Christianity 20 Years After 9/11 - Session 1
8/09 - PREQUEL: What to Expect
PBS NewsHour - While the U.S. is still an overwhelmingly Christian country, since 2007 there has been a notable drop in the number of Americans who call themselves such, and the number of people who don’t identify as any religion has risen dramatically. Jeffrey Brown talks to Alan Cooperman of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the latest survey, and Rev. Serene Jones of the Union Theological Seminary.
The Atlantic - The United States is no longer a majority white, Christian country, and that is already beginning to have profound social and political implications. At 45 percent of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic—and the backlash from many members of the group against the increasing diversification of America has been swift and bitter. “People fight like that when they are losing a sense of place, a sense of belonging, and a sense of the country that they understand and love,” says Robert P. Jones, the author of 'The End of White Christian America,' in this animated interview. “How do they reengage in public life when they can’t be the majority?”
The American religious landscape has changed dramatically over the past several decades. While regular church, synagogue and mosque attendance has been on the decline since the late 1970s, a Pew Research Center study this year has found that the biggest generational dropoff has occurred with millennials -- young adults born between 1981 and 1996. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports on why.
The U.S. has seen a rise in the intensity of political ideology even as Americans turn away from religious beliefs. Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote about this for The Atlantic and joined CBSN to discuss the danger of blurring the line between religious convictions and political ideology.
23 ABC News | KERO - Churches, temples, and mosques are reopening their doors. But not all members are coming back. Some prefer online streaming. Others stopped attending services altogether. But as Amanda Brandeis explains, church membership was already on the decline.
Unknown
0:00
And I think Brian just said it so perfectly, is that people began to see that
religion was around for good and it wasn't for good. And I, the comparison that
I come up with and the reason I was sort of asking Brian was that about his
elementary school experience was that in the 1960s the primary narrative that
there was about religion in the United States, it was partly this public
private split narrative religion was private and then this sort of secular
space that we share that was the public space.
Unknown 0:36
But there was a second narrative, and that was that
Unknown 0:43
wealthy civil wealthy societies, wealthy democratic societies had all become
more secular, and that the United States was more secular than it had been
perhaps several generations earlier. But because of this private religious
thing that was so robust that we sort of bucked the trend of secularization in
the same way that the European European public's had embraced secularization.
And we could see religion in decline, rapid decline post World War Two
throughout European European countries. And so, so I think it was in the United
States, it's a little bit of this worry that, you know, are we going to become
like Europe, religiously, and even the liberal Methodists that I hung around,
they didn't want that to happen. They, they wanted Protestantism, we understood
ourselves to be a Protestant country I mean it's, I can't even believe I grew up
in a world like this, but we understood ourselves to be a Protestant nation,
and that we were proud of that. And, and we didn't want to be like the
Europeans, and yet there was this, this, this undertone that that might happen
to us too because it had happened to them. And I think that the connection
there to 911 is really fascinating because the Europeans had to deal with the
religion is here for good, but not for good reasons, or not for good purposes.
In the wake of the Holocaust,
Unknown 2:23
where you could really see how Christianity had been manipulated and abused, to
the point of murdering 6 million people in a systematic genocide. And so, the
Europeans had to face that public ugliness, a lot earlier than we did in the
United States where we're still holding on to this, this sort of myth oh so
Protestant purity, and we're gonna save the world for democracy and we're the
good guys in this movie, and all of that kind of stuff that we that we grew up
with. And it really did not come on done for most Americans until 911, when I,
and, and I really do think the combination of 911 and the very worst of
Catholicism. At the same time becoming Pope that there's publicly inactive.
Unknown 3:19
Just cores. In the name of religion.
Unknown 3:25
It's so ironic that Protestants thought of themselves as so pristine, with the
history of slavery and genocide of indigenous peoples, but I think it's very
hard for even people your age, to believe how how totally successful that
purity narrative was for kids, for when you know and I'm older than that about
when we were kids, it still was attacked and so ironic that right as we're
having this conversation through all these battles about critical race theory,
and attempts to dumb down public education to not tell the truth about about
American history, there's this desperate grasp to reclaim that that mythic
narrative of purity.
Unknown 4:15
I wonder if I could. This might take us too far afield.
Unknown 4:19
So, Troy, feel free to, you know, redirect us here. But, Diana. I'm thinking of
you as a historian, and I'm thinking that that the 30 Years War. What was it
1618 to 1648. I think it was that the 30 Years War. In some ways prepares away
for the enlightenment and sort of a super powering of secularism to say
whenever religion gets involved, we have bloodshed. Could we just get
reasonable, percent of men around the table and reasonable white landowning
privileged men around the table and, and they'll agree and solve all the
problems that religious violence, leading to decline in religion. And then I've
often wondered if, has anybody talked much about World War Two, being seen as a
failure of Christianity, or all of these so called Christian nations, most of
them, Protestant, Protestant in the north and Catholic in the south, unable to
stop Hitler and Mussolini.
