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The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism

Wed, 01 Nov 2000 00:00:00 -0500

The framework for this book by economic historian Robert William Fogel, 1993 Nobel Prize“winner in economics, is borrowed, as the author fully acknowledges, from a work published in 1978: Revivals, Awakenings, and Reforms , written by the late William G. McLoughlin, a history professor at Brown University. To understand Fogel’s book, it turns out, a quick survey of McLoughlin’s is first needed.

McLoughlin identified five “awakenings” (or religious revitalization movements) in American history. The first was the Puritan awakening, which began in England in 1610 and lasted till 1640. The settlements of New England and, at least in part, Virginia were aspects of that movement. The second was the famous “Great Awakening” (1730“1760) associated with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Third, in McLoughlin’s telling, was what is more commonly known as the “Second Great Awakening” (1800“1830). (The numbering becomes a little confusing at this point, since most historians have not, with McLoughlin, counted the early Puritan movement as an “awakening.” They start counting with Edwards and Whitefield, while McLoughlin starts counting with Plymouth Rock.)

If the First Great Awakening was Calvinistic, the Second Great Awakening was Arminian. The former stressed human “inability,” while the latter stressed man’s freedom, his capacity to cooperate with God in the work of the soul’s salvation. Small wonder such a development took place in a nation that had just won its independence from a great power and was now self“confidently engaged in settling a continent. If Americans could achieve this much, couldn’t they at least lend a hand when God tries to save their souls?

The fourth revival was called by McLoughlin “the Third Great Awakening” (1890“1920). This was the age of the Social Gospel. If the Great Awakening was Calvinist and the Second Great Awakening Arminian, this Third Awakening was downright liberal and modernist. It was modernist in the theological sense, accommodating to evolutionary theory and German higher criticism. But it was modernist in a social“political sense as well. Earlier awakenings had emphasized the spiritual transformation that must take place within the individual soul. The Third Awakening focused on material conditions. How can we expect men and women to lead Christian lives in circumstances of poverty, slum housing, excessive working hours, dangerous working conditions, periodic unemployment, poor schooling for their children, and so forth? If the Second Awakening called on sinners to give up drink, the Third called on society to eliminate conditions that drive men to drink.

Each of the great awakenings, McLoughlin argues, had important political consequences. The first paved the way for the American Revolution, the second gave rise to the abolition movement, and the third supplied the moral and intellectual basis for Progressivism and the New Deal.

The Fourth Great Awakening, McLoughlin says, began about 1960 and”since all previous awakenings had a life span of thirty years”could be expected to run until 1990. (Re member, McLoughlin was writing in 1978, in the middle of the journey.) If the Third Awakening, being modernist, veered some distance from traditional Christian orthodoxy, the Fourth made no pretense of being Christian at all. McLoughlin identifies this awakening with the great American cultural revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, its beginning in the San Francisco Beat movement, followed by the explosion of interest in Zen and other Eastern religious alternatives. Then came “experimental life“styles associated with drugs, the hippies, the practice of occultism, and rock concerts.” The famous Woodstock concert of 1969 was a kind of sacramental event for the Fourth Awakening, analogous to the revivalistic camp meeting of earlier awakenings.

In his own book, Fogel makes a number of changes to McLoughlin’s thesis, though keeping the basic framework. For one, he omits the first revival, the Puritan Awakening; instead he starts counting with the Great Awakening. More importantly, he argues that the time period for each of the awakenings is much longer, so that the tail end of one overlaps with the beginning of the next. He then divides each of the these more protracted movements into three phases: what McLoughlin would call the awakening itself, Fogel thinks is only the first phase, that of religious revival. Once the people are stirred in their souls they push the moral implications of the revival onto the nation’s political agenda. At the end of each episode, the dominance of that political program is effectively challenged. In other words: Phase I, the religious revival proper; Phase II, the political revolution; Phase III, the decline and fall of both.

Thus the First Great Awakening runs from 1730 to 1820. This is divided into Phase I, the religious revival (1730“60); Phase II, the American Revolution (1760“90); and Phase III, the breakup of the revolutionary coalition (1790“1820). The Second Great Awakening lasts from 1800 to 1920: Phase I, the religious revival (1800“40); Phase II, abolitionism, Civil War, etc. (1840“70); Phase III, Darwinian crisis, urban crisis (1870“1920). The Third Great Awakening began in 1890 and has not yet ended: Phase I, religious revival (1890“1930); Phase II, New Deal, civil rights movement, feminism (1890“1970); Phase III, conservatives gains, liberal losses (1970“not yet ended).

