American Civil Religion: Mythology and Narrative

“You know, this is the first time in history when we’ll have the choice to vote for a Muslim or a Mormon as president.”
“He’s not a Muslim, you know that.”
“No. No I don’t.”
“Well, I suppose I don’t really either.”

The scene is a coffee shop in a small town in Nebraska, where I was using the Wi-Fi to watch videos from the DNC in Charlotte. In the meantime, I was also flipping back and forth between news outlets and Facebook, reading commentary of the presidential campaign and my friends political posts. The thing I have become most acutely aware of this cycle is a divide between resonant stories and something approaching “brute fact.”[1]

Both parties appreciate resonant stories, however, one side appears to care more about the brute factual basis of those stories, while the other has an apparent complete disregard for it.[2] Not that I am saying either party is completely truthful, or doesn’t stretch, bend or otherwise play politics in this campaign, only that one side believes in fact, and the other does not. For those hiding under rocks, the Obama campaign merely distorts facts, and Romney doesn’t let the facts get in the way of stories.[3]

Furthermore, what my liberal friends find most infuriating is the complete lack of a fact basis for the major points in the Republican campaign, these people are adherents to pursuit of “brute fact”; while my Republican leaning family members get most upset about validating their perceptions of the world. What we are witnessing here is a conflict between denominations of the American Civil Religion.[4] As with all religions, the American Civil Religion has a set of rituals and myths that structure it and guide the practice, and the conflicts we are witnessing right (in the news, coffee shops and social media) now is over which one is true.

American Civil Religion, “allows us to interpret current behavior–which may appear superficially to be transitory and shallow—in light of historical tradition and values” that have “held meaning” in American culture.[5] So, what is this religion? It is “an institutionalized set of beliefs about the nation, including a faith in a transcendent deity who will protect and guide the United States as long as its people and government abide by his laws”[6] and virtues (such as liberty, justice and personal integrity). As a religion, it is best understood as a “system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations” that formulate a perception of “a general order of existence” that is then wrapped in “an aura of factuality” which makes “moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”[7] According to Angrosino, “what makes America civil, is “that it, like other religions, creates potent, compelling, and ‘uniquely realistic’ moods and motivations in its adherents.[8]

Joseph Campbell said, “All religions are true but none are literal.”[9] This conception of truth relates to the ‘uniquely realistic’ perception of meaning, while literalism refers back to a belief in ‘brute facts.’ I believe we can accept this interpretation when dealing with politics, which will explain why neither party will convince the true believers of the others’ truth. Furthermore, if we accept this religious framework, arguing over history in order to try and prove a point in politics, because “Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”[10] Which brings us to a dilemma, especially if you value history and the sciences. However, that dilemma can be bridged through the use of “better-formed stories”[11], metaphor and adherence to the mythology of the American Civil Religion.

What this requires is a reframing of political discourse and the ‘lies’ told by one party vs. another. Instead of checking the facts of a person’s position, we need to understand the mythic traditions of people, which is a more difficult task. And, we must also endeavor not to turn myth into fact: “If myth is translated into literal fact, then myth is a lie. But if you read it as a reflection of the world inside you, then it’s true. Myth is the penultimate truth.”[12] In this reframing, it explains why blatant lies by Mitt Romney don’t matter—they aren’t lies, but “reflection[s] of the world” as interpreted by people.

We will never convince true believers of either side of this conflict in the American Civil Religion of the other’s truth, but it is never the true believers that need to be converted. Instead, we need to learn to tell better metaphors for the problems and crises of the modern world in order to sway those who are still looking for something solid to found their lives and political commitments. “Whenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination.”[13]

In American Civil Religion, a regime of meaning, it is not the facts of history, or economics that win, but the mythologies that pertain to the regime. Therefore, when liberals and democrats cry foul over budgetary arithmetic, or authenticity of spoken and recorded positions of the other, they ultimately lose. Existence of record and/or the physical facts of arithmetic obscure the telling of myth by attempting to impose reality into it. Instead, the more persuasive story is one that resonates within the meaning system of the civil religion (stories such as the tea party, and individual responsibility, not adherence to history lessons and arithmetic). Failure to focus on the mythologies of the American Civil Religion is to turn ones back on the church of the state (and ultimately give control of the American Dream to the Rightwing).

“Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.”[14]

Notes:

[1] John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (Free Press, 1997).

[2] “Mitt Romney Tells 533 Lies in 30 Weeks, Steve Benen Documents Them,” Slacktivist, n.d., http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/08/29/mitt-romney-tells-53... Robert Reich, “Romney’s Lying Machine,” Christian Science Monitor, August 25, 2012, http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Robert-Reich/2012/0825/Romney-s-lying-... “David Plouffe: Romney Campaign Built on ‘Tripod of Lies’,” ABC News Blogs, n.d., http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/david-plouffe-romney-campai....

[3] “Romney Pollster: We Won’t ‘Let Our Campaign Be Dictated By Fact-Checkers’ | Mediaite”, n.d., http://www.mediaite.com/online/romney-pollster-we-wont-let-our-campaign-....

[4] Bellah, Robert N. “Biblical Religion and Civil Religion in America,” Religion in America, Winter 1967, Vol. 96, No. 1, pp. 1-21.

[5] Michael V. Angrosino, “Civil Religion Redux,” Anthropological Quarterly 75, no. 2 (2002): 239–267. P. 240

[6] Ibid. p 241

[7] Ibid. p 242 quoting Clifford Geertz

[8] Ibid. p 242

[9] Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Third. (New World Library, 2008).

[10] Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (Anchor, 1991).

[11] Carlos sluzki, “‘The “better-formed” story’,” in L’Adolescente e i suoi Sistemi, ed. G Cecchin and M Mariotti (Rome; Kappa, 1992).

[12] Leslie Sowers, “Cultures Linked by Man’s Ideas, Mythologist Says,” Houston Chronicle, 1986.

[13] Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. 1: Primitive Mythology (Penguin Books, 1991).

[14] Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor (New World Library, 2001).