The Accommodation of Protestant Christianity with the Enlightenment: An Old Drama Still Being Enacted
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The Accommodation of Protestant
Christianity with the Enlightenment:
An Old Drama Still Being Enacted
David A. Hollinger
Abstract: Throughout its history, the United States has been a major site for the accommodation of
Protestant Christianity with the Enlightenment. This accommodation has been driven by two closely
related but distinct processes: the demysti½cation of religion’s cognitive claims by scienti½c advances,
exempli½ed by the Higher Criticism in Biblical scholarship and the Darwinian revolution in natural his-
tory; and the demographic diversi½cation of society, placing Protestants in the increasingly intimate
company of Americans who did not share a Protestant past and thus inspiring doubts about the validity
of inherited ideas and practices for the entire human species. The accommodation of Protestant Christian-
ity with the Enlightenment will continue to hold a place among American narratives as long as “diversity”
and “science” remain respected values, and as long as the population includes a substantial number of
Protestants. If you think that time has passed, look around you.
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin
Luther King, Jr., invoked the Pilgrims landing at
Plymouth Rock and Jefferson writing the Declara-
tion of Independence. In that 1963 meditation on
DAVID A. HOLLINGER, a Fellow American national destiny, fashioned as a weapon
of the American Academy since in the black struggle for civil rights, King repeatedly
1997, is the Preston Hotchkis Pro- mobilized the sanctions of both Protestant Chris-
fessor of American History at the tianity and the Enlightenment.1 Like the great ma-
University of California, Berkeley.
jority of Americans of his and every generation,
He is the immediate past President
of the Organization of American King believed that these two massive inventories of
Historians. His publications in- ideals and practices work together well enough. But
clude The Humanities and the Dy- not everyone who has shared this basic conviction
namics of Inclusion Since World War II understands the relation between the two in quite
(2006), Cosmopolitanism and Solidar- the same terms. And there are others who have de-
ity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, picted the relation as one of deep tension, even hos-
and Professional Af½liation in the Unit-
tility. Protestant Christianity, the Enlightenment,
ed States (2006), and “After Cloven
Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Prot- and a host of claims and counterclaims about how
estantism and the Modern Ameri- the two interact with one another are deeply con-
can Encounter with Diversity,” stitutive of American history. We often speak about
Journal of American History (2011). “the religious” and “the secular,” or about “the
© 2012 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
1The heart” and “the head,” but American life accommodation. The bulk of the men and
Accommo- as actually lived beneath these abstrac- women in control of American institu-
dation of
Protestant tions has been much more particular and tions–educational, political, and social–
Christianity demands scrutiny in its historical density. have sought to retain the cultural capital
with the
Enlighten- The United States, whatever else it may of the Reformation while diversifying
ment have been in its entire history as a subject their investments in a variety of opportu-
of narration, has been a major site for the nities and challenges, many of which
engagement of Protestant Christianity came to them under the sign of the En-
with the Enlightenment. This engagement lightenment. The legacy of the Enlight-
was–and continues to be–a world-his- enment in much of Europe, by contrast,
torical event, or at least one of the de½ning played out in the rejection of, or indif-
experiences of the North Atlantic West ference to, the Christianity to which the
and its global cultural extensions from the Enlightenment was largely a dialectical
eighteenth century to the present. Still, response, even while state churches re-
the United States has been a uniquely mained ½xtures of the established order.
conspicuous arena for this engagement In the United States, too, there were peo-
in part because of the sheer demographic ple who rejected Protestant Christianity.
preponderance of Protestants, especially But here the legacy of the Enlightenment
dissenting Protestants from Great Britain, most often appeared in the liberalization
during the formative years of the society of doctrine and Biblical interpretation
and long thereafter. Relatively recent and in the denominational system’s func-
social transformations can easily blind tioning as an expanse of voluntary associ-
contemporaries to how overwhelmingly ations providing vital solidarities mid-
Northern European Protestant in origin way between the nation, on the one hand,
the educated and empowered classes of and the family and local community, on
the United States have traditionally been. the other.