The most significant departure Fogel makes from McLoughlin’s scheme is in his characterization of the religious nature of the Fourth Awakening (1960 to present). For McLoughlin, this was “leftist” and non“Christian (even anti“Christian); its typical heroes were Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and Janis Joplin. For Fogel it is “rightist” and predominantly Evangelical Protestant. It began in 1960 with the rise of conservative Protestantism and still hasn’t ended. The political stage really began in 1990 with the rise of the pro“life, pro“family, and media re form movements on a truly massive scale; its political decline has not yet begun. Its agenda is not sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Rather it is to end abortion and to prevent gay marriage. Its typical heroes are Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed.

Now it is not clear that Fogel’s revision of McLoughlin gets the story right. A great cultural“spiritual up heaval did take place in America beginning in the 1960s, dominated by antinomians who proclaimed personal liberty as the supreme moral value (hence the drug revolution, the sexual revolution, the abortion revolution, etc.). Then a conservative Protestant counterrevolution began (the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, the Promise Keepers, and so on). The culture war between these two parties is still going on; it remains far from clear which will prevail, if either. Fogel breaks from McLoughlin’s view without explaining why, and shows us no good reason to take it for granted that the conservative religious party will prevail.

American politics, as well as the culture from which this politics springs, has always, says Fogel, held equality to be a paramount value. In the earlier part of the nation’s history, when the United States was still a predominantly agricultural country, this value took the form of “equality of opportunity.” But a change took place as the nation industrialized and urbanized; equality of opportunity was no longer sufficient. Hence the political agenda of the Third Awakening (i.e., twentieth century liberalism) was informed by what Fogel calls “modern egalitarianism””the belief in “equality of condition.”

In recent decades, however, the redistributionist ethic of liberalism has declined in public acceptance. Why? Largely, Fogel argues, because of its success, i.e., because equality of condition has to a great degree been achieved. It may not look that way if we measure equality in money terms, since in America we still have vast disparities of income and wealth. However, Fogel points out, nowadays ordinary Americans have a purchasing power that only the wealthy possessed a century ago; we still have relative deprivation, true, but almost no absolute poverty. Just as important, and perhaps even more so, thanks to improved diet and medicine, we live longer, we live more healthily, and we have more energy to devote to work and play. A small percentage of the populace still lags behind, of course, and that needs to be worked on. But most of us have just about everything we really need in terms of material and biological goods.

Virtual material satiety now leaves us free to work on our “spiritual” needs. A combination of great prosperity plus longer and healthier life (both of which will continue to improve in the years ahead) means that a smaller fraction of one’s lifetime will be devoted to the necessity of earning a living (Fogel calls this “earnwork”), while a greater fraction will be available for activity that is voluntary and spiritually fulfilling (“volwork”). But this shift doesn’t mean that America will no longer have to worry about equality. Far from it. Only now we will have to be concerned with a new kind of equality: not equality of opportunity or equality of condition, but “equality of spiritual resources.” This will be our “postmodern egalitarian agenda.”

And what counts as a spiritual resource? Fogel gives us a list of fifteen resources, including such items as “sense of purpose,” “vision of opportunity,” “strong family ethic,” “sense of community,” “ethic of benevolence,” “work ethic,” “thirst for knowledge,” and “self“esteem.” This list is perhaps the weakest moment in the book. For one thing, it reads like a catalogue that might have been borrowed from a self“help column in a magazine found at the supermarket. For another, it’s arbitrary. Fogel doesn’t attempt to demonstrate why it should be this list and not some other. Why not faith, hope, and charity? Why not poverty, chastity, and obedience? Why not the four cardinal virtues of ancient moral philosophy”prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance? Why not Aristotle’s more ample list of virtues, including philosophical wisdom? Why not Thomas Aquinas’ list, which blends Christian and Aristotelian virtues? At first glance, any of these other lists would seem to be more eligible than Fogel’s, since each has something Fogel’s does not, namely, a track record of producing spiritual virtuosi.

