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By James Dennis LoRusso, Religion Bulletin

Were you to travel one segment of the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois this morning, you might discover a curious billboard.  The display features a mugshot of Ted Kaczynski, the self-confessed “Unabomber,” coupled with the question, “I still believe in Global Warming.  Do You?”  The new billboard campaign lining various commuter routes is the latest initiative of the Chicago-based conservative think tank, the Heartland Foundation, to call into question prevailing scientific consensus around climate change.

Predictably, progressives have responded virulently, claiming that Heartland has sunk to a new low in its effort to undermine and politicize “mainstream” science.  In a scathing response, Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Beast characterizes the strategy as “a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses on guilt by the most extreme association.”  In other words, by linking belief in global warming to the likes of Kaczynski, Castro, and Charles Manson, all of whom presumably agree with the thesis of climate change, Heartland implies that anyone subscribing to such views must also be degenerate.

While Sullivan’s critique is warranted, it also reveals something significant about the shape of American political discourse more generally.  To borrow a notion from Roland Barthes, esteemed scholar of twentieth-century myth, American political discourse has becomedepoliticized.  Barthes writes: “Myth is depoliticized speech… Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact.” (Mythologies, 143) Barthes wishes for us to see how myths transform historically situated and contested knowledge into concepts beyond the pale of critique.

At first glance, the billboard appears to perform precisely the opposite function of myth; After all, isn’t it calling into question something which “mainstream” science simply acknowledges as “a statement of fact?” Well, yes… and no.  Barthes also reminds us that all is not as it appears in myth.  He writes, “myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing: it distorts; myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.”  Similarly, these billboards clearly intend to question global warming, and to associate this view with various serial killers, dictators, and cult leaders.  Nothing is hidden here.  The mythic component, however, operates at a higher order: It is the underlying assumption, as Barthes suggests, which inflects the meaning of the billboard for the passerby.

By including Kaczynski, the billboard presents global warming as pathological rather than political.  At least in American popular discourse, his actions represent those of a sick and demented mind, rather than a politically motivated individual (despite the vast amount of evidence that the “Unabomber” saw himself as utterly political).  By extension, then, anyone who subscribes to the idea of man-made climate change must also be experiencing some form of mental illness.

Curiously, in his critique of the billboard campaign, Andrew Sullivan merely inverts the main characters, reproducing the same myth.  After carefully pointing out how the Heartland Foundation has rendered “the left” as some monolithic bloc of mentally deranged psychopaths for believing in global warming, Sullivan concludes: “Large sections of the American right are now close to insane as well as depraved.  And there is no Buckley to reign them in.  Just countless Jonah Golbergs seeking to cash in.” Here, he reduces the conservative audience towards whom these billboards are aimed to a mob of mentally deranged subjects.

What, then, does this analysis of political squabbling accomplish? Well, employing Barthes’ lens exposes contemporary American politics as pathological, even bipolar.  Each side deploys the language of pathology in order to construct an “other” that is neither political nor rational (perhaps not even human), but ill or evil.  This strategy insulates one’s position from critique, as it simultaneously depoliticizes the issue (in this case global warming).  “Something must be wrong with those people,” we say.

Taking the attitude that “you can’t reason with a crazy person,” however, seems troubling to me, as I look out on a world filled with violence, suffering, and increasingly concentrated undemocratic power in the form of transnational corporations. Democracy, I was always taught, requires that we accord human dignity to others, even those with whom we disagree politically.  It demands that we take our adversaries as thinking individuals; it asks that we assume that they, despite our differences, believe that they have the best interests of society at hand, and finally, it challenges us to engage in reasoned debate with one another to establish the grounds for practical solutions. Contemporary political actors on all sides instead engage in competing forms of myth-making, designed to dehumanize the opposition and depoliticize the issues.

Of course, Barthes might claim that I am merely constructing a myth of my own, one that naturalizes all humans as reasonable and well-intentioned.  But as he states, “the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth: and this reconstituted myth will in fact be a mythology.”

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By James Dennis LoRusso, Emory University  

With all of the talk about the need for jobs and income inequality, the latest figure sitting in the front car of that roller coaster otherwise known as the Republican presidential race, Newt Gingrich, once again has invited the ire of Progressives with his remarks about the poor.  At a campaign stop in Des Moines, he made the following claim:

 Really poor children,” he claims, “in really poor neighborhoods, have no habits of working.  And have nobody around them who works.  So, they literally have no habit of showing up on Mondays.  They have no habit of staying all day.  They have no habit of ‘I do this, and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.

Besides citing the implicit racism here that paints poor inner-city youth as lazy or being driven to criminal lifestyles, Newt’s critics have charged him predictably with ignoring sociological data painting a very different picture.  Even I can attest to the fact that in my previous career as a retail manager, the working poor, particularly single mothers, comprised a significant portion of my staff.  Some of these held down more than one part-time job to support their children, and they may work seven days per week, putting in nearly eighty hours of labor.  To me, these mothers spend more time on the job than many of my middle class colleagues.