The upward mobility of Catholic and
Jewish populations since World War II
and the massive immigration following
T he sharper church-state separation in
the United States liberated religiously de-
the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965–producing ½ned af½liations to serve as intermediate
millions of non-Protestant Americans solidarities, a role such af½liations could
from Asia, Latin America, and the former less easily perform in settings where reli-
Soviet lands–have given the leadership gious authority was associated with state
of American society a novel look. To be power. Hence in addition to orthodox,
sure, there have long been large numbers evangelical Protestants who have been
of non-Protestants in the population at more suspicious of the critical spirit of
large, but before 1960, if you held a major the Enlightenment, American life has
leadership position and had real opportu- included a formidable population of “lib-
nities to influence the direction of society, eral” or “ecumenical” Protestants build-
you most likely grew up in a white Prot- ing and maintaining religiously de½ned
estant milieu. The example of King is a communities even as they absorbed and
reminder, moreover, that the substantial participated in many aspects of modern
population of African Americans has long civilization that more conservative Prot-
been, and remains, largely Protestant. estants held at a distance. As late as the
In the United States, the engagement of mid-1960s, membership in the classic
Protestant Christianity with the Enlight- “mainstream liberal” denominations–
enment most often took the form of Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian,
2 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciencesand so on–reached an all-time high. secularists in disguise, as well as the feel- David A. Because educated, middle-class Ameri- ing among ecumenical parties that their Hollinger cans maintained Protestant af½liations evangelical co-religionists are sinking the well into the twentieth century, the true Christian faith with an albatross of Enlightenment was extensively engaged anachronistic dogmas and alliances forged within, rather than merely beyond, the with reactionary political forces. These churches. Had the educated middle class quarrels, shaped in part by the campaign moved farther from Protestantism, the for a “reasonable Christianity” waged by cultural capital of the Reformation would Unitarians early in the nineteenth century, not have been preserved and renewed to continue to the present day, sharply distin- the degree that made it an object of strug- guishing the United States from the his- gle for so long. torically Protestant countries of Europe. The intensity of the Enlightenment- The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Protestant relationship in America result- and the Scandinavian nations have long ed also from the discomforts created by been among the most de-Christianized in the very church-state separation that the world. The United States really is dif- encouraged the flourishing of religious ferent. Accordingly, the copious literature af½liations. The United States is the only on “secularization” often treats the Unit- major nation in the world that still oper- ed States as a special case.4 ates under an eighteenth-century consti- Never was the United States a more tution, one that, anomalously in the gov- special case than it is today. Indeed, con- ernance cultures of even that century, temporary American conditions invite makes no mention of God. The U.S. fed- renewed attention to the historic accom- eral government is a peculiarly Enlight- modation of Protestant Christianity with enment-grounded entity, and for that the Enlightenment. An increasingly prom- reason has inspired many attempts to inent feature of public life is the af½rma- inject Christianity into it, or to insist that tion of religion in general and of Protes- God has been there, unacknowledged, all tant Christianity in particular. Republican along.2 candidates for of½ce especially have been The role of liberal religion in American loquacious in expressing their faith and history is too often missed by observers ½rm in declaring its relevance to secular who consider the consequences of the governance. Michelle Bachman, Mike Enlightenment only outside religion and Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Richard Perry, recognize religion only when found in its Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum are most obscurantist forms.3 The fundamen- among the most visible examples.5 Lead- talists who rejected evolution and the ers of the Democratic Party, too, includ- historical study of the Bible and have lob- ing President Barack Obama, have pro- bied for God to be written into the Con- claimed their faith and have contributed stitution receive extensive attention in to an atmosphere in which the constitu- our textbooks, but the banner of Protes- tional principle of church-state separation tant Christianity has also been flown by is widely held to have been interpreted defenders of Darwin and the Higher Crit- too strictly. icism and by critics of the idea of a “Chris- The Enlightenment-derived arguments tian America.” Quarrels within American of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, Protestantism revolve around the feeling which maintain that debates over public among more orthodox, evangelical par- policy should be con½ned to the sphere of ties that mainstream liberals are actually “public reason,” are routinely criticized 141 (1) Winter 2012 3
The as naive and doctrinaire. We are awash dynamic of “science and religion” dis-
Accommo- with con½dent denunciations of “the sec- course, the speci½c content of religious
dation of
Protestant ularization thesis” (usually construed as belief is reformulated to take account of
Christianity the claim that the world becomes less re- what geologists, biologists, physicists,
with the
Enlighten- ligious as it becomes industrialized) and astronomers, historians, and other natu-
ment with earnest pleas to listen empathically ralistically grounded communities per-
to the testimonies–heavily Protestant in suade religious leaders is true about the
orientation–of religious yearning and world. Normally, the religious doctrines
experience now prevalent in popular cul- rejected in this process are said to have
ture. The writings of “the New Atheists” been inessential to begin with. They are
revive the rationalist-naturalist critiques cast aside as mere projections of histori-
of religion that had largely gone into cally particular aspects of past cultures,
remission during the decades when reli- which can be replaced by formulations
gion was widely understood to have been that reflect the true essentials of the faith
privatized and hence less in need of refu- and vindicate yet again the compatibility
tation by skeptics. Af½rmations of a secu- of faith with knowledge. Sometimes, how-
lar orientation less strident than those of ever, cognitive demysti½cation pushes
the New Atheists provoke extensive atten- people toward nonbelief.