Further, this list is hardly consistent with Fogel’s thesis that the bearers of the Fourth Awakening are mainly conservative Protestants. Evangelicals and Pentecostals, were they to draw up a list of essential spiritual resources, would include some of the items on Fogel’s list, but not others”e.g., when did “self“esteem” become a Christian virtue? More importantly, Fogel’s list omits items that would certainly be on a conservative Protestant list, e.g., love of God, faith in Jesus Christ, diligent study of the Bible.

The book is written for the general reader, not the specialist alone. Fogel’s knowledge of economic history is immense, and one of the incidental pleasures of the book is the information about economic history it liberally scatters through its pages. At moments, however, I felt that the train of argument would have been clearer if the supply of information had been less. But my real complaint is that all this data is put in the service of such a tepid thesis. All these big and contested issues are brought to bear to allow us to predict . . . that in the future people will try to help themselves and help others to help themselves become nicer, psychologically healthier people. This is awakening from materialism, perhaps. But hardly something Great.

David R. Carlin is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at the Community College of Rhode Island, as well as chairman of the Democratic Party in Newport, Rhode Island.

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Rights, Animal and Human

Tue, 01 Aug 2000 00:00:00 -0400

Last year Harvard Law School offered its first“ever course on animal rights. This is good news for animal rights advocates, since Harvard is one of the two or three top law schools in the nation. If Harvard is on board for animal rights, can the Supreme Court be far behind?

Currently, American law gives animals protection in a wide variety of circumstances, but it affords them no rights . The prevailing legal principle is that only persons can be bearers of rights. So, before animals can have rights, either that principle will have to be changed, or it will have to be shown that animals (at least some of them) are persons.

The animal rights movement (of which Peter Singer, the controversial Princeton professor, is the philosophical guru) contends that there should be only a relatively narrow legal gap between humans and animals. Biologically speaking, of course, there is only a narrow gap between humans and the highest of the animals. But this raises the question: Is a strictly biological account of human nature adequate? The animal rights movement would answer this question in the affirmative; Christianity, by contrast, has always answered it in the negative. At first glance, the animal rights movement seems to be aiming at the elevation of animals. In fact, however, it is but the latest episode in a long history of attempts to degrade humans.

Many individual members of the animal rights movement, I willingly concede, are kindhearted folks who are revolted at cruelty to animals and wish to minimize it; they have no desire to degrade humanity. But historical movements often have objective tendencies that contradict the wishes of their proponents. (Witness communism, which, despite its objective tendency to tyranny and mass murder, had many followers who were humane and philanthropic in intention.) Underlying the push for narrowing the legal gap between humans and animals is the philosophical premise that there is no more than a narrow ontological gap between humans and animals. But the animal rights people are not the first to embrace this premise. Far from it.

In the sixteenth century, Michel de Montaigne, the great French essayist and skeptic, argued that the gap between humans and animals was narrower than most people imagined. He devoted much of his writing to showing that humans are not nearly as rational as we, in our pride, suppose ourselves to be, while occasionally pointing out how surprisingly rational the lower animals could sometimes be. In his most comprehensive and influential essay, “An Apology for Raimond Sebond,” Montaigne cited the case of a logical dog, a case reported by an ancient philosopher. The dog was following a scent along a path. Suddenly the single path divided into three. The dog hesitated: Which way to go? He sniffed at one path; no scent. He sniffed at a second; no scent there either. And then, without bothering to give an investigatory sniff at the one remaining, he set off on this third path. Clearly the dog had performed a disjunctive syllogism, saying to himself: “The scent I’m following will be found either on path A, B, or C; it is not found on A or B; it follows, therefore, that it must be on C.”

And since, according to the dominant philosophical tradition of Montaigne’s day”a tradition that reached back to Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics”rationality (or a capacity for logical thinking) is the distinctive characteristic of human beings, it was no small thing to show that dogs as well as humans can be logical. In the world of philosophy, it had always been rationality that established the almost infinite ontological gap between humans and animals. Show that rationality is a characteristic shared by both, and humanity’s ancient claim to dominance is destroyed.

