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Benjamin L. Mabry's avatar

There's a reason that civic renewal feels like the Underpants Gnome meme, and that's because we're not going to like the middle step. I've been to a good number of academic conferences on the topic and the overwhelming response to the question of middle steps is a new civic religion.

In the past, vague multi-denominational Protestantism was the unifying civic religion. Towards the 1940's and 50's, it was changed to Judeo-Christianity. Russell Kirk's book, the American Cause, has a section devoted to the precepts of the American Civic Religion, and I recommend that everyone read it if you get a chance. When I was in graduate school, ISI (isi.org) distributed the book to us and encouraged us to see it as a synopsis of the ideology we should be teaching our students. I remember being rather disturbed by the religion chapters because I couldn't accept many of the theological statements that were described as fundamental to what it means to be an American.

As mentioned, the question of a civic religion is a major theme in a lot of liberal and center-right political groups who discuss these things at our conferences. I'm not going to name names - these aren't fringe people, but the kind of folks who get invited to hold positions in the White House Office, albeit perhaps not the most prominent positions. The issue being discussed is how to compose a quasi-religious statement that can become the criteria of American-ness and will be accepted by the bulk of the population as a valid expression of their personal beliefs, or at least not against their personal beliefs. Obviously, this civic religion can't be overtly Christian, can't exclude sexual identities, and can't alienate important factions of the elite. If people have a problem with it, their marginalization in society would be justified and they would be outside the protection of Civil Rights legislation.

The reality on the ground is that Trump has probably derailed this for the time being, to our benefit, because the one group whose exclusion would unite all others is probably conservative Catholics and Evangelicals. John Rawls made the argument back in the 80's that a liberal supermajority consensus could probably be built on the exclusion of these groups from full participation in society. That's the real potential source of any civic renewal in America and so that's why I refuse to raise a finger in its service.

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Scott's avatar

Thank you for this short post, Aaron. It's nice to read someone who's doing more nuanced evaluations. I'm as guilty as the next man when it comes to reading highly partisan things, so I enjoy the way you engage in an irenic spirit.

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