tion, moreover, because debates about the The second process, demographic diver-
nation and its future are so much more si½cation, involves intimate contact with
religion-saturated that at any time since people of different backgrounds who dis-
the 1950s. In a country that has now elect- play contrasting opinions and assump-
ed a president from a member of a noto- tions and thereby stimulate doubt that
riously stigmatized ethnoracial group, the ways of one’s own tribe are indeed
atheism remains more anathema than authorized by divine authority and viable,
blackness: almost half of all voters are if not imperative, for other tribes, too.
still comfortable telling pollsters that The dynamic here is also classical: cosmo-
they would never support an atheist for politanism–a great Enlightenment ideal
president. Observers disagree whether –challenging provincial faiths. Wider ex-
American piety has religious depth or is a periences, either through foreign travel or,
largely symbolic structure controlled by more often, through contact with immi-
worldly interests; either way, religious grants, change the context for deciding
formations are indisputably part of the what is good and true. Living in proximi-
life of the United States today.6 ty to people who do not take Protestant
Christianity for granted could be unset-
I n this contemporary setting, it is all the tling. Here again, the standard response is
more important to understand how the to liberalize, to treat inherited doctrines as
accommodation of Protestant Christian- suf½ciently flexible to enable one to abide
ity with the Enlightenment has taken place by them while coexisting “pluralistically,”
and how the dynamics of this accommo- or even cooperating, with people who do
dation continue to affect the public cul- not accept those doctrines. Sometimes,
ture of the United States. Two processes however, awareness of the range of human
have driven the accommodation, growing possibilities results in abandoning the
increasingly interconnected over time. faith of the natal community altogether.
One is cognitive demysti½cation, or the crit- Philosopher Charles Peirce understood
ical assessment of truth claims in light how easily the two processes can be
of scienti½c knowledge. In this classic linked. In “The Fixation of Belief,” Peirce
4 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciencesargued that all efforts to stabilize belief other faiths, con½dence in the unique- David A.
will ultimately fail unless you adopt be- ness and supreme value of Christianity Hollinger
liefs that can withstand exposure to the required a bit more energy to maintain.8
world at large. When you encounter other When Jewish intellectuals in the middle
people who hold very different opinions decades of the twentieth century ad-
than your own, and who can present vanced secular perspectives in a variety of
striking evidence to support those opin- academic disciplines and other arenas
ions, it is harder to be sure that you are of culture, a common Protestant culture
right. Your own experience and that of was more dif½cult to sustain. Cognitive
those around you may yield a particular demysti½cation can proceed within a
set of certainties, but if another group of tribe, but commerce with neighboring
people moves into the neighborhood and tribes can diminish the predictable resis-
obliges you to confront their foreign tance to it.
experience and the truth claims appar-
ently vindicated by that experience, your
old certainties become less so. Can you
Cognitive demysti½cation operated
most aggressively in the nineteenth cen-
keep the rest of the world away from your tury, especially in relation to the Darwin-
own tribe? Perhaps, but it is not easy. ian revolution in natural history. Virtually
Peirce made this argument in 1877, while all Americans who gave any thought to
defending the superiority of science in the the relation of science to religion prior to
speci½c context of the Darwinian contro- the Darwinian controversy believed that
versy. He understood science to entail the reason and revelation, rightly understood,
taking of all relevant evidence into ac- reinforced one another. Bacon and Luther,
count, wherever it came from, and truth it had often been said in the years just
to be what all the world’s inquirers could before Darwin, were twins in the advance-
agree on if all their testimonies could be ment of modern life. In the context of this
assimilated. He perceived modernity as deeply entrenched understanding of the
an experience of difference in which hid- symbiotic nature of the Protestant Refor-
ing out with one’s own kind was not like- mation and the Scienti½c Revolution, the
ly to work. In this way, he integrated the religious implications of natural selec-
Enlightenment’s cosmopolitanism with tion were debated in the United States
its critical spirit.7 with more intensity, and for a longer pe-
Hence demographic diversi½cation and riod of time, than in the other countries
cognitive demysti½cation can have their of the North Atlantic West. Although
own force, but also reinforce one another; some discussants concluded, then or
and they can even overlap. When West- much later, that Darwinian science was
erners brought modern medicine into lo- fatal to Christianity, the overwhelming
cales where it was new, indigenous belief majority of American commentators were
systems were put under stress by the “reconcilers.” The copious discourse of
Westerners and their novel and often the late nineteenth century sought main-
highly effective means of interpreting and ly to establish that science and religion
treating disease. When the 1893 Chicago were not in conflict after all, no matter
World Parliament of Religions made what the freethinking philosophers of
Americans aware of the sophistication of Europe asserted. Even Andrew Dickson
many non-Christian religions and of the White, author of the monumental 1896
ways in which myths assumed to be pecu- work, A History of the Warfare of Science
liarly Christian had ready analogues in with Theology in Christendom, insisted that
141 (1) Winter 2012 5The the only warfare attendant upon the had sent them abroad. Returning home
Accommo- advance of science was caused by the mis- with positive readings of foreign peoples
dation of
Protestant taken efforts of theologians to go beyond and with jarring suggestions for changes
Christianity their proper sphere. Christianity itself, in American churches and the surround-
with the
Enlighten- allowed the stolid Episcopalian president ing society, missionaries and their chil-
ment of Cornell University, was just as sound as dren, exempli½ed by the writer Pearl Buck,
ever. The persistence of strong creationist often were potent liberalizers. But the
constituencies right down to the present chief agent of change, which I focus on
shows that the greatest single instance of here, was immigration compounded by
cognitive demysti½cation remains con- upward class mobility.