Near the middle of the eighteenth century, during the robust early stages of the Enlightenment, a minor French philosophe, Julien Offray de la Mettrie, wrote a book titled L’Homme Machine . If humans are nothing more than machines, he argued, albeit very refined and complex ones, then there is certainly no great ontological gap between humans and the lower animals, for they are also machines, though less refined and complex. La Mettrie suggested, for instance, that the reason apes cannot speak is not because of any inferiority in rationality to human beings but because of “some defect in the organs of speech.” He believed a young ape could be taught the use of language if we were to instruct it using the (then newly invented) methods used to teach deaf“mutes to “speak.” In other words, given the right teacher, apes could be taught sign language.

But to date, the greatest of all attempts to narrow the gap between humans and the lower animals has been Darwinism. Perhaps this should not be said of the Darwinism of Darwin himself, who had little wish, at least in public, to extrapolate his biological findings into the realm of ontology. But it can certainly be said of many of Darwin’s epigones, who viewed humans as purely biological entities and thus regarded biology as competent to pronounce the last word on the ontological rank of human nature. Since humans have the same remote ancestry as the rest of the animal kingdom, since we have the same relatively proximate ancestry as the great apes, and since anatomically we bear a strong resemblance to these our “cousins,” then it follows (they reasoned) that humans are ontologically only a little bit superior to the lower animals. And if we measure superiority and inferiority in terms of capacity to survive (which is perhaps the true Darwinian way of measuring these things), then we are not superior at all; for it is obvious that all surviving animal species have equally met that test. By that measure, our superiority, if we are indeed superior, will not be shown until we outlast all other animal species; but that is almost certainly impossible, since it is difficult to imagine how humans could survive on earth without the assistance of other simultaneously existing animal species.

Our contemporary animal rights movement is heir to this long tradition of trying to narrow the gap between humans and lower animals. But what motive lies behind this tradition? The answer seems obvious enough. Specifically, the motive is anti“Christian; more generally, it is a strong animosity toward the view of human nature taken both by biblical religions and by the great classical schools of philosophy, especially Platonism and Stoicism. That man is “made in the image and likeness of God” is an expression found in the Bible, but it is a formula that well expresses the anthropology of Plato and the Stoics as well. To reduce human nature to nothing more than its biological status is to attack this ancient and exalted conception of human nature.

In defense of the attackers”from Montaigne, through the philosophes and the Darwinians, to Peter Singer (who once wrote a book titled Animal Liberation ) and the Harvard Law School”it might be said that their intentions have often been humane. The Stoic“Christian theory of human nature, in their opinion, has been dangerously unrealistic, the product not of empirical observation but of fantastic imagination. By encouraging men and women to believe that their true home is not in this world, the world of nature”that we are potentially divine beings living in temporary exile”this fantastic theory has rendered humans unable to achieve such limited happiness as we might have achieved. Demoting human nature from heaven to earth will, by making us more realistic, render us more successful. Better (in Macaulay’s phrase) to own an acre in Middlesex than a county in Utopia.

This defense (“they had good intentions”) might have been acceptable prior to the twentieth century. But in the course of that century we had some unpleasant experiences with persons who entertained the purely biological conception of human nature. Hitler was a great believer in this purely biological conception (sometimes with a confused overlay of pagan romanticism). In his way, he can be counted as one of Darwin’s epigones. Now, of course, you cannot prove that an idea is wrong simply because Hitler embraced it; for instance, that Hitler favored the production of Volkswagens doesn’t prove that they are bad automobiles. But when there is a direct link between one of his major ideas and the Holocaust, as there is in the case of his conception of human nature, this is at least enough to give us pause. At present I cannot prove that the idea of animal rights is extraordinarily dangerous and inhumane; to get proof of this, we’ll have to wait until the disastrous consequences of the idea reveal themselves over the next century or so. But I strongly suspect that it’s a dangerous idea, and accordingly I suspect that the promoters of this idea, whatever their intentions, are enemies of the human race.

David R. Carlin is Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at the Community College of Rhode Island, as well as chairman of the Democratic Party in Newport, Rhode Island.

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The Denomination Called Catholic

Sat, 01 Nov 1997 00:00:00 -0500

By now, nearly everyone has heard the statistics. From the end of Vatican II in 1965 to the present, the American Catholic Church has experienced dramatic drops in attendance at Sunday Mass, per capita contributions, the number of Catholic elementary and secondary schools, the population of priests and nuns, enrollment in seminaries and religious orders, the circulation of Catholic periodicals. Many Catholic colleges and universities, it is true, have held their own and even prospered, but their success has come in many cases at the price of watering down their distinctively Catholic character.

