Imagine a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, a cradle Catholic, who fell asleep as a young man and emerged from his nap in 1995.
He is, of course, thankful to be alive. But he's puzzled and shocked by what America has become in four decades. Most disturbing is what has happened to the church he remembers. Most of the Catholics in the old parish neighborhood have long since left. In the suburbs where they now live, few attend Mass regularly, and those few go to what seems for all the world like a Protestant service with some Catholic trappings. For even fewer is the parish church central to their lives.
The alarming state of affairs is a nightmarish fulfillment of warnings Rip remembers hearing from the pulpit before he nodded off. The first time he turns on TV, there in living color is near-nudity that outstrips some of the "pornography" his friends used to pass around as adolescents. Now, to Rip's amazement, everyone seems to find this normal.
Priests and nuns are seldom to be seen. Spurning their distinctive garb, they blend into the culture. Their numbers, Rip learns, have declined drastically.
Even when the church speaks, many Catholics don't listen. Most practice birth control, as one can tell by observing the small size of Catholic families. Far more distressing, the government has condoned abortion and pays no attention when the church, strangely allied with a vocal contingent of Protestant fundamentalists, speaks out on that issue. And while "gay marriages" and abortions are now tolerated, displaying a Nativity scene on public property is not.
Yet sociologists tell us the United States is in many respects a remarkably religious place. Its levels of professed religious faith go far beyond those of any other major industrialized nation. Survey after survey shows that at least 95 per cent of Americans say they believe in God, and four out of five claim to be Christian. The vast majority of Christians say they believe in such traditional teachings as the virgin birth of Christ, the existence of the devil, and hell. Even among those who are not Christian, half say they believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection of Christ.
Loyalty to some of the older religious institutions has dropped off, it is true, but that seems to be counterbalanced by enthusiasm for newer religious groups and for renewal movements within traditional structures. A case can be made that a higher percentage of Americans are actively religious today than was true a century ago.
Yet it is clear that we live in a culture marked by extreme paradoxes with respect to religion. On the one hand, America not only systematically excludes religion from most of its public life and public education, but it is also one of the most materialistic, consumer-oriented, sensual and self-indulgent cultures in history. On the other hand, many types of religious life are flourishing.
How are we to understand a culture where both these things are true?
Today, traditional Christian institutions are no longer so strong, and certainly fewer of the faithful are ready to equate the pronouncements of those institutions with God's authority. On the other hand, most American religious groups have developed strong emphases on internalization of religious belief.
In Catholic churches, for instance, congregations no longer play passive worship roles; services involve much more congregational response. And Protestant groups, especially the evangelical Protestants who constitute about a third of American Christians, have developed the personal, voluntary and experiential dimensions of religious faith much more highly. They typically emphasize a personal experience of being "born again," as well as personal testimony and a personalized devotional life.
Such ideals carry over into other groups. Many Catholics have been influenced by the charismatic renewal movement, which emphasizes dramatic religious experience as a way of deepening one's loyalty to the church. Small-group movements whose members share religious feelings and experiences have spread to almost every religious entity.
This emphasis on personal voluntary religion is the chief feature that distinguishes American from European religious patterns. In Europe, where there has been much more reliance on religious establishments funded by the state, the collapse of public religion has left a larger religious void. In America, ever since colonial times churches have had to depend on voluntary support. From the time of the Great Awakening of the colonial era, American churches developed revivals as one of their typical mechanisms.
Revivalism has been to American religion what free enterprise has been to the American economy. Revivalists and their enthusiastic converts developed effective promotional techniques, advertising, salesmanship, personal witnessing and other ways of popularizing faith. Almost every Protestant denomination was at one time dependent on such evangelical techniques for enlisting much of its constituency. Even Catholics in America, on the whole more dependent on inherited church loyalties, cultivated regular seasons of revival.
In short, when public religion in America declined, Americans churches were not without recourse. They had long traditions of enlisting voluntary loyalties and of promoting religion through personal contact and testimony.
Non-Christian religious faiths have flourished here as well. This country's dedication to religious freedom fosters a bewildering variety of religious groups, many of them the imports of immigrant communities. These often remain distinctive, at least for several generations, flourishing on a differentness that preserves ethnic identity.
Countless new groups, from Mormons to New Age, have sprung up in the fertile, free-enterprise American environment. Those that have succeeded have adapted themselves to a culture that rewards enthusiasm, efficient organization, activism and personal outreach.
Thus in America we often hear the expressions like "I happen to be Catholic," or "I happen to be Jewish," or "I happen to be Baptist." We are encouraged to think of our faith as a private hobby, like mountain climbing or stamp collecting, and only incidental to the important matters of life.
In spite of that, American believers have not withdrawn from public concerns altogether. One has only to think of the role of the "religious right" in American politics.
Many Christian groups, both Protestant and Catholic, have traditions of exerting influence in the public sphere. Though these influences have declined, that decline itself has fostered counter-movements. So although pronouncements on public issues from major Protestant denominations or from Catholic bishops elicit less response today than a generation ago, aggressive conservative groups try to fill the void by organizing religious constituencies who emphasize that religion, politics and the value system on which our culture is based must be inextricably linked. Such militants can have an influence disproportional to their numbers, especially in state and local politics.
At the same time, the religious right has not resolved another problem: In light of the immense diversities among American religious groups, we have no fair way to decide whose religion should be dominant in the public sphere. Simplistic solutions that favor a single religious outlook are not likely to win the day, and more generalized programs, such as a school prayer amendment, tend to be superficial. Nevertheless, the problems these measures attempt to address are quite real.
