A surprisingly optimistic view of the complicated relationship between faith and democracy in the American republic.<\/p>\n
In his 2018 book The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America,<\/i> America\u2019s leading sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow exposed the seams of anger in small-town America that helped fuel Donald Trump\u2019s successful presidential bid. In his most recent publication Wuthnow takes on another challenging topic: the role religion plays in shaping America\u2019s democratic values and institutions. <\/p>\n
Wuthnow is Gerard R. Andlinger professor of sociology emeritus at Princeton University and the former director of the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion. Now retired, Wuthnow continues to publish, adding to the more than three dozen books he has written over the course of his career that have explored the complex relationships between religion, culture, economics, and politics in America. <\/p>\n
Bettina Krause, editor of Liberty<\/i> magazine, recently talked with Professor Wuthnow about his new book, Why Religion Is Good for American Democracy<\/i> (Princeton University Press, 2021). The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
Bettina Krause:<\/strong> The idea that religion is actually good<\/i> for democracy is not something we hear often these days. Can you expand on why you decided to tackle this topic, and why now?<\/p>\n Robert Wuthnow:<\/strong> I focused on democracy because I believe, as many other people do, that our democracy is under threat, and has been for the past five years or so. And religion, which is something that I\u2019ve worked on for many decades, was the natural point of entry for my own thinking about this. <\/p>\n In discussions about the role of religion in public life, there\u2019s a lot of commentary that says religion is bad. Some people say, \u201cLet\u2019s just get away from that. Let\u2019s get rid of that.\u201d Then there are other folks who want to focus on \u201cgood religion,\u201d and they say, \u201cIf we just had more of that, it would be wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n I have difficulties with both of those approaches, and one difficulty is that each way of thinking asks us to live in a world we\u2019d like<\/i> to live in, and not the world we actually do<\/i> live in. In the world where we actually live, people hold very different views about religion\u2014and these are views they\u2019re willing to contend for and feel strongly about. <\/p>\n And so, for me, the question is: If we think about the actual world in which we live\u2014the actual America in which we live\u2014what are some constructive ways in which religion contributes to democracy?<\/p>\n Krause:<\/strong> I wonder if another threshold question, then, is what we mean by democracy\u2014its purpose. For instance, are we aiming for some kind of society-wide consensus? Do you think there are misunderstandings about what we\u2019re trying to achieve with democracy? <\/p>\n Wuthnow:<\/strong> Yes, absolutely. The important question here is what, precisely, we mean by \u201cdemocracy.\u201d Once again, there are different theories and views. Consensus is, in fact, one of those ideas. This is the belief that democracy works because we all basically hold the same values. Therefore, religion contributes best when it encourages those basic consensual values. You see arguments for that perspective all the time. It\u2019s one view, but it\u2019s not my view.<\/p>\n A second view is the one called \u201cdeliberative democracy.\u201d People who argue for deliberative democracy understand that disagreement is part of the mix, but the hope is that people will\u2014once again, in a kind of ideal world\u2014sit down together and deliberate, talk back and forth, and come to a consensus. That isn\u2019t happening either.<\/p>\n The argument I pick up on in the book is the one that a Belgium theorist named Chantal Mouffe has, in my view, articulated best. It\u2019s called agonistic democracy. Agonistic democracy recognizes that people are combatants. People fight about what they believe, usually not violently. But they will disagree in their actions as well as their words. They contend vigorously for what they believe. This is an idea that\u2019s very compatible with the notion of democracy held by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and even many of the thinkers before that. Democracy is, in fact, the political system that allows us to disagree and still live with one another.<\/p>\n If you think about agonistic democracy as the framework, then the question becomes: How does religion fit in with agonistic democracy? My argument is that diversity of religion leads us to advocate for or against one thing or another. And it\u2019s that interaction, that agonistic interaction, that contributes to making democracy what it is and, in fact, makes it stronger for all of us.<\/p>\n Krause: <\/strong>So how does this work in practice? Say, for instance, in the context of the current pandemic? Some churches complied with restrictions on in-person worships; others defied public health measures. And now disagreements are also playing out around the question of religious exemptions for vaccines. This level of controversy is causing angst for many people, but are you saying it\u2019s actually an example of this whole system working as it should?<\/p>\n Wuthnow:<\/strong> It\u2019s an example of the diversity of religion working as it should. As difficult as this is and as dangerous as it is to have a pandemic spreading, we, as a society, are also having to confront our values, the values that we claim are built into our democracy. Those values include preserving the safety and well-being of the public, because this is a part of what a democracy is supposed to do.