By now, nearly everyone has heard as well what may be called “the liberal agenda for Catholic reform”: married priests, female priests, semi-popular election of bishops, democratization of church authority, relative autonomy for national churches, a downgrading of papal authority, frequent ecumenical councils or synods, greater tolerance for theological dissent, total repeal of the ban on contraception, a moral code more flexible about abortion, homosexuality, and premarital sex. The reformers consistently claim that adoption of their agenda will reverse the decline of American Catholicism, filling the pews with faithful laity and filling the seminaries with faithful priests.

What these reform proposals boil down to is: a call to Protestantize the American Catholic Church—or, to put it more precisely, a call to transform the Catholic Church so that it resembles the liberal or mainline Protestant churches. The fact remains, however, that anyone who imagines such a transformation will improve Catholic numbers has paid no attention to the mainline churches, whose statistics have been discouraging for a long time and are getting worse. They are so bad, in fact, that we may be living through an era that, in retrospect, will have to be described as the age of the disintegration of mainline Protestantism.

The liberal reform proposals are based on the rather odd notion that what liberal Catholics prefer, Catholics in general prefer. If the history and current status of the mainline Protestant churches teach us anything, they teach us that a Catholic Church reformed according to a liberal Protestant model would prove unappealing to everyone except the reformers themselves and the small number who share their rather specialized ecclesiastical sensibility.

Sociologists of religion conventionally distinguish three forms of organized religion: the church , the sect , and the denomination . Some religions offer pure examples of one of these three types, but often they change with time, drifting from one type to another. As a result, many religions turn out to be mixed, a combination of two and sometimes all three types.

The development of this sociological typology began nearly a century ago with certain German scholars––notably Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch––who were studying the Reformation. They found they had to make a distinction between two radically different forms of Protestantism. On the one hand were those religions––like the Church of England or the Lutheran Church in northern Germany––organized on a territorial basis with the premise that everyone ought to be a member of the body politic’s official church. On the other hand were those religions––like the Baptists, Quakers, or Mennonites––organized on a “gathered” basis where membership was voluntary, not automatic, and where only the “elect” belonged, not the entire population of the realm. Troeltsch and Weber assigned the term “church” to the territorial religions and “sect” to the gathered religions.

It turns out, however, that church and sect differ in more than how they get their members. Churches are large, embracing at their limit all members of a society, while sects are small. Churches tend to be strongly ritualistic, while sects downplay ritualism. Churches emphasize hierarchical authority, drawing a sharp distinction between clergy and laity, while sects are more democratic, de-emphasizing the clergy/laity distinction. Churches prefer centralization, sects congregational autonomy. Churches run to ornate buildings, sects to simplicity. Sects emphasize the subjective side of religion, especially the cultivation of strong religious feelings, while churches are wary of emotional religion. Sects have a strong sense of in-group solidarity that is far weaker in churches. Sects draw a sharp distinction between themselves and the outside world––a distinction churches can hardly be expected to draw since their members include the whole social world. The average sectarian takes religion far more seriously than does the average church member, a difference in psychological investment that is reflected in the far higher levels of time and money contributed by sectarians.

When sociologists tried to apply in America this distinction between churches and sects, they found it an imperfect fit. There are plenty of sects in the United States: this country has been the world’s greatest breeding ground of Protestant sects. But there is no American church, if only because no American religion ever embraced a majority of Americans. A further conceptual problem, however, is that the United States––and, increasingly, other parts of the world––have a third form of religion, neither church nor sect. This third form, whatever resemblances it has to the other two, differs from them in the quite fundamental respect of tolerance.

Both church and sect claim to be the sole true religion. They teach their members that outside their particular religion there is no salvation, or at least that outside their religion the road to salvation is much steeper and rockier. God, they contend, does not agree with the great American religious slogan of the 1950s: “Attend the church of your choice.” Instead God’s slogan is: “Attend the church of My choice.” Churches and sects tend equally to religious intolerance. For centuries churches translated this intolerance into religious persecution, while sects have often championed religious freedom; but this is largely because sects were never strong enough to persecute others, and if they meant to have freedom for themselves they would have to insist on freedom for all. If churches no longer persecute and sects rarely or never did, this is not because they now regard all religions as equally meritorious. While not legally intolerant, they remain “intolerant” and “judgmental” at the level of extra-legal evaluation.

