Rain and the Rhinoceros

American politics is the hot topic right now and I’m finding it devastatingly boring to watch. Sure, it does stir up emotions for me, as I watch the American civil religion express itself–full blown–through the good-for-nothing corporate media. This is “convention time”–America’s holy days–the days when people gather together to worship around the flag and to celebrate and remember all the blood shed, all the blood sacrificed, for the nation. For the American tradition, convention time is the time when we do what we do best, prepare to compete and coerce. For those who think that American democracy, the rule of the majority over the minority, is free from coercion, should think again.

In a recent post, James K. A. Smith rightly points out that Barack Obama’s politics is neither new, left, nor Christian. Rather, as Smith notes, Obama’s politics looks to be little more than Republican lite and promotes the same old civil religion and Americanism Democratics and Republicans have always been about. Referring to Obama’s acceptance speech, Smith writes, “In language that could have just as easily appeared in Bush’s second inaugural or the National Security Strategy of the Bush administration, Obama promised to ‘restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace and who yearn for a better future.’”

For Obama the god who has elected America to be the savior of the world comes before the God who delivered Israel from Egypt and raised Jesus from the dead:

I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America – they have served the United States of America.

So I’ve got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.

Another interesting point Smith makes is that Obama invokes Scripture in a way that echoes the Religious Right. As Smith notes, scripture passages that refer to Israel or the church are transposed into a new context in order to refer to America.

Alluding to Hebrews 10:23 Obama states, “Let us keep that promise – that American promise – and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.” ["Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised if faithful." Heb 10:23]

To quote Smith again, “The context makes it clear that this is the church’s hope in Christ, but here Obama idolatrously transposes that to the ‘American promise.’ This is a ‘new kind of politics?’ Sounds like the same old sort of civil religion we’ve heard from the Religious Right for years–the same (idolatrous) civil religion of Americanism.”

Well, I finally finished my semester at St. Thomas and I’m thankful to have come out of the mess mostly alive. I have about a month off now to relax and hang out with Marcia and Owen. Although I find it deeply disturbing, I’m thoroughly enjoying Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag by Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle. Lately, the notion of American ”civil religion” has been on my mind and I think Marvin and Ingle do a superb job of bringing to light the deeply religious character of nationalism.    Here are a few interesting quotes from the first couple chapters:

 ”Though [religious] denominations are permitted to exist in the United States, they are not permitted to kill, for their beliefs are not officially true. What is really true in any society is what is worth killing for, and what citizens may be compelled to sacrifice their lives for. . . despite a sturdy American tradition of separating sectarian faith from the state, national faith is inextricably wedded to governance, which is ultimately the question of who shall live and die. Only nationalism motivates the sacrificial devotion of citizens, without which there can be no effective governance. In relation that faith, sectarian religion is best understood as a jealous competitor” (9-10).  

The purpose of Marvin and Ingle’s work is to “show that the totem system of American patriotism is a symbolically coherent, deeply primitive, powerfully religious enterprise organized around a violent identity-crystallizing mechanism. We propose that the totem is the violently sacrificed body symbolized by the flag. The flag ritually transformed is the god of society renewed” (11).