tested in the United States. At the other The prodigious increase of Catholic and
extreme, the fact that biologists are the Jewish immigration starting in the 1880s
most atheistic of all American groups positioned Protestant Christianity even
today reminds us that the Darwinian rev- more ½rmly on the defensive. Certainly,
olution has helped lead many people out- Protestants well before the Civil War had
side the faith. But the larger truth is that felt suf½ciently threatened by Catholic
accommodation with evolution rather migration from Ireland, and to some ex-
than rejection of it or of Christianity has tent from Germany, to discriminate sys-
been the rule for Americans who are born tematically against Catholics and thereby
into Protestant communities.9 keep “popish” corruptions from disrupt-
Many other examples of the process of ing their religious con½dence and their
accommodation in the face of cognitive control of American institutions. Public
demysti½cation could be cited, including schools in many parts of the country
the adjustments compelled by the histor- became more secular in order to neutral-
ical study of the Bible. But because this ize the charge that these schools were de
process and its prominent examples are facto Protestant institutions (which to a
well known, I will simply flag it with this large extent they had been, as Catholics
supremely important instance and move correctly discerned).11 But well into the
on to the less-extensively discussed sec- twentieth century, two circumstances ren-
ond process, demographic diversi½cation, dered the numerous Catholics more of a
which emerged most strikingly in the political problem for Anglo-Protestant
twentieth century. hegemonists than a religious one for be-
lievers: the extensive system of Catholic
Demographic diversi½cation began schools kept the bulk of the Catholic pop-
ulation something of a thing apart in local
with some highly pertinent agents of
change functioning at a geographical dis- communities, and the relatively weak
tance. The sympathetic study of foreign class position of most Catholics until
cultures by anthropologists promoted the after World War II diminished the fre-
“cultural relativism” associated above all quency with which their ideas circulated
with Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict. in the national media and academia. A
This movement explicitly and relentless- few Protestants converted to Catholicism,
ly questioned the certainties of the home but the vast majority of Protestants of all
culture by juxtaposing them with often persuasions felt so superior to Catholics
romanticized images of distant commu- that the latter’s opinions and practices
nities of humans.10 Another factor was rarely called their own into question.
the gradual effect American Protestant Demographic diversi½cation was held at
missionaries had on the communities that a certain distance.
6 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesYet only temporarily. The situation tant culture who were already stretching David A. changed rapidly in the early 1960s with its boundaries in secular directions (in Hollinger the election of John F. Kennedy as presi- the context of many episodes of cognitive dent and the dramatic liberalization of demysti½cation) and were eager to explore Catholic doctrine by Pope John XXIII’s the diversity Jews embodied. Vatican II Council. These developments Unlike the Catholic population, more- turned Catholics into more serious inter- over, many Jews were resoundingly secu- locutors. Catholics became suf½ciently lar in their orientation and carried not an intimate neighbors to compel the sympa- alien religion but rather the most radical- thetic attention that helped “provincial- ly Enlightenment-generated strains of ize” American Protestantism, pushing European thought, including Marxist Protestant leaders to renounce the pro- and Freudian understandings of religion prietary relationship to the American na- itself. Secular Jews were also leaders in tion that had so long been a foundation the exploration of modernist movements for their own authority. To be sure, the in the arts that contested the more ratio- most theologically and politically conser- nalist elements in the legacy of the En- vative elements within Protestantism lightenment while offering precious lit- continued to espouse the idea that the tle support to the Protestant orthodoxy United States was a Protestant nation. But against which the Enlightenment was so in the view of the mainstream leadership, largely de½ned. As non-Christians, the as voiced by The Christian Century, Ken- Jewish intellectuals were more foreign nedy’s inauguration marked “the end