Unknown 5:27
And, you know, if that really becomes an interesting, because if religion has
power, then its power to stop these horrible things from happening. And if it
didn't have any power, what good is it, it's like a lose lose for religion when
violence breaks out like I'd love to hear any thoughts you both have Yeah.
Unknown 5:50
Well, the thing about the 30 Years War is, that's a really important point.
There were some lectures I remember giving, probably about 15 years ago, where
I looked at what I called maternity one and maternity two and I pitched
maternity one beginning in the wake of the 30 Years War, which most historians
do picture there and talked about how coming out of the 30 Years War, you get
this. You do get a kind of decline of conventional religiosity across Europe,
you get the first understanding of atheism. As far as I am aware, that is when
the term atheist was actually coined, and you get the first people coming out
of the closet as actual non believers in God, and we didn't even have language
for that, in European cultures, until after the 30 Years War, which I think is
a really interesting thing, if you look at what happened post 911 and the
growth of new Atheism. And then you also have, you also get, you know, people
just sort of questioning the religions they were born with these newly first
fourth actually religions of Protestantism or the new form of Catholicism that
was born after the Reformation. And the people were saying, Well hey, it didn't.
Unknown 7:06
It's brought us a lot of trouble. So is there a better form, and that's when
you begin to get the development of quietism and what eventually becomes the
movements towards the religions of the heart, you get the devotion of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus, you get very pious warm is sort of inwardly directed
forms of mystical Catholicism that become quite popular, so that all happens
post modernity one, but I you know I really, I think your question about World
War Two is really fascinating. I am not aware of a book that does that but that
could be because most of my reading in the last 10 years has been in different
fields other than that particular one. But the thing that really just burst
into my imagination while you were talking, is the fact that, yes, it was a
failure of Western Christianity.
Unknown 7:59
English speaking Christians did not see it as a failure. As a matter of fact,
you could catch World War Two as a sort of, I mean, I've been mean to say World
War Two. World War Two as a failure of continental Christianity.
Unknown 8:21
But Anglo Protestant Christians thought that they had succeeded. And so what
you get immediately following World War Two, in Anglo Protestant countries, is
you get Billy Graham, you get the revival of sort of a really pious form of
Christian personalized form of Christianity that will eventually feed, what
becomes the Religious Right. So I think that we could look at sort of Anglo
Protestant hubris in the years following World War Two as a sort of a last gasp,
that sort of racially energized.
Unknown 9:05
Protestant vision first articulated that was particularly really strongly
around 1900 100 in a book called our country by Josiah strong who was a liberal
minister who really created a whole vision of white Anglo Saxon supremacy as
being the sort of moral vision for the world. And I think that we're we're to
sort of put up an approved stamp of approval on that. And, and that's why I
think the racial issues have been so hard to deal with. And that's just a really
interesting question to me. I was binge watching the Queen, or the crown this
week.
Unknown 9:47
And I watched the episode I just recently watched the episode about the Queen
and the Billy Graham visit, and think about how incredible that that moment was
in the late 1950s I think it was 1957. And yet, everybody in those episodes,
Everybody thinks that England is right because it's an English Christianity is
morally superior to every other Christianity, there is. And so I just think
that's fascinating because that might well be the last gasp of that particular
vision, and it just so happens that you and I were born, that at the end, you
know, we born in born into that, I mean that was that was the, the air that we
breathe. And so trip when Brian says you don't remember it because you know
you're 20 years younger than we are. It really shows a kind of a break in the
culture, where folks who are my agent and Brian's age, we've had to work really
hard to stay in church, we had to literally self consciously reject everything
that we were taught as children, we had to re learn history, technology,
politics.
Unknown 11:20
We had to relearn our own senses of our of identity. And then we had to decide
if it was worth it to do all that work.
Unknown 11:29
So you kind of understand if you, if you'd like me and Brian, and obviously we
think you do, is that people who are our age who have done
Unknown 11:44
kind of rare.
Unknown 11:46
I mean it's not, it's impossible. We Brian I have plenty of friends who have also
done this work with us as why we could do the work. But when you look at our
generation, you know, there's a whole lot of people who would just much rather
capture the mythologies that they hadn't placed when they were kids, is just
too hard to do anything else.
Unknown 12:08
You would you agree with the World War Two thing is passing you mentioned,
strong, and that triggered.
Unknown 12:17
I read a bunch of the Walter Roush biographies because they're both social
gospels. And one of the big things that World War One did was get all the
ethnic churches, or B, churches attached to a particular part of continental
Europe to attach themselves to American Protestantism, and after that you get
the finalization of a lot of the denominations we have today. So that World War
Two. The role of America and the UK played in World War Two, that comes as a
means of justifying right Anglo shaped Christianity.
