If in the past two decades of (postmodern) scholarship, historians of American religion have focused on "the unseen subjects of U.S. religious plurality" - in Stout's words - such as ethnicity, gender, and class, they have also lost sight of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant consensus that (if shifting from generation to generation, war to war) dominated the shaping of America's civil religion. I personally think American religious history is broad or catholic enough to simultaneously encourage the study of religious plurality of the various minorities that together constitute the majority and the dominant, white Protestant consensus or civil religion. I think that historian Catherine Albanese has accomplished this. In synthesizing the multitudinous religious minorities of the United States' religious landscape (or faithscape, for those who prefer Stephen Colbert) in America: Religions and Religion, Albanese does not lose track of the importance of civil religion in wartime in the form of "millennial fervor." Stout does fault Albanese's work for addressing correlation but not causation between war and civil religion in the United States. I concur with Professor Stout's assessment that "the peculiarities of race, class, gender, and ethnicity no longer constitute the story of a fragmented American religious identity" once war and civil religion are integrated into "a broader examination of American religion in a transnational context."
The symbiotic relationship between religion and war is hardly an exceptionally American phenomenon. A week or two ago, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair noted that the year 2014 has begun with "a ghastly roll call of terror attacks in the obvious places" - in other words, the Islamic World - but also in Nigeria, Russia, Burma, Thailand, and the Philippines. Mr. Blair identifies "one thing self-evidently in common" linking all of these acts of violence: "the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion." Having taught a class or two on religion at Yale, Mr. Blair has an eponymous foundation based in New Haven, and just announced that he is partnering with Harvard Divinity School to launch a website providing up-to-date analysis of religion and conflict on a global scale. I would argue that - however controversial it may be for a former politician who carried his nation into a preemptive war to claim an ability to objectively observe and analyze religion and violence - Tony Blair and Harry Stout provide scholars with a necessary call to arms to take seriously the persistence of civil religions - in the United States and abroad - that seek to unify public opinion upon the foundations of religion and nationalism in the 21st century. In other words, outside of the ivory tower, human beings still find valence for their fears, hopes, and dreams in shared religious - however orthodox or heterodox - belief connected to violence against perceived outsiders or invaders rather than a faith that increased education and living standards will unite the peoples of diverse cultures.
Parting Shot
Could not resist including a brilliant extended quote from an article by Stephen T. Asma about Chinese filial piety in a Chronicle of Higher Education review of "Tiger Mother" Amy Chua's new book:
Here’s how filial piety affects the Chinese psyche. When you are a child, you are not living for yourself, you are training for your future self. And when you’re an adult, you’re not living for yourself, either, because now you’re a parent and you’re living for your child and your elderly parent. And when you’re an elderly parent—just when you’d think you could relax and put your feet up—it’s back to work because now you’re living for your grandchild. Then you die.