of than the Catholics, yet, paradoxically, Protestantism as a national religion” and their high degree of secularism created a the fuller acceptance of the secularity of a common foundation with liberalizing nation grounded in the Enlightenment.12 Protestants, many of whom continued to In the meantime, the much smaller see Catholics as superstitious dupes of a population of immigrant Jews and their medieval establishment in Rome. Espe- descendants presented a sharper chal- cially in literature, the arts, and social crit- lenge to Protestant epistemic and social icism, Jewish intellectuals joined ecu- con½dence. Enthusiastically immersed in menical Protestants and ex-Protestants public schools and seeking full participa- in national leadership during the middle tion in American institutions of virtually decades of the twentieth century. Two all sorts, the highly literate and upwardly antiprovincial revolts, one against the mobile Jewish population of the post- constraints of traditional Jewish life and 1880 migration was concentrated in the another against the constraints of tradi- nation’s cultural capital, New York City. tional American Protestant life, reinforced Jews were harder to dismiss as bearers of each other and accelerated the cosmopol- ideas and practices at odds with the Prot- itan aspirations of both.13 estant heritage. Their witness was so com- The role of Jewish Americans in the pelling that it eventually forced the devel- process of demographic diversi½cation opment of the concept of “the Judeo- increased when the barriers against their Christian tradition.” But long before that inclusion in academia collapsed after phrase caught on in the 1950s, Jewish World War II. The teaching and public intellectuals had begun to converse with discussion of philosophy, literature, his- John Dewey, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., tory, sociology, and political science had Randolph Bourne, Hutchins Hapgood, remained an Anglo-Protestant reserve and other products of American Protes- long after resistance to Jews had dimin- 141 (1) Winter 2012 7
The ished in medicine, law, engineering, and tentous phases of the entire multicentury
Accommo- natural science. The leading secular aca- accommodation of Protestant Christian-
dation of
Protestant demic humanists and social scientists of ity with the Enlightenment, broadly con-
Christianity the prewar generation, exempli½ed by strued, was the crisis experienced by the
with the
Enlighten- lapsed Congregationalist John Dewey, old “Protestant Establishment” during
ment had been of Protestant origin. The post- and after the 1960s. The theologically and
war change was rapid and extensive. By politically liberal leaders of the National
the end of the 1960s, the Carnegie Foun- Council of Churches and its most impor-
dation reported that self-identifying Jews, tant denominational af½liates (the United
while constituting only about 3 percent Methodists, the United Church of Christ,
of the national population, accounted for the Northern Presbyterians, the North-
36 percent of sociologists, 22 percent of ern Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Disci-
historians, and 20 percent of philosophers ples of Christ, and several Lutheran bod-
at the seventeen most prestigious uni- ies) were caught in the ferocious cross ½re
versities. Later in the twentieth century, of national controversies over all the clas-
the increase of female and black faculty sic issues of the period, especially civil
brought a different sort of demographic rights, Vietnam, empire, feminism, abor-
diversi½cation, one that discredited sex- tion, and sexual orientation. As ecumeni-
ist and racist traditions rather than reli- cal Protestant leaders tried to mobilize
gious biases. But there was also another their constituencies on the leftward side
difference: the addition of women and of these issues, they were simultaneous-
African Americans to the humanities and ly attacked by evangelicals for selling out
social sciences was often justi½ed by the religion to social activism and abandoned
need for the special perspectives they by many of their own youth for moving
could bring to scholarship and teaching. too slowly. Membership in the histori-
This was decidedly not the case with cally mainstream denominations declined
Jews. No one declared that there was a rapidly in the late 1960s and 1970s while
need for “a Jewish perspective.” It was evangelicals, who maintained a strong
instead the epistemic universalism of the public following, moved aggressively into
Enlightenment that de½ned intellectually national political leadership during the
the coming of Jews into American acade- 1970s and 1980s.
