Beliefs matter:
Jr, David R Carlin
OF SEVERAL HMDS David R. Carlin, Jr. BELIEFS MATTER UNDERSTANDING THE AMERICAN SCENE Every semester I teach a course in introductory sociology, and late in the semester we come to the chapter on...
...Here it was, only the spring of 1993, and already Clinton had alienated the white South as a whole...
...My point is not that the students should become religious...
...but Clinton, despite being a Southern Baptist himself, had so offended the leadership of his denomination after only a few months in the White House that they decided he was unworthy of the customary invitation...
...That's usually confined to the Saturday ghetto of the religion page, except on those special occasions when another priest is charged with sex molestation or when Tammy Bakker remarries...
...I can sympathize with political analysts who prefer a simplistic theory of society...
...These elites take many things seriously: money, art, politics, technology, sex, crime, drugs, etc...
...Hence the more respectable among the simpli-fiers adopt a quasi-Marxist theory, saying that everything depends on the economy ("It's the economy, stupid...
...But look...
...In view of his support for abortion and the gay rights agenda, this was not really surprising...
...After all, one of Clinton's great strengths as a candidate was that he's a Southerner...
...politics has no choice but to plunge into the study of American religion in all its bewildering diversity: Catholicism (that's relatively simple), Judaism (that's more complex), and Protestantism (that's positively mind-boggling), not to mention a myriad of other faiths that are neither Protestant, Catholic, nor Jewish.c, nor Jewish...
...BELIEFS MATTER UNDERSTANDING THE AMERICAN SCENE Every semester I teach a course in introductory sociology, and late in the semester we come to the chapter on religion...
...And political reporters-who are usually expected to know many things besides politics, on the theory that if the only thing you know is politics then you won't even know politics very well-are not expected to have anything but the most amateurish knowledge of religion...
...Anyone who really wants to understand U.S...
...My point is that whether you're religious or not, you need to understand religion if you want to understand America...
...Unfortunately for those who prefer that society be simple, it is not...
...and given a Republican sweep of the South, it is close to impossible for a Democrat to get elected...
...Two main reasons, I think...
...The SBC did not invite him for the same reason the retired officers of General Washington's army did not invite their old comrade-in-arms, Benedict Arnold, to their reunions...
...and who can blame people for trying to make their jobs easier...
...My analysis received a tentative confirmation in the elections of November 1994...
...I told my students that this minute notice on the religion page should have been front-page political news...
...Second, the elites who control the national press, the universities, and the entertainment industry tend to be far more secularized than the American population as a whole...
...But religion...
...But of course any political observer could have made the same analysis, provided he or she did not have a trained incapacity when it comes to religion in American life...
...Hence it is rarely mentioned in school, in newspapers, or even in private conversations between persons of different denominations...
...They know little about the role it plays in society today, and they know even less about its historic role...
...Of course the better newspapers have a religion reporter, but he or she is not allowed to cover political happenings...
...I had found a very small item on the weekly religion page of one of my local papers saying that the Southern Baptist Convention had decided not to extend an invitation to President Bill Clinton to address its annual meeting...
...I tell my students that religion has played such an important role in American history that it is impossible to understand the United States unless you understand American religion, above all the many-colored coat of American Protestantism...
...and not just any Southerner, but a Southern Baptist, a member of the principal white church in the states of the old Confederacy...
...Why this ignorance...
...First, our privatization of religion restrains us from talking about religion in public...
...But they find it nearly impossible to take religion seriously, and their inability to do so is reflected in the pictures they paint of American society-pictures that underestimate the social importance of religion...
...Certainly the economy is important, but so is religion...
...On election night, such an observer would not have been surprised to hear exit polls revealing that, while Clinton was fairly unpopular everywhere, his unpopularity went right off the graph in the South...
...In recent times Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush had been invited to speak to the annual meeting on a regular basis...
...after all, I'm a sociology teacher, not an evangelist...
...The last time a non-Southern Democrat was elected president was in 1960 (long before my students were born...
...The truly asinine simplifiers adopt an ad-world theory, and say that everything depends on how candidates and programs are packaged for sale to the public...
...But sorry, there is no escape...
...In other words, this little item on the religion page suggested, at least for those who had eyes to see, that Clinton's re-election prospects in 1996 were already in grave danger...
...I then add that most people, including those who dominate the command posts of American politics and culture, have a poor understanding of American religion...
...I myself am using a computer to write this article, not a quill pen...
...Forget it...
...Of course this is a doubly unfortunate truth for those who would like American society to be simple, since American religion-unlike, say, Polish religion-is terribly multifarious...
...Every day newspapers, radio, and TV give us plenty of information about government, politics, business, sports, entertainment, crime, and even sex...
...Thus any adequate understanding of society will have to include an understanding of religion...
...So it looks as if Democrats can win the White House only by nominating Southerners, because they're the only candidates who can pick up enough of the white vote in those states to prevent a Republican sweep or nearsweep of the South...
...In the spring of 1993 I was able to garnish this lecture with a perfect illustration of the general neglect by the press of American society's religious dimension...
...After all, it makes their job easier...
...I tell my students to notice how little attention the press gives to religion...
Vol. 122 • July 1995 • No. 13
