Christian Nation vs. Secular Country?

AS WE SWING into the 2016 presidential campaign, we Americans can be certain of at least one thing: We will be treated to another round of very public arguments about the role of religion in our republic. If this were a boxing match, and if past patterns persist, the title of the bout would be Christian Nation vs. Secular Country. The sides, more eager to mobilize their own than have a conversation with the other, will happily seek to bludgeon one another.

Thankfully, a number of writers have set out to complicate this picture in a way that adds both color and hope. Peter Manseau’s One Nation, Under Gods and Denise Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Quran are beautifully written accounts of our interfaith country. By interfaith, I mean both that there were people of different faith persuasions present from our earliest days, and that they constantly bumped into one another as they established their communities and sought to build up this country.

That interaction often went badly—the Salem witch trials, the anti-Catholic Know Nothing party, and present day anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are just some examples. As Manseau writes, “The story of how a global array of beliefs came to occupy the same ocean-locked piece of land is more often one of violence than of toleration.”

But there are inspiring threads of pluralism in the American tapestry as well. As Manseau puts it, “the repeated collision of conflicting systems of belief, followed frequently by ugly and violent conflict, has somehow arrived, again and again, not merely at peaceful coexistence but at striking moments of inter-influence.”

Both of these books display the full fabric.

While Manseau’s is more of a straightforward (if alternate) history in its recounting of interesting interfaith events, Spellberg’s is a deep dive into Thomas Jefferson’s philosophical imagination. Drawing on the writings of the famed English philosopher John Locke, Jefferson wanted to create for himself and his new nation a case that would test the limits of the religious liberty and pluralism his founding documents called for. He chose the archetype of “the Muslim.” While the archetype was long viewed in Europe as bloodthirsty and evil, Jefferson imagined him (and the figure in Jefferson’s imagination was most certainly male) as a citizen.

Spellberg puts it this way: “while some fought to exclude a group whose inclusion they feared would ultimately portend the undoing of the nation’s Protestant character, a pivotal minority, also Protestant, perceiving the ultimate benefit and justice of a religiously plural America, set about defending the rights of future Muslim citizens.”

There are many important topics in a presidential campaign. What to make of a nation that (some scholars say) is the most religiously diverse country in human history and the most religiously devout in the Western hemisphere at a time of global religious tension is certainly one of them. Such conversations ought to be informed by books like the ones I mention above. And after reading them, you’ll be looking for a conversation much richer than the Christian Nation vs. Secular Country battle to which we have become so accustomed.

Whoever wins the White House in the end, I hope the inaugural address in January 2017 includes a line like the one in President Obama’s January 2009 speech: “For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers ... we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”