mia. Hence that episode stands as a pecu- This religious crisis revolved around a
liarly vivid case of the overlap between particular outlook the ecumenical leader-
demographic diversi½cation and cogni- ship brought to the conflicts of that era. A
tive demysti½cation: the Jewish academ- cosmopolitan and rationalist perspective,
ics, like their counterparts in literature it was inspired by the demographic diver-
and the arts, were living examples of how si½cation that liberal Protestants observed
life’s deepest challenges could be ad- in their social environment and by the
dressed beyond the frame provided by cognitive demysti½cation of their cosmos
Protestant Christianity.14 that modern science had achieved. Self-
consciously “modern,” this viewpoint in-
A ll these developments presented a cluded an increasingly generous opinion
of foreign peoples and their inherited
striking challenge to Americans with
institutionalized responsibility for the religions, a revulsion toward the persis-
preservation and critical revision of Prot- tence of anti-black racism in their own
estantism during the second half of the country, a recognition that the American
twentieth century. One of the most por- nation was as much the possession of
8 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciencesnon-Protestants as of Protestants, a posi- ary function of preaching the gospel. David A. tive response to secular psychology and When the ecumenical leadership ½nally Hollinger sociology, and a growing receptivity to backed away from the traditional assump- theologies that rejected or downplayed the tion that the heterosexual, nuclear, patri- role of supernatural power. The accom- archal family is God’s will, evangelical modations the ecumenical Protestant leaders seized the idea, called it “family leadership made with secular liberalism values,” and ran with it to great success. generated countermeasures from funda- Evangelicals remained largely aloof from mentalist, Pentecostal, and holiness Prot- the civil rights movement–often declar- estants. These conservatives, deeply re- ing racism to be an individual sin rather senting the authority exercised by the than a civic evil to be diminished by state mainstream liberals partly as a result of power–while ecumenical leaders widened the latter’s generally strong class position, the gap between themselves and their established a formidable array of counter- rank-and-½le church members by strongly institutions. The National Association of supporting the activities of Martin Luther Evangelicals was founded in 1942, Fuller King, Jr., and numerous kindred initia- Theological Seminary in 1947, and Chris- tives, including the Freedom Summer tianity Today in 1956. In the 1960s, evangel- operation launched in 1964 to register icals were able to offer the public a credi- blacks to vote. The departure of civil rights ble, highly visible alternative to the style issues from the agenda of American poli- of Protestantism promoted by the Na- tics eliminated a barrier to the Religious tional Council of Churches, the Union Right’s national credibility, facilitating Theological Seminary, and The Christian their triumphs in the 1980s: evangelicals Century. By 1965, when the liberal theolo- gained more power during the Reagan gian Harvey Cox concluded his best-sell- years by merely acquiescing to civil rights ing The Secular City with the injunction to measures that many of them had opposed, stop talking about God and focus simply treating them now as a fait accompli. Ecu- on “liberating the captives,” evangelicals menists engaged in extensive, probing had provided religious cover for Protes- discussions of the antisupernaturalist tants dubious about the captive-liberating, writings of the most radical of their theo- diversity-welcoming, supernaturalism- logians. The buzz in the seminaries, Time questioning projects of the ecumenists.15 reported in 1965, was that “it is no longer In a fateful dialectic, enterprising, possible to think about or believe in a media-savvy evangelical leaders espoused transcendent God who acts in human a series of perspectives that remained history. . . . Christianity will have to sur- popular with the white public during the vive, if at all, without him.” Evangelicals turmoil of the 1960s and early 1970s, just stood fast for traditional understandings as the ecumenical leadership more ½rm- of the Bible and made it clear that God ly renounced these views. The idea of a really was in charge of things. These cer- “Christian America” is a prominent exam- tainties played well in the average church ple, though there were many more such pew.16 cases. While the ecumenical leadership, The accommodating ecumenical Prot- deciding that its missionary project was estants, having absorbed much of moder- culturally imperialist, diminished its size nity, found their social base diminishing and turned from preaching to social ser- while Protestantism was increasingly vices, evangelicals took up and pursued associated with people who had resisted with a vengeance the traditional mission- these accommodations. Ecumenists’ ap- 141 (1) Winter 2012 9
The proval of contraception and a role for sex not as aware as the president was of the
Accommo- other than reproduction had a marked risks they were taking, nor were they as
dation of
Protestant effect on birth rate differentials between blunt in the moments when the truth
Christianity the two Protestant parties: during the dawned on them. But they, like Johnson,
with the
Enlighten- baby boom, Presbyterian women had an believed that the time had come to re-
ment average of 1.6 children while evangelical direct the institutions and populations
women had an average of 2.4, a birth rate they were trying to lead, and they behaved
considerably higher than even for Cath- accordingly. They encouraged secular
olic women during that era. Ecumenical alliances that blurred the boundaries of
leaders encouraged their youth to explore their faith community and risked the grad-
the wider world of which evangelical lead- ual loss of their children to post-Protes-
ers counseled their own youth to be sus- tant persuasions. Just as Democrats lost
picious. They also accepted perspectives most of the South to the Republican Party,
on women and the family that reduced so, too, did ecumenists yield more and
their capacity to reproduce themselves at more of the cultural capital of the Refor-
precisely the same time they took posi- mation to the evangelicals.
tions on empire, race, sex, abortion, and But Protestantism is not America. Nei-
divinity that diminished their ability to ther is the South. The Democrats did well
recruit new members from the Seventh enough in the national arena by paying
Day Adventist and Church of the Naza- the price of turning the states of the Old
rene, ranks which in earlier generations Confederacy over to white Republicans.
