Is that the case with the worldly, egoistical Trump? He says his favorite Bible verse is “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” the lex talionis which he probably considers a mandate for vengeance (but in fact sternly limits it because “vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord”). But once untethered from the Biblical message that even (or especially) a chosen people come under judgment when they abandon God’s commandments, civil religious solipsism based on vox populi vox dei theology can become destructive, even suicidal. Now, civil faith is a powerful glue that can help a large, diverse people cohere in good times and bad. Still others suggest the Trump campaign is the logical outcome of a civil religion that identifies the United States as a new Promised Land inhabited by a new Chosen People blessed by the Almighty with power and prosperity. Others argue that Trump represents the worst variety of ACR: the chauvinistic Captain America culture that demonizes “the other” and promises only that Americans start winning again. Some are obituaries because their authors suspect Trump has repudiated the idealism characteristic of ACR.
A Google search for “Trump and American Civil Religion” or “Trump’s civil religious rhetoric” yields a plethora of thoughtful, informed articles and blogs that nevertheless could not disagree more about what that meaning may be. This year the Internet has been drenched with speculation about what the Trump campaign means for the ACR that was first described by sociologist Robert Bellah fifty years ago. So what appears now to be a populist victory over globalization may turn out to have been the pathetic yawp of believers in a dying American Civil Religion (ACR) that has morphed since the end of the Cold War into an abortive Global Civil Religion.
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No doubt international banks, multinational corporations, transnational foundations, non-governmental and international organizations, and their intellectual publicity agents in think tanks, universities, and the media have already started to plan how to frustrate dangerous atavistic nationalism in Europe and now America. The widespread resentment of political correctness, open borders, and globalization will only increase as the elites who control the levers of power push back or co-opt the Trump administration. However, the truth is our long, national nightmare is far from over, regardless of Trump’s performance, because the demographic and economic shifts that caused this year’s political earthquake remain. He’ll say do this and do that and nothing at all will happen.” No doubt opponents and supporters alike hope the same will be true of a splenetic, impulsive President Trump. Thus did Harry Truman famously say of his successor, General Dwight Eisenhower, “Poor Ike. Most experts predict that Trump, like every president before him, will be constrained by the Congress, judiciary, warring bureaucracies, and uncontrollable foreign powers. Many believe Donald Trump, having won, will cease the shock-jock talk and govern as the pragmatic businessman he purports to be. That was less than three months ago, but already seems like another age:Īmericans are saying good riddance to the ugly 2016 campaign. Let me begin by reciting a blog I wrote for Yale University Press on the occasion of its publication of my new book in November, just after Trump’s upset victory in the presidential election.
His civil religious rhetoric and theatrics have already proven to be as surprising, indeed unprecedented, as his political campaign and governing style. But for this session I thought to describe what we already knew and have recently learned about the faith and practice of Donald Trump. My subject today is American Civil Religion, its problematical relationship to Biblical religion, and especially its sometimes-nefarious influence on U.S. Editor’s Note: The following article is based on a lecture given at the Templeton College Forum at Eastern University on February 17, 2017.
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