A Post-Christian America

The number of non-believers has increased significantly in the last few years, and religion plays a smaller role in American politics. Has the U.S. under Obama started its post-religious phase?

Recently, Obama visited Turkey where he tackled the idea that America is a Judeo-Christian nation: “One of the great strengths of the United States,” the president said, “is we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

The reaction was predictable. Frank Donatelli, head of the Republican think tank GOPAC raged: “Are we to apologize for being Christians?” on CNN. The week before, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled to overturn a ban on same-sex marriage. In other words, this was a tough few weeks for Christian conservatives. And it will get worse.

The first Americans were very strict. Church and state had to be kept separate. America consisted of people who had fled from religious persecution, so the last thing they wanted was a new version of that forced upon them. At his second inaugural speech in 1793, George Washington chose to exclude God completely. God was not saluted once. His successor John Adams would not be outdone, and put his hand on the Constitution instead of the Bible.

Change would soon come. First, through careful re-writing: “that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe”? (Jefferson), “that Power whose providence mercifully protected our national infancy”? (Jackson) and “Him Who has not yet forsaken this favoured land”” (Lincoln). In the 1900s, it really surged: to leave out God would not only be unheard of, but politically impossible. At the last count, God has been mentioned in 43 of 55 inaugurational speeches. (It is worth noticing that Jesus has not been mentioned once.) All this must have seemed confusing for the aging John McCain: in an early phase of the 2007 presidential campaign, he claimed that the Constitution defines America “as a Christian nation.” Just for the record: no, it does not.

Unlike what the atheist or deist George Washington (what the first president believed or did not believe is still a hot potato) foresaw: the repulsion of the European churches did not make religion less popular. On the contrary, an attractive market of free, new church societies blossomed. Here was something for everyone. This surprised Alexis de Tocqueville when he came to America: “”the religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States.” And it has been like this for a while. But something is emerging. Whether or not Obama is a Christian – he also supervises an America that is coming to terms with its diversity.

It was easy to miss, but in the fifth paragraph on page 17 in the comprehensive American Religious Identification Survey 2009 published in March, Albert Mohler, Jr. – president of one of the world’s largest Baptist societies – found something that struck him with force. One of the survey’s findings in particular was alarming: the number of Americans without any religious affiliation has doubled since 1990 – from 8 to 15 percent.

And even worst: whereas atheism historically was concentrated on the Northwestern coast, it has now spread to southern California, the eastern seaboard and Texas (!). For Mohler, it appeared that the historical foundation for American religious culture was cracking. These were small pockets that could undermine the Christian-conservative agenda. As de Tocqueville also observed: side by side with God-fearing people lived people who had “a great depth of doubt and indifference to faith.”

As Mohler wrote on his blog: “the most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture.”

At the same time, several of Mohlers compatriots had more or less come to terms with losing the battles over abortion, school prayer, the teaching of evolution, and same-sex marriage. What happened?

All of a sudden, it seemed so long ago that the American evangelist and church father Charles G. Finney argued that “the great business of the church is to reform the world – to put away every kind of sin.” Christians are bound by duty he claimed, “to exert their influence to secure a legislation that is in accordance with the law of God.” Ronald Reagan used partly the same rhetoric when he talked about America as the “shining city upon a hill.”

Christian forces in America have thought this way for a long time. The sentiments of the church and the legislation of the state should be in sync, the ratio should be 1:1. Not only ideally, but actually. If the church feels it is a sin to drink alcohol, the government should ban alcohol. If the church feels Darwin’s theory of evolution is in conflict with the Bible, the government should adjust education accordingly. If the church feels abortion should be banned, the state and the courts should do the same. It is not just a political program, it is about personal duty and religious fulfillment. In other words, there’s a lot on the line when the gays are getting married.

Strangely, peace still largely rules Obamaland. The anger that started when obligatory school prayer was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1962 and that was accentuated by the introduction of legal abortion eleven years layer, seems – maybe counterintuitively – to only shrink. Even the noise of the destruction of one gay marriage bulwark after the next is followed by nothing more than a shrug. A kind of resigned “well well, God’s kingdom is not of this world.”

This new coming to terms with the imperfection of the state could mostly be the result of increasing “marginalization.” According to the same survey, the proportion of the population that identify themselves as Christians has fallen by 10 percent since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. This development is also ominous from a Republican perspective: 75% of people who did not belong to any religious society voted for Obama.

A new survey by “Newsweek” shows the same trend: On being asked “Do you think of America as a Christian nation?” only 62 percent said “yes.” Only one year ago, 69 percent said the same thing. Two thirds of the population (68 percent) agree that religion is “losing influence” in American society. In addition, the proportion of people who thinks religion is an answer to all or most of today’s problems is at a historic low – 48 percent. Under George W. Bush and Clinton, this number never fell below 58 percent.

America will still be a nation formed by religious (Christian) faith. We are not talking about Europe here. That fewer people are identifying themselves as Christians does not necessarily mean that the nation is in what Mohler called a “post-Christian phase.” One-third of Americans speaks of themselves as born-again Christians and massive immigration from Latin America increases the number of Catholics.

The weakening of the Christian conservative movement could even be good news for religion per se – it can be taken back to its home turf instead of being deputizing as a political instrument. Sidelined can be a good way of rediscovering the depths that made the Founding Fathers separate church and state initially. Religious arguments should be treated as one element among many in the larger political discourse – and not as trump cards. You should separate church and state, but separating religion and politics is like separating economy and politics.

And like what Obama touched upon in Turkey: America’s greatness has never been connected to a single faith, but to freedom and order.