provided many converts to the more The ecumenists, even while they lost the
respectable Methodist and Episcopalian leadership of Protestantism, advanced
faiths. Evangelicals, by contrast, had more many of the goals of secular liberalism
children and kept them. that they had embraced. The United States
today, even with the prominence of polit-
W hat happened to ecumenical Protes- ically conservative evangelical Protes-
tants, looks much more like the country
tantism during the 1960s crisis and its
aftermath can be instructively compared ecumenical leaders of the 1960s hoped it
to what happened simultaneously to the would become than the one their evangel-
Democratic Party in national politics. ical rivals sought to create. Sociologist
“We have lost the South for a genera- N. J. Demerath III has put this point hyper-
tion,” President Lyndon Johnson is wide- bolically: the ecumenical Protestants
ly quoted as having said in 1964 when the scored a “cultural victory” while experi-
Democratic Party aligned itself with the encing “organizational defeat.” They cam-
cause of civil rights for African Ameri- paigned for “individualism, freedom, plu-
cans. The manner in which ecumenists ralism, tolerance, democracy, and intellec-
risked their hold on American Protes- tual inquiry,” Demerath observes–exact-
tantism is similar to the way the Demo- ly the Enlightenment values that gained
cratic leadership imperiled its hold on the rather than lost ground in American pub-
South, and with similar consequences. At lic culture in the second half of the twen-
issue in the control of American Protes- tieth century.17 These values were not pe-
tantism was not only race–the crucial culiar to ecumenical Protestants, but their
issue for the Democrats–but also impe- emphatic espousal demonstrated an ac-
rialism, feminism, abortion, and sexuality, commodation with secular liberalism,
in addition to critical perspectives on especially as instantiated in speci½c caus-
supernaturalism. Ecumenical leaders were es such as civil rights, feminism, and the
10 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciencescritical reassessment of inherited religious lectuals never contemplated. The world David A.
doctrine. that American Protestants and their prog- Hollinger
eny eventually made their own, in coop-
T o treat the ecumenical Protestant saga eration with Americans who had no Prot-
estant past whatsoever, is a vast expanse
of the last half-century as a culmination
of the accommodation of Protestant encompassing dispersed elements of cul-
Christianity with the Enlightenment, as I ture from throughout the globe. The En-
do here, invites several quali½cations. It lightenment was destined to be a great
will not do to suppose that the evangeli- provider of stepping-stones for European-
cal Protestants, who in my telling of the derived American Protestants because the
story are primarily resisters to moderni- Enlightenment was largely a product of
ty, experienced neither transformations European Christian self-scrutiny in the
within their own ranks nor internal di- ½rst place.
versi½cation. An excellent guide to dis- Finally, we are left with the mystery of
agreements within American evangelical where a given historical formation such
Protestantism is historian Mark Noll’s as “ecumenical Protestantism”–or even
well-titled The Scandal of the Evangelical “the Enlightenment” itself–is best con-
Mind, which characterizes the funda- sidered an agent and where it is best con-
mentalist movement of the twentieth sidered a vehicle. The heavily Christian
century as “an intellectual disaster.” But I foundations of modern science and of the
believe it is fair to say that many of the Enlightenment are now widely acknowl-
loudest voices in the evangelical con- edged. And the Christianity of Paul the
versation today, exempli½ed by Nancy Apostle was itself as much a collection of
Pearcey’s Total Truth: Liberating Christianity historical results as of causes. It is easy
from Its Cultural Captivity, make Noll look to say that Protestants who most fully
like no less impassioned a defender of the accommodate secular liberalism have
Enlightenment than Harvey Cox. It is all turned their institutions into vehicles for
a matter of degree and emphasis.18 agencies outside Christianity, but the tra-
Neither will it do to imagine that every jectories that flowed into ecumenical
novelty prompted by cognitive demysti- Protestantism and helped make it what it
½cation and demographic diversi½cation became were not, in themselves, autoch-
amounts to a triumph of the Enlighten- thonous: those forces were complex re-
ment narrowly construed as a set of natu- sults of earlier conditions, like strong
ralistic and rationalist dispositions. The winds that had picked up many diverse
Enlightenment as a presence in modern materials from the various territories
history certainly was just that; indeed, through which they had blown.
much of its legacy can be traced to the The accommodation of Protestant
power of those dispositions to explain Christianity with the Enlightenment will
human experience and diminish suspi- ½nd a place among American narratives
cion of the alternatives to Protestant so long as there are Americans whose for-
orthodoxy confronted in the process of mation was signi½cantly Protestant and
demographic diversi½cation. But the En- who owe a large part of their understand-
lightenment provided more than an out- ing of human reason to the seventeenth-
look to accommodate increasing diversity. and eighteenth-century savants who in-
It functioned as an almost in½nite series spired Benjamin Franklin and Thomas
of stepping-stones to many ideas and Jefferson. If you think that time is pass-
practices that eighteenth-century intel- ing, look around you.