<\/p>\n But perhaps just as important, we\u2019re having a discussion between what I would call \u201ccivic responsibility\u201d or \u201csocial responsibility\u201d on the one hand, and individual freedom on the other hand. You have some people saying, \u201cNo, no, it\u2019s totally up to me. It\u2019s my freedom. I\u2019m not going to pay any attention to anybody, especially the government telling me to mask or take a vaccine.\u201d Other people are saying, \u201cThat\u2019s fine, but you\u2019re endangering me and my children. You\u2019re not going to get away with it, so I\u2019m going to ask the government to pass laws or to impose a mask mandate or a vaccine mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n In the short run, it\u2019s dangerous. Those of us who think there ought to be vaccines and masking wish the other side would just go away. But what we do see, at least, is a very vigorous discussion of these fundamental values. And those values are getting discussed in schools and communities and, of course, in legislatures and governors\u2019 offices and, to some extent, in the courts. <\/p>\n What I\u2019ve tried to do in my book is to look at a series of case studies from the past century and to show that this is the same kind of thing that has happened in other situations. It happened, for instance, when we were debating conscientious objection, or public welfare, or immigration. The debates themselves were contentious. People disagreed, they fought about it. They brought in religious arguments, which was a good thing in most cases. What happened was that sometimes the courts simply had to adjudicate and say, \u201cAll right, we\u2019ve heard both sides. This is what\u2019s happening.\u201d More often, though, there was not only a refurbishing of the values\u2014because they were being debated publicly\u2014but also some innovative thoughts about what those values meant and how they should be implemented.<\/p>\n Krause: <\/strong>So religious contention, in some ways, drives adaptation of our democratic values? <\/p>\n Wuthnow: <\/strong>It\u2019s absolutely a driver of adaptation, in much the same way that other folks have argued for the diversity of ideas in science or in higher education or in public education. In these areas, bringing diverse ideas into the mix often forces people to think outside the box and to come up with new ideas. I think the best example of that in the book is actually the one on conscientious objection. That, by the way, is where Seventh-day Adventists make a brief cameo in the book. That whole debate about conscientious objection started out with the arguments being pretty much \u201cAll right, if you belong to one of the traditional historic peace churches, Mennonites, Brethren, and a few others, then you could apply for conscientious objection.\u201d <\/p>\n Then as things moved forward, as we moved beyond World War I toward World War II, it became obvious that there were a lot of folks who believed in peace and were eager to embrace conscientious objection, but who didn\u2019t belong to any of those traditional groups. Our ideas about what conscientious objection meant had to be deliberated, and those debates then sharpened and changed what we meant by \u201cconscience\u201d and \u201cfreedom of conscience,\u201d ideas that are so important to democracy. Now, freedom of conscience wasn\u2019t something that could be legitimated just by holding membership in a historic peace church. It now had to be based much more on the sincerity and the depth of the convictions of the individual. Then those had to be affirmed and had to be supported by churches and secular groups and so forth. The short version of that story is that diversity of religion played a big factor in the changing ideas of freedom of conscience.<\/p>\n Krause: <\/strong>When people talk about religious diversity today, one of the emerging demographic trends that\u2019s often mentioned is the decline in those claiming affiliation with institutional religion\u2014the rise of the so-called nones. If this trend continues, how do you see that impacting the future role religion will play in American democracy?<\/p>\n Wuthnow: <\/strong>I\u2019m not as worried about those trends as a lot of folks are. Worries about this tend to come from two sources. One is from folks who believe that we should<\/i> have a consensus in our democracy, and especially those who believe that we should have a Christian consensus. They see Christianity declining as a percentage of the population, and they say, \u201cThat is not good for our society.\u201d The other source of concern is a little more nuanced. The argument there, which comes from a lot of studies of social capital and civic engagement, is that people who are actively members of a faith community are more likely to vote, more likely to get involved in good works, volunteer activity, and so forth. If we don\u2019t have as much churchgoing, then we don\u2019t have as much of those good civic activities. All right. That\u2019s a concern.<\/p>\n But the reason I\u2019m less concerned is that the data suggests those folks who are not affiliated with a religious organization\u2014and they tend to be younger rather than older\u2014are also engaging very actively in civic activities. In fact, let\u2019s say some of the ones who are the most adamantly anti-religious, the most adamantly secular, they\u2019re playing a good role by criticizing the religious folk.<\/p>\n Krause:<\/strong> That\u2019s very counterintuitive.