Strong pressures in our society, generated by desires to keep the peace in our economic and political life, work to exclude from public life not just formal religion but religious perspectives and influences as well. If these trends continue unchecked, what will generate the values necessary to make a democracy work? Part of the American agenda in the next generation may be to seek moderate and equitable solutions to these problems.
At the close of the 1980s, Americans celebrated the sudden collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Those events were a surprise because no one realized the extent to which the old Marxist faith had been eroding for a generation. That erosion may help us to gain some perspective on our own cultural trends.
There are, obviously, monumental differences between the United States over the past 30 years and the former Soviet Union, but there are also disturbing parallels. As the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out in the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union each fostered a myth of its historical destiny to lead the world. Each authenticated its claim to virtue by pointing to economic growth and material prosperity. Each lauded science and technology as ways of advancing moral ideals.
But the promises failed in the USSR, and here they have an increasingly hollow ring. The American mood has turned cynical toward the ideal of secular salvation. For many of us, the religious resources preserved in our cultural heritages provide alternative bases for faith.
Still another criticism is that American religion is too little shaped by authentic religious traditions and too much shaped by idols of American culture draped in religious garb. The specifics of such critiques depend on one's point of view: Some criticize the religious right for what they see as a too-close linkage of Christianity with American nationalism or capitalism. Others accuse the religious left of turning religion into a political program to promote contemporary notions regarding gender or sexual orientation.
Critics from both left and right criticize the tendency of much of American religion to echo our culture's fascination with self. Much American religion puts more emphasis on personal fulfillment than on serving God. As one secular critic put it, the chief attraction in a lot of churches seems to be that one can gain access to a secret power that will improve one's life. Thus prayers are attempts to assure health and personal comfort. Religious groups emphasize "sharing," a crucial component in our therapeutic culture's guide to psychological health. What's more, individuals instinctively think of themselves as superior to church doctrine: Their own preferences are the ultimate authority.
Still other Americans construct their own religion. An often-quoted example makes the point: When a team of sociologists led by Robert Bellah explored America's "Habits of the Heart" in the 1980s, they interviewed one woman, whom they called Sheila, who seemed typical of an American religious type. "I believe in God," she told the interviewers. "I'm not a religious fanatic. I can't remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheilaism. Just my own little voice."
Such views suggest that both the strengths and weaknesses of much of American religion arise from the same sources. Our tradition of religious free enterprise has led to vigorous religious organization, efficient promotion, adaptation to changing times and emphasis on internalized and personal religious faith. But it has also meant that churches cater to the market, to what people want, sometimes at the expense of what they may need.
There is a danger of painting this picture too bleakly (or too brightly, for those who think that's the way it should be). Many churches preserve ancient heritages that challenge contemporary Americans with visions of God drawn from very different times. Even when they accommodate themselves to their audiences, something of the older, transcendent, God-centered vision remains. Although their services may have a contemporary flavor, they are still confronting followers with ancient traditions and texts, such as Catholic teaching, the Bible, the Torah or the Koran. Inevitably these teachings will challenge at least some easy assumptions and self-centered prejudices.
It is far too simple to write off most of American religion as a sell-out to American values. In every era, religions adapt to cultural milieus, and that's necessary for their survival. And although the dominant cultural traits offer challenges to the ancient religious heritages, they seldom obliterate them.
As a historian, he looked for the driving impulse that separated the spirit of his era's culture from that of the Middle Ages. In a famous passage in The Education of Henry Adams entitled "The Dynamo and The Virgin," he recalled the Paris Exposition of 1900, where he saw the central display -- a giant dynamo -- as symbolizing the heart of a civilization that had learned to harness physical power and built its values around material satisfactions.
Traveling next to Chartres, he saw the spectacular cathedral there as representing a very different dynamic at the center of medieval civilization: the spiritual power of the Virgin. "All the steam in the world," he observed, "could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres."
Today we would have to look for other symbols to characterize our civilization and to contrast it to the medieval ideal. Perhaps a Henry Adams of today would write about "The Virgin and Madonna." That may be putting it too starkly, however, as though the essence of our culture were open defiance of its religious heritages.
We probably get closer to the heart of our culture by looking at the mundane. If so, then the most revealing contrast to the cathedral spires of Chartres would be that great symbol of our consumer-oriented mass culture, the golden arches of McDonald's.
The notion of McDonald's as our archetypal cultural symbol is illuminating when we seek to understand the paradoxes of American religious life. There is still a lot of religion in America. Critics constantly accuse it of superficiality and claim that it sells a McGod, yet millions of ordinary people find spiritual sustenance from it. Indeed, many who first acquire taste for populist religious fare move on to more substantial spiritual diets.
And not all American spiritual taste is superficial. Even though McDonald's may be our typical restaurant, it is far from our only choice: We also have gourmet restaurants and a lot in between. So it is with the free-enterprise system of American religion; it offers choices to meet every spiritual need.
Traditional religious practices and institutions still hold great power, and it would be a mistake to underestimate their sustaining dynamism. On the other hand, in a culture where people are bombarded with the message to trust themselves rather than institutions, many religious groups flourish by accommodating, at least to some degree, to cultural tastes.
In short, religion is by no means dying in America. In a culture that has not been able to fulfill all its promises of salvation on earth, a lot of Americans are still looking for ancient and transcendent solutions -- and sometimes finding them.