141 (1) Winter 2012 11The endnotes
Accommo- 1
dation of Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” The Christian Century, June 12, 1963,
Protestant 769–775.
Christianity 2
with the There were strong movements to this effect in the middle of the nineteenth century, and they
Enlighten- continued episodically in the twentieth. In 1947 and again in 1954, the National Association
ment of Evangelicals attempted to amend the Constitution to include the following passage, intro-
duced into the U.S. Senate (where it died in committee) by Vermont Republican Senator
Ralph Flanders: “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Savior
and Ruler of nations, through whom we are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God”; see
“The Congress: Hunting Time,” Time, May 24, 1954, 23.
3 The heavily religious character of the Enlightenment as it flourished even in late-eighteenth-
and early-nineteenth-century America is emphasized in what remains after more than three
decades the standard account of its topic, Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976). The range and vitality of liberal theological endeavors
throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been documented and analyzed in the
massive work of Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 3 vols. (Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006).
4 Prominent examples from recent years include Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the
West (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2002); Pippa Norris and Ronald Englehart, eds.,
Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2004); David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, eds., Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and
His Interlocutors (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006); and Callum G. Brown and
Michael Snape, eds., Secularisation in the Christian World: Essays in Honour of Hugh McLeod
(Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate, 2010).
5 For an unusually probing exploration of this feature of American politics, see Ryan Lizza,
“Leap of Faith,” The New Yorker, August 15 and 22, 2011, 54–63.
6 Three excellent collections of original academic essays exploring these current engagements
are Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan Van Antwerpen, eds., Rethinking Sec-
ularism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); George Levine, ed., The Joy of Secularism:
11 Essays for How We Live Now (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011); and Ira
Katznelson and Gareth Stedman Jones, eds., Religion and the Political Imagination (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2011). See also the most searching and comprehensive recent
contribution to the sociology of religion in the United States, Robert Putnam and David Camp-
bell, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010).
7 Charles Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief,” Popular Science Monthly 12 (November 1877): 1–15.
8 An influential study of this pivotal episode in demographic diversi½cation at a geographic
distance is Grant Wacker, “A Plural World: The Protestant Awakening to World Religions,”
in Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant Establishment in America, 1900–1960, ed.
William Hutchison (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 253–277.
9 Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New
York: D. Appleton, 1896). Among the many excellent studies of the religious aspects of the
Darwinian controversy, two have been especially influential: James R. Moore, The Post-Dar-
winian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great
Britain and America, 1870–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and Jon H.
Roberts, Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution, 1859–
1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988). The standard work on the persistence of
creationist ideas is Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scienti½c Creationism to Intelli-
gent Design (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). For the religious views of
biologists, see Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Atheists: A Psychological Pro½le,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Atheism, ed. Michael Martin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 312.
Biologists challenging a literal reading of the Bible remain in dif½culty even today in some
12 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesProtestant colleges; see, for example, http://m.insidehighered.com/layout/set/popup/news/ David A. 2011/08/15/a_professor_s_departure_raises_questions_about_freedom_of_scholarship_at Hollinger _calvin_college. 10 A recent, exhaustive treatment of this movement is found in John S. Gilkeson, Anthropologists and the Rediscovery of America, 1886–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 11 Fresh light on the Protestant-Catholic relationship in the middle decades of the nineteenth century is cast by Jon Gjerde, Catholicism and the Shaping of 19th Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 12 Martin Marty, “Protestantism Enters Third Phase,” The Christian Century, January 18, 1961, 72. 13 I have discussed the coming together of these two antiprovincial revolts in “Ethnic Diversi- ty, Cosmopolitanism, and the Emergence of the American Liberal Intelligentsia,” American Quarterly 27 (1975): 133–151. A recent and highly original contribution to the study of these developments is Daniel Greene, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism: The Menorah Associ- ation and American Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011). 14 For an extended treatment with attendant documentation of the developments summarized in this paragraph, see David A. Hollinger, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid- Twentieth Century American Intellectual History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. chap. 2, “Jewish Intellectuals and the De-Christianization of American Public Culture in the Twentieth Century.” 15 Harvey Cox, The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (New York: Macmillan, 1965), 268. 16 “Theology: The God is Dead Movement,” Time, October 22, 1965. For a fuller account with attendant documentation of the developments mentioned in this paragraph and those fol- lowing, see David A. Hollinger, “After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestants and the Modern American Encounter with Diversity,” Journal of American History 98 (June 2011): 21–48. 17 N. J. Demerath III, “Cultural Victory and Organizational Defeat in the Paradoxical Decline of Liberal Protestantism,” Journal for the Scienti½c Study of Religion 34 (1995): 458–469, esp. 458–460. 18 Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1994); Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2004). 141 (1) Winter 2012 13
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