By contrast, American “third form” religions are marked by high levels of tolerance. The attitude typical of their members is something like this: “It is good to have a religion. We happen to prefer ours, but we think it’s fine that you prefer yours. The important thing is that we honor God, not what building we use when giving this honor.” These third-form religions are called “denominations,” and the denominational attitude has long flourished among members of the so-called mainline churches: Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, etc.

For a long time American Catholics stood outside this circle of genial tolerance. Catholicism clung to its “first form” habit of mind, insisting that it was the one true church––which was viewed by otherwise tolerant Protestants as unmannerly at best and dangerous at worst. But with time Catholics softened and Protestants mellowed. In the 1960s, with the election of John Kennedy, the coming of Vatican II, and the disappearance of the Catholic ghetto, the mutual suspicions of Catholics and mainline Protestants largely evaporated. Catholics entered the hitherto all-Protestant circle of interdenominational tolerance.

In other words, American Catholicism, which had striven to be a church in a society that had no room for churches, had become a denomination. This is not to say that the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a formal statement in which they renounced their claim to belong to the one true church. But denominationalism is a matter more of practice and attitude than of credal formulas. For the last quarter century Catholics, both clerical and lay, have tended to think and act as though Catholicism is simply the biggest of America’s many denominations.

Barring an unlikely conversion of all Americans to Catholicism, the Catholic Church can never become the church in this country. For better or worse, the United States has always been and likely always will be a nation of incorrigible religious pluralism.

Neither can the American Catholic Church become a sect, for the simple reason that the sectarian religious style is completely alien to Catholicism. It is true that during its long exclusion from the American mainstream, Catholicism took on such traits of sectarianism as enhanced solidarity and suspicion of outsiders. But these feelings were never as strong as those in a genuine sect. A “quasi-ghetto” response is the one Catholicism typically makes in social situations where the powers that be are experienced as alien and hostile: British-ruled Ireland and Communist-ruled Poland are other examples. In the absence of an anti-Catholic political or social regime, it is virtually impossible for American Catholicism to regain even the limited sectarian traits it had under the old Protestant establishment.

Here is the great Catholic problem: if the Catholic Church in America cannot be a church, and will not be a sect, it must settle for a denomination. The trouble is that denominationalism is inherently unstable: Almost from its inception it enters into a state of decline that eventually becomes precipitous, leading to something like full disintegration. The history of denominationalism in America is a history of decline. At first the denomination begins a relative decline, shrinking as a percentage of the population. Eventually this becomes an absolute decline in numbers, a phenomenon that has hit nearly all mainline Protestant denominations in the last thirty years. And if this absolute decline cannot be arrested, it finally turns into a rout.

The reasons for this pattern of decline are debatable, but the fact of it is not. A vivid illustration is the transformation of the Methodists from sect to denomination. Beginning as a sect in the eighteenth century and remaining one through much of the nineteenth, the Methodists entered a golden age of growth and expansion. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, they began to shake off their old sectarian narrowness in order to “progress” to denominationalism. In the course of the next century, Methodism became a thoroughgoing denomination. The price for “going mainline” has been numerical decline, at first a relative decline and then, since the 1960s, a reduction in absolute numbers.

There is at least some relation between denominational decline and social class. The denominational style seems more congenial to those with somewhat higher levels of education, occupation, and income, while the sectarian style suits those of lower social rank. When families rise from lower to higher social rank (a common phenomenon in sectarianism, with its typically strict moral code and strong in-group support), the upgrading causes later generations to feel uncomfortable with their religion’s sectarian style, and they demand a shift to something more denominational. And the more socially and economically successful they become, the more denominational they insist their religion be. The result, not surprisingly, is decline. America’s higher social classes are generally “moderate” in religious style, not “enthusiastic.” The moderate denominations, considering zeal a sign of social vulgarity, tend not to spread the faith through missionary activity; they will not even make hearty efforts to instill the faith in their own children. By contrast, the enthusiastic sects, full of zeal, spare no efforts in proselytizing both their own children and the world at large.

