God and War Raymond Haberski

I think this was my first "intellectual history". I picked it up as it came up in a search in my research into the year 1976. Ok, so civil religion is the combination of love of country with religion ... that God's judgement of your country is always GOOD. Intellectual History means that while Haberski will take us through the events of history from the cold war to the recent wars in the Middle East, his focus is on what the thinkers and writers of these times had to say. 

The book introduced me to many thinkers and writers, particularly Will Herberg. He and Nieburhr both

Will Herberg

pointed to the danger of the hard Manichean terms everyone was talking as the cold war heated up. "The feared that the struggle against a foe as terrible as communism would create a one-dimensional moral world, in which those opposed to communism got to determine good and evil." (44). Herberg in 1955 became a prominent critic of civil religion with his book Protestant, Catholic, Jew. "He called it 'the American Way of Life' ... Americans were cultivating a religion 'which validates culture and society, without in any sense bringing them under judgement.'" 

Soon after Haberski quotes from Heschel; "Little does religion ask of contemporary man. It is ready to offer comfort; it has no courage to challenge. It is ready to offer edification; it has no courage to break the idols, to shatter the callousness. The trouble is that religion has become 'religion'--institution, dogma, securities." (47)

The next section moves us from the cold war to the war in Vietnam. Haberski tells of King's Riverside church address, but also goes into the larger movement against the war with everyone from Heschel to Neuhaus and Jim Wallis. As a reader of both First Things and Sojourners (I no longer like First Things at all), I deeply enjoyed reading some of their origin stories. Neuhaus was older than Wallis by nearly a decade, but they sort of squared off, intellectually, in 1971 when the first issue of Sojourners came out ... originally called Post-American. 

Jim Wallis

Wallis is maybe still in seminary. The war in Vietnam had been going on since 55 so that is over 15 years ... Here is Wallis in the first issue of Post-American:

"We find ourselves in the midst of a radical awakening, among people who are raising basic and critical questions about the nature of our society and about the quality of life in the world we inherit. The questioning of a new generation has generated a new awareness and activism which poses a direct challenge to the American status quo. ...We have unmasked the myth of the American Dream by exposing the reality of the American Nightmare. Establishment speeches ring hollow in our ears in the face of a society cancerous with racism, exploitation, repression and war."

He attacks the US for the civilian deaths in Vietnam under the banner of protection and freedom. He attacks US for its neglect of the poor, for “students beaten and shot for opposing our madness” and “Black Panthers murdered in bed to ‘secure law and order.’ But he also turns on the materialism and measuring everything in dollars. “We see American society as rich and full of everything but justice, meaning, and spiritual consciousness.”

He concludes with this: "We must be radical disciples applying the comprehensive Christian message to all areas of life, culture, and human need—committed to reconciliation, justice, peace and faith which is distinctly Post-American."

Neuhaus who is the paster in NYC and was one of the founding members of CALCAV (Clergy and Laiety

John Richard Neuhaus

Concerned about the Vietnam war). He argued for the importance of protest. But in the 70s Neuhaus was arguing against seeing the call to be post-american and arguing for them being in a pre-american moment. Taking up the metaphor of the American Experiment, he argues that we are moving toward the American ideal or should continue that pilgrimage. He also says this approach is "strategically more effective, because no people can be asked to join an adventure if they are deprived of the symbols of continuity and hope, if they are deprived of the myths which identify the community with which they are able to travel in confidence." 

And this is Haberski's lead in to a comparison of Jimmy Carter's humble approach and attempt to recover America is Good after a 20 year war that we lost vs. Reagan's approach of nothing-to-recover-because-AMERCIA-IS-GOOD. 

It was so so interesting to see the difference and how most evangelicals dumped Carter for Reagan ... questioning whether it was christianity or civil religion at work behind the hearts and minds of evangelicals. Maybe you know, maybe you don't, but all those moral majority guys, Falwell, Bakker, Swagger, Robertson, Neuhaus, Novak, Schaeffer, etc. "While no member of this group had fought in the Second World War or any war for that matter, they considered themselves warriors nonetheless." And they argued that what happened in Korea and Vietnam was a "loss of will. 'We are not committed to victory. We are not committed to greatness. We have lost the will to stay strong and therefore have not won any wars we have fought since 1945.'" That was from Jerry Fallwell --- fat rich pastor. Muscular Christianity ... much like Graham using the cold war and anti-communism, communism scare to draw in his crowds. 

And guess what ... doesn't this sound familiar? Falwell laments "we face a decade when it is doubtful if Americans will survive as a free people." (1980 in his 'Listen America' tour).

Haberski writes "Reagan had a paradoxical understanding of the United States. The nation's greatest asset, he believed, was the way the system 'freed the individual genius of man.' But he also constantly denounced the state produced by that system. This seeming contradiction, though, became an effective one-two punch: while Reagan praised the nation for reflecting the best in the American people, he could blame the state when things went wrong (as in Vietnam)." (123)

Haberski gives more color and nuance to Reagan though, especially to his shift toward the end to disarmament. 

Basically, after the tragedy of Vietnam, which troubled the basic civil religion that America is judged Good by God, are the many attemps to rebuild it. Carter through humility and asking God for forgiveness (which americans proved allergic to), then Reagan, next you get George H. W.  Bush who was a navy pilot in WWII but still having to grapple with leading a nation at peace now that the Cold War was also over. The Culture War ramped up, but Bush wanted to displace it somehow ... gulf conflict? A war we could win and so make up for Vietnam? 

At heart is the question "After the Cold War, what was America?" (151)

I hope to write more on this book and from this book in other places. The last section is amazing too, touring us through Bush, jr and his wars in the middle east and especially highlighting the defense mounted by First Things and Neuhaus and the strong pushback from Stanley Hauwerwas who was also on the editorial board for First Things. 

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in any of these topics.