<\/p>\n Wuthnow: <\/strong>Yes, right. If you take Black Lives Matter\u2014and I haven\u2019t really talked about this in the book\u2014but the Black Lives Matter started up in 2014. The leaders of Black Lives Matter were actually very critical of the churches. They were younger people, they were intersectional, they wanted to be loosely organized. They were critical of the churches, even the Black churches, for not having done as much as should have been done to protect against police violence or racial injustice.<\/p>\n That was a way in which younger people who were not religiously involved had a way to protest and advocate for racial justice. For a while you saw a division of labor where Black Lives Matter was really good at getting people out on the streets, but the Black churches and some White churches were really good at following up and working on police review committees. Then over time there has also been a convergence so that you see people like Reverend William Barber and Reverend Raphael Warnock embracing Black Lives Matter ideas. You see that synergy that goes on when people are coming at it from different perspectives and with different constituencies.<\/p>\n Krause: <\/strong>It\u2019s a great example of what you\u2019re describing throughout your book.<\/p>\n Wuthnow: <\/strong>Right, yes. This has been recognized or argued by political scientists for a long time, that religious diversity is a way to mobilize people with very different constituencies and ideas. The prime example is from the 1970s. When Jimmy Carter came along, born-again evangelicals, especially fundamentalists, were really not involved in politics at all. They were just hanging out and saying, \u201cNo, we\u2019re not going to sully ourselves getting involved in politics.\u201d Jimmy Carter, and then especially Jerry Falwell on the religious right, managed to mobilize that constituency. As much as people on the left don\u2019t like the fact that that happened, it did encourage those folks to be involved in political participation, which I think overall is a good thing.<\/p>\n Krause: <\/strong>So, jumping forward to today, and this same question of the interplay between religion and partisan politics. I\u2019m wondering what your thoughts were, as a sociologist of religion, as you watched the events of January 6 at the Capitol. What were your reactions as you saw the religious symbolism, the religious language, that was being used that day? Was that a surprise to you?<\/p>\n Wuthnow: <\/strong>I would have to say that it was a surprise. I remember just a few days before I was thinking, \u201cOK, we\u2019ve had an election and we\u2019re moving ahead.\u201d I totally didn\u2019t see this coming. I was surprised and I\u2019m disconcerted, as much as anybody else, about the role religious symbols and beliefs played among the protesters. I have difficulty understanding where some of those individual protesters were coming from.<\/p>\n One way to think about that event, and this isn\u2019t original to my thinking, is that when you see people feeling that they are really marginalized and really subjected to injustice, they are, whether their feelings and beliefs are legitimate or not, more likely to take violent action. We see that in many studies of social movements, which again is an argument for inclusive democracy. If you can include people and say, \u201cOK, you think the election was stolen. Let\u2019s talk about it. Let\u2019s have meetings. Let\u2019s discuss it.\u201d<\/p>\n You will have the extreme fringe groups who will say, \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to make my point, and nobody\u2019s listening to me, and the whole society depends on me taking up arms.\u201d You do have those outbreaks. They happen from time to time, and they have throughout our history. Again, we have to trust in our basic institutions, in our safeguards. I think right now what we have to do is rebuild trust and transparency as much as possible. If we can do that, then I think we begin to move beyond the situation that led to January 6.<\/p>\n Krause: <\/strong>Final question. I\u2019m wondering how optimistic or pessimistic you are about the resilience of American democracy and the role religion plays in it. <\/p>\n Wuthnow:<\/strong> I\u2019m actually quite optimistic. I don\u2019t say that lightly, because I\u2019m a pessimist about most things. For example, I\u2019m a pessimist about the pandemic right now, and I\u2019m a pessimist about climate change, and a lot of other things. In terms of the religious situation and how it\u2019s influencing democracy, I\u2019m actually optimistic. On the one hand, at the grassroots level, I see a lot of energy in American congregations across the theological spectrum, a lot of vitality there. A lot of that activity is focused on caring for people\u2019s needs, and that\u2019s great. Then at the same time, I see a lot of advocacy happening that doesn\u2019t require a lot of grassroots support back in the congregations. It involves protesting racial injustice, and it involves working for affordable housing or a whole variety of things. That advocacy is interfaith, it\u2019s ecumenical, it\u2019s interracial. And in many, many cases it involves collaboration among religious groups and nonreligious groups, which I think adds to the strength of everything that\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A surprisingly optimistic view of the complicated relationship between faith and democracy in the American republic. In his 2018 book The Left Behind: Decline and Rage in Rural America, America\u2019s leading sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow exposed the seams of anger in small-town America that helped fuel Donald Trump\u2019s successful presidential bid. 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