The latitudinarian spirit of tolerance that lies at the heart of denominationalism is fatal in the long run, for the tolerant find it difficult to halt their nonjudgmentalism short of disaster. The denominationalists begin by being broadly tolerant of other religions, which makes it difficult to be enthusiastic for their own. They typically move to being broadly tolerant of unorthodox views and practices within their own religion: If “heresy” is fine in other religions, how can it be condemned at home? Finally, denominationalists become tolerant of views and practices that are quite nonreligious and even antireligious. If all religions are equally meritorious and all heresies equally tolerable, then approval cannot be withheld from beliefs that are hardly religious at all––beliefs that lie far closer to the regions of agnosticism and atheism than to the regions of orthodox Christianity. And how then can a line be drawn between religion in general and irreligion, insisting that those who fall on the wrong side of the line are outside the pale of respectability?

There is something attractive in this tolerance––for those who are intellectually curious and temperamentally cosmopolitan, something very attractive indeed. But it is no way to make religions numerically prosperous. And even on its own terms there turns out to be something peculiar about this tolerance in actual practice. The denominational mentality in full bloom seems tolerant of nearly everything except the sectarians. Liberal Protestants and liberal Catholics alike tend to be more open to outright secularism than to sectarian Protestantism; and the more liberal the Protestant or Catholic in question, the more true this is. The secularist is regarded as an ally in a great struggle for maximum tolerance and mutual respect, while the sectarian is viewed as a misguided and often perverse enemy.

Having embraced denominationalism, American Catholicism has begun to mirror the decline we have seen over and over again in the mainline Protestant churches. And since an escape from denominationalism is unknown in American history, the decline appears to be irreversible.

As both a Catholic and an American, however, I am reluctant to accept this conclusion. And there are in fact four reasons for being somewhat more optimistic about the long-term future of Catholicism in the United States.

The first reason lies in the fact that we have already seen the effect of the Protestant denominational experience. When the more liberal Protestant churches started on the denominational high road in the nineteenth century, it was with no intention of weakening their essential Christian content. Quite the opposite, they hoped to become more purely Christian than ever: on the one hand, purging the faith of sectarian excrescences while retaining the pure core of Christian doctrine; and on the other fulfilling the gospel injunction “that all may be one” (an ideal sectarians seemed to care little about). It is easy enough to see now that the logic of denominationalism gradually drains the Christianity out of Christian churches and empties church pews. But this is no proof that the old champions of denominationalism were either fools or anti-Christians. All it proves is that people of good will make mistakes when not in possession of infallible crystal balls.

But American Catholicism does not need crystal balls. All it needs is an awareness of the history of denominational Protestantism. Since liberal Protestants have already tried the experiment, there is no need for Catholics to repeat it. If Catholics are neither fools nor anti-Christians, they will avoid carrying their religion’s current denominational tendency through to the bitter end. It may not be clear at the moment just what needs to be done; but an awareness that something needs to be done is a first step in the right direction.

The second reason for Catholic hope comes with the recruits from mainline Protestantism. As liberal Protestantism shows a continuing incapacity to resist secularism both in society and in the churches themselves, anti-secularist members of these churches will be faced with three options. One is to stay and fight, a fight that becomes increasingly discouraging with the passage of time. A second is to switch by joining a conservative Protestant sect. And a third is to join the Catholics. There is no way of predicting what proportions will choose which option, but Catholicism is already getting its share. These new Catholics are deliberate and self-conscious opponents of the denominational ideal, and their mere presence in the Church slows the Catholic drift toward absolute denominationalism. If they are religious intellectuals, their writing, teaching, and preaching slow it down even more. This is nothing new––in the last two centuries some of the most effective Catholic opponents of liberal religion have come from the outside: John Henry Newman in England, Jacques Maritain in France, and others.

A third reason for Catholics not to despair lies in the fact that Catholicism is far more international than any Protestant denomination. This greater internationalism is not simply a matter of a more numerous and widespread membership, but also of its international governance. There is nothing in the Protestant world that corresponds to the Vatican, and American Catholicism lacks the national independence that Protestant denominations have always had. While Catholicism in the United States may be able to travel a certain distance down the denominational road, it will not be able to go all the way unless it is able to carry the rest of the Catholic world, including Rome itself, with it. And this is not a likely prospect.

