaufman The United States and European Reconstruction John Killick American Exceptionalism Deborah L. Madsen The American Landscape Stephen F. Mills Slavery and Servitude in North America, 1607–1800 Kenneth Morgan The Civil Rights Movement Mark Newman The Twenties in America: Politics and History Niall Palmer The Vietnam War in History, Literature and Film Mark Taylor Contemporary Native American Literature Rebecca Tillett Jazz in American Culture Peter Townsend The New Deal Fiona Venn Animation and America Paul Wells Political Scandals in the USA Robert Williams Religion, Culture and Politics in the Twentieth-Century United States MARK HULSETHER EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS Dedicated to my students in American religion. May you choose wisely which traditions to leave behind, and which to hold onto and improve. © Mark Hulsether, 2007 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in Fournier by Koinonia, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts A CIP Record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 1302 1 (paperback) The right of Mark Hulsether to be identifi ed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Introduction 1 1 Key Players and Themes in US Religion before the Twentieth Century 20 2 Changes in the Religious Landscape in the Early Twentieth Century 49 3 Religion and Social Confl ict in the Early Twentieth Century 77 4 Cultural Aspects of Religion in the Early Twentieth Century 108 5 Shifts in the Religious Landscape from World War II to the Present 138 6 Religion and Evolving Social Confl icts from World War II to the Present 172 7 Cultural Aspects of Religion from World War II to the Present 204 Conclusion: Consensus, Pluralism, and Hegemony in US Religion 235 Index 242 Introduction On issues from A to Z, abortion to Zionism, it is impossible to understand the full contours of US political culture without attention to religion. Therefore, this book is not solely for people with a personal commitment to a religious or spiritual practice; it is for anyone who wants to understand where culture and politics in the US has been and where it is going. Our goal is an overview of the interplay among religious practices and identities, sociopolitical competition and confl ict, and wider dynamics in US culture. Two things make this study distinctive compared with other books covering similar ground. First, it is especially concise. Several excellent books are available that survey the territory of US religion in the context of US history, society, and culture.1 However, whereas we might imagine many of these texts as fairly comprehensive atlases – thus cumbersome for some purposes – this book is more like an orientation map and a guide to a set of representative cases. It is ruthless in paring down the boundless sets of names and dates that might claim a place in a comprehensive survey. Its goal is an uncluttered introduction that can be used in conjunction with other books. Some readers may use it in courses on US religion to contextualize and weave together fi ner grained studies of specifi c issues. Others may use it to bring religious issues into dialogue with other explorations in US cultural history. Secondly, this book focuses its argument and selects its examples in a distinctive way – to relate religion to issues of cultural recognition and sociopolitical power that are particular concerns in the fi elds of American Studies and cultural studies. We will not neglect theology, denomina- tional histories, secularization, devotional practices, or other matters that are commonly stressed in books on US religion. However, compared with other books, we will give less attention to dialogues with theology and religious studies, and more attention to multiculturalism and cultural hegemony. Each of these points deserves more refl ection. 1 2 religion, culture and politics in the 20th-century us Mapping US Religion Let us begin with the matter of brevity, and consider its implications for how readers should approach this book. When I teach on US religion, I compare our syllabus to the itinerary of a trip. Imagine travelers who have only one week to travel from New York to Seattle. What maps do they need? They might start with a general orientation. Where are New York and Seattle? Are they logical beginning and ending points? Where do the travelers currently stand in relation to these cities? What are the key landmarks between them – and insofar as people disagree about this question, what are the disputed issues? Once we have clarifi ed such matters the problem shifts to choosing a route. Many students enter my classes like travelers who want to tour as comprehensively as possible. They want to taste a little bit of everything. Unfortunately, the more diligently a traveler tries to be comprehensive, the more possibilities come into view. Suppose we settle on a route that passes through all fi fty states plus Quebec and Mexico City. Consider how severely this would limit the time we could spend in any one place. We might have to hire a jet and fl y over the route to complete such an itinerary – and how much could we learn about any one place that way? Think for a moment about a place you know well: its component parts; its sounds and smells at different times of the year; its associations with past events. Could a traveler ‘cover’ the task of understanding this place by driving through and checking off its name in a logbook? Travelers should abandon the unattainable goal of comprehensive coverage, and adopt a motto that we will use for this book – striving for maximum breadth without shallowness and maximum depth of engage- ment without narrowness. Each person may have a different sense of what is too shallow or too narrow. Nevertheless, we can agree to seek a route through some representative cities and landmarks. We can pause to explore them, briefl y to be sure, but with more attention than a fl yover allows. As we pass through various places, we can shift from an orientation map to a concise guidebook. Although maps and guidebooks supply limited information, they enable informed decisions about where to stop. Importantly, they might keep us from losing the forest for the trees while traveling through a large territory. Such are the modest yet signifi cant goals of this book. To understand religion adequately we must eventually move to a level of mapping that is more like living in a place for an extended period than passing briefl y through. The term ‘religion’ can mean so introduction 3 many things that generalizing about it is diffi cult. However, one thing is safe to say. Much of what constitutes a religious group – what religion is for this group – is its debate about what its central practices should be today, and what they should become in the future. How should the group express its core teachings? Which behaviors command its time and energy, and which are taboo? What are its values and how do these relate to everyday events and emergent controversies? Who can speak as an authority? How is this decided? The beating heart of any religion is its process of working out such understandings, whether in overt and self-conscious ways or informally and implicitly. We cannot feel this heartbeat through memorizing cut- and-dried propositions like ‘religion X believes in doctrine Y.’ In fact, the complexity and fl uidity of lived religion is hard to grasp without exploring several religious groups in depth, with attention to many levels of experience inside each group, interactions with outsiders, and changes over time. People who have experienced only one kind of religion are often amazed by the differences they discover through such explorations. Likewise, people who have little personal experience with any form of religion, but who have the impression that religions are monolithic blocks of tradition, are often surprised by the complexity they encounter. All large religious traditions include internal confl icts, multiple levels of experience, and subtleties such as declared principles that contradict actual behaviors, confl icting interpretations of the ‘same’ ideas, and rituals that carry powerful resonance for the group but are invisible to outsiders. It is hard to dramatize such complex textures in a short book, and our challenge increases insofar as our stress on complexity goes against the grain of much academic writing. Many scholars assume that religions are cut-and-dried cultural forms – largely unchanging (or at least conser- vative), probably irrational, and weakened by ‘secularization’ in some sense of this slippery word. (For some scholars secularization means that religions are disappearing entirely; to others it means only that religions are separate from the state but otherwise thriving; and to others it means that religions are limited to a private intrapersonal sphere.2) Admittedly, such scholarly assumptions do match some religions we will meet on our trip.

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