Unknown 12:54
And luckily capitalism, and a whole host of other things that go along with it.
Right, so they, I know. Brian's talked a lot about it before about the way the
post world war two Christianity, sets the stage for, really, the explosion in
the global south gets more and more taken over by Anglo forms, essentially,
Christianity, so that, you know, now one of the things we've exported, right,
is a Christianity that has is able to tell itself. That sanitizing self stories
that are a little blind, right to the fact that we've inherited stolen land is
built on dead bodies, right, like we, we, we have internalized that and then
export it. And I think that's part of what for me and definitely those younger
than me that I was their youth minister Christianity in America after 911 We
never had a moment where we really thought we were the good guys. Right. Like,
I watched the church. Say no to the biggest protest, that's happened globally
around the war in Iraq. The number of people protesting and wants is huge, and
who wasn't the Methodists, in the White House, or his denomination could tell
him no, he didn't care, right, so there's this sense that like after that all
these institutions that set the stage for export. Across the globe, just get
falsified by 911 and everything that goes in after it being the collapse all
that stuff I'm sure what you're talking about. But I do think that that's, I
hadn't thought of it that way but there is a real shift that. What if your
memory of the big institutions in the in the state, the economy, religion, for
those that 911 was coming of age and younger, When were the glory days.
Unknown 15:01
Like, when was some time that you can even convince yourself, we were on the
right side.
Unknown 15:07
What would it look like to do so. Well I think January 6 is an example of what
it looks like to try to convince yourself at this point that our inheritance,
and our institutions are telling a winning beautiful good story. And so those
1611 Project critical race theory is crazy.
Unknown 15:25
Here's a perfect example, I just saw this, it just came out. The trailer for
the new God's Not Dead movie about homeschooling I've heard that yeah but not
just homeschooling. It's telling a story where they are literally going to
outlaw talking about religion, in America, even in homeschooling curriculum
they're going to go in and then forcibly move these, these students in the
schools so they can tell them about trans identity and how secularism is the
greatest thing ever, like the phobia around that, right, is what's God's Not
Dead he's surely a lap bra, and you're like that, that's, that's what we've
gotten to that I think it's, it's real, it's connected to that piece. Ryan
talks about it in his fourth area like this, this, this need for a story that
justifies the preservation of ill gotten gains, and your, your place in the
world, and trip you know historically what I think is really fascinating
because this is the conversation about decline, you know, is that liberal
Protestantism, that mainline denominations, for as easy as it is to heap on
them to see everything that's wrong with them. They did possess self correcting
mechanisms.
Unknown 16:50
And so despite Anglo Protestant triumphalism post World War Two.
Unknown 16:57
There were people in the, in the main line, who did look at the flow of
history, And who did say, Wait a second.
Unknown 17:08
We have black people who were soldiers, sailors, in World War Two helped us win
this great victory and now they come back to the United States and look
they're, they're treated like shit, you know, and so this isn't right, this is
what we're about. And so, so the main line, at least in some portions of it,
and that those are the portions we valorize now.
Unknown 17:31
They began as sort of a self corrective journey about race, it didn't happen
fast enough, but it happened it was happening, and it still is happening,
Interestingly enough, they also be in a self corrective journey about violence
around, Vietnam, and they began a self corrective journey about women around
feminists. And so the liberal traditions, because that's enough sort of
theological liturgical communal resources to be able to do that work of self
interrogation and examination and say, We need a different type of shirt for
different kinds of things, and to try to create a different story, that would
go along with that. But the tragedy of it is, is that those are the churches
that decline in the 60s and the 1970s. And so, so they became a parable for
other Protestants, of what you can't do.
Unknown 18:34
And when they became that terrible but you can't do other process say well what
can we do.
Unknown 18:40
Well, we're going to become more patriotic and so by 1980 You got Jerry Falwell
standing on the stairs of Thomas Road Baptist church with a big choir behind
him all wearing red, white and blue waving flags. And, and so, so, um,
literally every single time you turn around, that form of that highly pop up a
pious paper patriotic Protestantism, all like was heaping on the mainline at
the same time, saying oh you can't do liberal Christianity because if you start
doing that kind of stuff here, there's no, there's not gonna be I love your
churches, nobody wants to nobody wants to hear all that.
Unknown 19:22
And so this tradition, became actually a tradition of denial and a tradition of
rejection of any kind of self criticism or genuine cultural reflection. And
then they created a narrative of growth around that. If you go into that place
of denial. If you go into that place where you, you refuse to look at this
other historical evidence. Your church is going to grow. And that's why this
narrative was so dangerous at the end of the 20/20 century, and why there is
nobody happier in America, that that narrative is dying right now, then me and,
and if that Christianity day piece was written because I've been making a big
fuss about how much they're dying and the media is finally paying attention to
me. God bless them, I hope Christianity takes me on every single day for the
rest of my life,
Unknown 20:25
literally shut up.