The fourth reason things may not be as bad as they seem is the structure of government in the Catholic Church. A combination of papal monarchy and an aristocracy of bishops, Catholicism may be the least democratic of contemporary Christian churches. At the diocesan level, the bishops become lesser monarchs and their priests a lesser aristocracy. And all these monarchs and aristocrats compose an order sharply differentiated from the Church’s lay majority by being ordained, celibate, and all-male.

Regarding things from a purely sociological point of view, we may say that thoroughgoing denominationalization of the Catholic Church is against the interests of the clerical order. If the Catholic Church makes no distinctive claims to truth and legitimacy, why should the authority of this clerical order be tolerated? Why not become like Protestant denominations, with a democratized and decentralized authority shifted from pope, bishop, and priest in the direction of the laity? It is not unusual to find priests and even bishops eager to make the shift. But a screening process for promotion guarantees that little of this eagerness is found in the upper ranks of the Church, and the Catholic clerical order is unlikely to embrace the denominational ideal in a deliberate and intentional way unless two or three popes in a row lead the way.

These four reasons for hope––the prior knowledge of Protestant denominationalism, the influx of anti-denominational converts, the undenominational internationalism of Catholicism, and the conservative structure of the Catholic hierarchy––constitute hope, not solid expectation, much less scientific prediction. If American Catholicism is to save itself, it must deliberately reject denominationalism. But it cannot do this unless it can find some other path to follow, and in the United States it can become neither a local sect nor a national American church. Finding some fourth way of being a religious organization will be a challenge of enormous proportions. Yet unless this challenge is met, the future of American Catholicism will be a relentless erosion of Christian content and a steady decline in membership.

A religion cannot avoid reduction to denominational status unless it is willing to claim to be better than all competing religions. But in contemporary America, denominationalized and democratized as it is, it is considered bad religious manners to make this claim; and most Catholics, both clergy and laity, are understandably reluctant to appear unmannerly in the eyes of their non-Catholic neighbors. Sectarian Protestants willing to claim that their faith is better than that of their neighbors pay the price of strong social disapproval and any number of negative stereotypes.

If American Catholicism is to find its “fourth way,” Catholics will have to learn both how to claim to belong to a religion that is better than other religions and to do so in such a way as to give minimal offense to their non-Catholic neighbors. It is easy to assert, as sects and churches traditionally have, that one religion is true and all others false. It is equally easy to claim, as denominations do, that many religions are equally true. What is difficult is to find a way to say, in the neighborly way the American situation demands, that while many religions have a partial grasp of the truth, only one’s own sees truth steady and sees it whole. Yet unless American Catholics master the knack of making this tactful fourth way assertion, they will see their religion continue down the road toward denominationalism and decline.

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Form Over Matter

Thu, 01 Feb 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Early in November 1995, the administrative board of the United States Catholic Conference issued the latest version of its quadrennial statement on politics and religion, this one entitled: “Political Responsibility: Proclaiming the Gospel of Life, Protecting the Least among Us, and Pursuing the Common Good.”

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The Accent of Choice

Mon, 01 May 1995 00:00:00 -0400

As a lifelong Democrat and erstwhile liberal, I’m sorry to have to admit this-but I’m afraid a lot of Democrats and liberals have not been exactly gracious about their defeat in last November’s congressional elections. I grant that Newt Gingrich, who gives no quarter to either liberals or Democrats, may be hard to swallow; but the role of the loser in American politics is traditional and well-defined. You have to smile, say that the people have spoken, wish the winner the best of luck in the difficult days that lie ahead, etc. You don’t have to mean any of this, of course, and every gracious word plus your smile can be totally insincere. But you really are expected to say things like this, even when the winner is someone you simply can’t stand.

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Right-Thinking About the Religious Right

Tue, 01 Nov 1994 00:00:00 -0500

It is amusing to see how alarmed all right-thinking people have become about that menacing phenomenon called “the Religious Right.” They are “extremists,” they are “out of the mainstream.” They are without question a danger to the Republican Party and probably a menace to the republic.

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For Luddite Humanism

Fri, 01 Apr 1994 00:00:00 -0500

Now that researchers at George Washington University Medical Center have split human embryos, thereby producing genetically identical twin embryos, cloning human beings is on the table for national debate. Reactions to the event at George Washington have been varied.

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