Deliver Us from Evil

Am I the oldest TV kid on the planet?

I can still remember the day in 1954 when the host of my favorite TV kids’ show explained to all of us that the Pledge of Allegiance had changed. This altered my young life, because my pre-school days hinged on the moment every noon when Big Brother Bob Emery led his viewers in the pledge. I was always hungry, you see, and I knew that he would follow the Pledge by raising a tall glass of milk to the studio portrait of Dwight Eisenhower with the words “A toast! To the President! Of the United States!” So every day I would recite the Pledge, join him in the toast, sip my milk—and then I got to eat my lunch.

On that day lunch got delayed a bit, however, since we needed to learn the NEW Pledge of Allegiance, with the words “under God” inserted. At the time, of course, no one thought this language was curious, and in fact it is still part of the pledge. Most of us have long forgotten that the Pledge was written by a Christian socialist who objected to the Knights of Columbus-sponsored campaign to add “under God.”

Looking back, I realize that day was the high-water mark of religion’s visibility in American life. Less than ten years later, in 1963, the US Supreme Court shocked millions by declaring public school prayer unconstitutional. Since then, of course, religion has been squeezed out of many other realms of public life. Sex education moved from family and church to the classroom; most abortion was declared a matter of “private” morality not subject to public sanctions; religious schools were denied public funding; Christmas displays were banned from public parks and buildings; sculptures containing the Ten Commandments have been removed from public property. And now the Massachusetts Supreme judicial Court has declared that banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

Yet America remains among the most “religious” of modern societies, a fact lost on many Americans. Churchgoing remains more common than elsewhere; “God Bless America” ends every Presidential address, and the song is sung at major sporting events; “In God we Trust” remains on our currency; schools still close for Christmas, which remains a legal holiday. Indeed, the American trend away from religion since 1963 eventually provoked a backlash: the “culture wars” in which conservative leaders championed “traditional moral and family values” against the rising tide of “secular humanism.” It is generally accepted that evangelical movements have become a major force in American life and even in our Presidential elections. As one French journalist explained during a recent TV report from Washington, “Americans have separated church and state, but that does not mean they have separated religion and politics.” Now the French are finding out that they are not immune. The “culture wars” have spread to their shores, in a new form that Americans should know about.

For years now, French-speaking Arabs have been immigrating to France from the “Magreb” (former French colonies in North Africa, like Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria). As a result, Islam has become the #2 religion in France—there are more Muslims than Protestants or Jews. And, of course, some of these Muslims belong to extreme branches of Islam that see modern Western culture as a threat and are determined to assert their Islamic identity. The result has been new tensions over church-state relations in France.

In particular, French schools have been challenged by the growing numbers of Muslim girls wearing head-veils to class. Various attempts to regulate school attire have so far resulted mainly in confusion and court cases, with some girls expelled or punished for attire that others are permitted. So now the government has stepped in and raised the stakes.

Last month, French President Chirac proposed legislation that will ban all “conspicuous” religious symbols in public schools and public workplaces. It will also allow private employers to develop policies for their workplaces. So it may soon be impossible for students—or teachers—to wear veils, crosses, even yarmulkes. There’s even talk of banning beards—or at least limiting their length!

Aside from the obvious practical problems (How to draw the line between “conspicuous” displays and acceptable ones? Will it reach the point, as one teacher worried, of “us measuring men’s whiskers”?), there is a broader and more serious question: what’s going on here? Why such a clash about religious symbols?

Both America and France have enshrined “separation of church and state” as the law of the land. We can expect, then, that as immigration makes their populations more religiously diverse, both societies will become less attached to their Christian roots. But America and France approach separation differently, and both approaches are rooted in national history. Because so many American colonists arrived to find religious freedom, Americans tend to stress the “religious liberty” of individuals because they fear the state’s power to control religion. By contrast, France’s long history as a Catholic country has left the French fearful of the Church’s power in public life. So while Americans want separation to protect religion from the state, the French want it to protect the state from religion.

The Catholic Church, of course, resisted the whole idea of separating church and state for nearly 200 years, insisting that the best government was a Catholic one. As recently as 1960, Americans worried that, if JFK became the first Catholic President, he would govern subject to Vatican orders. Shortly after, the American delegation to Vatican Council II (1962-1965) became the major shapers of the Council's document on religious liberty, and so the American idea of “freedom of religion” became church policy.

But a bigger question remains, here and in France and elsewhere: How will modern western societies maintain their Christian roots while respecting the growing diversity of their populations?

On one level, the answer is obvious. The days of “Christendom”—where political and social institutions once guaranteed that culture would always support the Christian Church—are gone forever. Western societies will always have their Christian heritage, but they won’t necessary keep their Christian identity. We are living through a great historical transition, from which countries like the US and France will emerge as multi-religious societies where Christianity no longer enjoys favored status.

On a deeper level, this answer begs another question: How can our societies become multi-religious without becoming non-religious in the process? This is a question of increasingly global importance. Just as many Americans wonder how future generations will maintain their Christian faith if society will not support Christianity, many in the Arab world wonder how Islam will survive if Western culture replaces Islamic culture in their lands. In both places the issue is: how to preserve faith without the backing of public authority?

The idea of religious freedom is supposed to protect all religions—but it also cuts them off from the social protection they used to depend on. Religions everywhere must now learn to survive on their own—maybe by supporting each other! Perhaps the real clash—the real “culture war”—is not between the symbols of our different traditions, but between a life rich in religious symbols and a life without them. Our time knows no greater challenge than this: changing the old clash of symbols to a harmony that can last.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com