Unknown 20:30
Have you ever heard me say that it's like that narrative that that
evangelicalism are always going to grow narrative was the narrative that
propelled this kind of white supremacist Christianity, right to the steps of
the Capitol in January 2021 And I have, I don't want to hear any more of it,
I'm over it and I'm really glad this just sticks are showing that I'm not
alone.
Unknown 21:00
Oh my goodness. I know, we're probably getting near the time we need to wrap
this up. But it strikes me that one way to describe this decline growth pattern
is to say that churches can broadly speaking, identify themselves as civil
religions, where their job is to bless the war, the nation's wars to bless the
nation's policies to pray for forgiveness if the nation does wrong, whether or
not the praise for forgiveness pronounces forgiveness and justification.
Unknown 21:40
And there's other positive things maybe that civil religions do to their
standards of decency and all the rest.
Unknown 21:48
But then your prophetical within it rises up to say our nations of mass, our
nations hypocritical our nations, nations got very skeletons.
Unknown 21:57
Let's face the truth. So you have civil religion versus prophetical.
Unknown 22:03
I think part of what we've seen is mainline Protestantism served as the silver
religion through the world wars, and then the 60s came to have the courage to
become a prophetical named feminism and name, what is the density of native
peoples who talk about the environment and exploitation the environment as it
talks about poverty and make racist central issue by liberal Protestant clergy
doing that in the 1960s They broke the contract of the civil religion and
evangelicalism were opportunities. At that moment, and they said here's our
opportunity to sneak in and become the new civil religion, steal away mainline Protestants.
And I think there's a way to say that Roman Catholics in the in the religious
writing effusion white conservative process by Conservative Catholics, Roman
Catholic sees their opportunity to say we can be the civil religion.
Unknown 22:59
And in many ways. These 20 years from 2001 to 21 from September 11 to generate
these 20 years it seems to me.
Unknown 23:12
The were being a civil religion and and reckoning.
Unknown 23:22
And so, even though a lot of people hear the word declined and they think it's
really too bad. I think part of what you're saying is, good riddance of civil
religion that defends the indefensible. Good riddance. And that maybe sets is
tough for some of our future conversations because this decline is one of the
best opportunities that a genuine form of Christianity has ever had to say that
race is a pivotal gospel issue. Poverty is a pivotal gospel issue, caring for
the environment is a
Unknown 23:59
radical reframing of of our faith, so that that decline, it seems to me, is a
phenomenal opportunity, and I think we have to say, as you just did.
Unknown 24:14
I don't want to go back. i There's nothing I want to go the extra hour.
Unknown 24:20
And that little tiny uptick in the statistics that were present in the July, 8
data.
Unknown 24:29
I don't see that as hopeful and good news in the sense that oh my gosh the
churches could be big again, but I see it as a hopeful good news is that maybe
this much reduced mainline has finally done enough public work that people who
are searching for Protestant identity that is reflective, that wants to engage
issues of race, that's happy to have women that's welcoming to LGBTQ people
that's trying to create a different kind of vision of a truly, Truly
pluralistic table Eucharistic table, that there are legitimately enough,
Americans who are searching for that, that they're wandering toward some of
these older churches again. And that's where I think the good news is not that
the churches are going to grow or that they're going to become you know
influential in the public square.
Unknown 25:32
But that may be the long part of inviting some percentage of white people into
a new story might finally be paying off in terms of people understanding what's
been happening in that quadrant American religion. And so that's one of my
places of.
Unknown 25:59
I really enjoyed the first session, and getting the talk.
Unknown 26:05
I'll just say one of those participating. The second half we're going to
intentionally be more positive the first three were digging in to trying to
look into problematize like setting this anniversary aside, and not in like
making each little moment right have shaken the last couple of years and
exception. We're trying to recognize that they are regulatory but we have to
deal with and one of the things, when I've just been thinking about doing this
with you is that both of you represent, To me, people who are invested in it,
or maybe recognize that liberation involves a kind of unlearning and there's a
call for new framing stories. And so like that's where we get to write in the
second half, but the act of unlearning is really important and I think the
notion of the client. There's so many bits that are connected to it. But the
idea that civil religion is the only driving religion in the empire.
Unknown 27:16
Is that something that would be wonderful to unlearn. Because I'm regularly
told that's the case.
Unknown 27:27
So, yeah. Any final thoughts like I I'm just super excited to do this.
Unknown 27:36
I'm glad we're talking about this, I feel like I learned some things today.
Unknown 27:41
All right, well we will see you next week. Remember, apply to any of the emails
have questions. And, yeah.