Still, my casual browsing of blogs and internet comment boards suggests that a substantial number of Americans agree with him.  Why, I wondered, is this the case?  Undoubtedly, most people in this country understand hard work to be a virtue, but in Newt’s statement resides a subtle assumption: Being poor is a sign of moral failure on the part of the individual and the poor community.  The mass appeal of this belief, that poverty itself is a sign of moral deficiency, results from the particular way the so-called “Protestant work ethic” is situated in American culture.  The root of this ethic comes out of the strict Calvinist tendencies of colonial New England. 

The Dissenting Puritans that settled Massachusetts in the seventeenth century held a view that hard work signified virtue.  Earlier thinkers of the Reformation like Martin Luther and John Calvin turned Catholic notions of work as penance for sin on their head and painted every individual’s “vocation” or “calling” as a contribution to God’s creation.  Throughout the modern period, America, West Europe, and now the world has embraced the idea that work, “getting your hands dirty,” is good for you, me, and the world.

Simply pointing out how American culture appreciates hard work doesn’t really move us any closer to understanding Newt’s portrayal of the poor.  As I have already suggested, the abundant literature reveals that the poor work quite diligently when opportunity permits.  Despite this evidence, Gingrich still maintains that the poor lack this ethic.  He can say this, I suggest, because his statements tap into a deeply seeded belief in American society that work should be an end in itself, not merely a way of meeting wants and desires.   Although we do work so that we can live comfortably, we also build our character when we punch the clock.  Work, thus, is a fundamentally moral project. 

A further look at the way Calvinism frames the work ethic within a larger system of belief reveals why American’s historically explain work as a moral practice.  First of all, in the strict Calvinist universe of the New England Puritans, moral authority rests privately within each individual.  When Luther and his successors urged Christians to take up the Bible and read it for themselves, they essentially removed the site of religious authority from the priesthood and placed it directly in the hands of the layperson.  Now, in the hands of each individual lay a responsibility to acquire and embody Biblical teachings.  Consequently, a prevailing Protestant notion persists that if you fail in some way, there’s no one to blame but yourself. 

Second, Calvinism teaches that “grace” comes freely from God, who decides every person’s fate at the dawn of creation.  Moreover, no series of actions will influence this fate; all a believer can do is look for evidence that he or she is among the elect.  Believers in colonial New England assessed their own spiritual state and that of their peers in a variety of ways.  For instance, full church membership was open only to those who could publically testify to a proper conversion.  Similarly, virtuous living, including hard work, could indicate a person’s place among the elect.  Of course, even upright living was no guarantee of salvation.  But, as colonial theologian, Jonathan Edwards, clamed in his piece, Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, worldly prosperity, when not ostentatious, surely implied the grace of God at work.  With this, the Puritan moral system ties the virtue of work to outward signs of grace in the form of worldly success. 

By erecting a culture that looked kindly upon hard work and the accumulation of wealth, these early American Protestants simultaneously prepared future generations to understand idleness, immodesty, and poverty as signs of low moral character.  Gingrich’s remarks resonate with the conservative base because they invoke this moral legacy.  Through the lens of these basic American values, poor children reflect a lack of moral strength.  Precisely because they live in poverty, this ethical deficit suggests an unwillingness to embrace hard work.  In short, the culture of poverty stems from indolence, itself evidence of individual moral failure. 

Moreover, even when Newt’s critics criticize him for ignoring evidence to the contrary, his supporters will continue to stand by his perspective.  Americans have inherited a belief that work must be done with the correct intentions, as an end, as a good in and of itself. Gingrich implies here that the poor only work as a means to an end, as a way of assuaging an insatiable appetite of desires.  Their penchant to resort to criminal activity illustrates what Gingrich’s poor truly care about.  They desire opulence and will stop at nothing to attain it.  According to this logic, hard work for its own sake remains an unknown ideal among the poor, because they are caught in a vicious cycle of immorality for which they can only blame themselves.   Such views cannot be overturned unless their specific histories are exposed.  Only when we acknowledge distinctively religious roots of the American work ethic do we get a better picture of why some conservative political views resonate so powerfully with the base.

*******************

James Dennis LoRusso is currently a PhD student of American Religious Cultures at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.  His work focuses broadly on the Religious Origins of American Capitalism, specifically on Spirituality in the Workplace and the intersection of advertising theory and the study of myth.

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James Dennis LoRusso, Emory University

Work is love made visible.  And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. –Khalil Gibran

Self-proclaimed “corporate mystic,” Lynne Sedgemore, read the above passage by Khalil Gibran during her keynote address at the International Faith and Spirit at Work Conference recently held at the University of Arkansas.  The conference, sponsored by the Tyson Center of Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace, itself a part of the University’s Sam Walton College of Business, gathered together an eclectic mixture of business leaders, academics, religious authorities, and spiritual teachers in hopes of generating momentum for an idea that has been gaining traction over the last few decades: that there is a place, indeed a vital need, in today’s global economy, for spirituality in one’s work. 

From corporate chaplaincy initiatives to “quiet rooms” in the office for reflection, prayer, or meditation, a smattering of businesses have begun to make room for employees to exercise their religious and spiritual commitments on the job.  The results, these advocates claim, produce greater satisfaction, a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in one’s life, and, not surprisingly, a more efficient and productive workforce, thereby improving the bottom-line and ensuring future success. 

While workplace spirituality, as the movement is known among the faithful, does hold profitability and respect for the diversity of faiths as principle aims, it also embodies a broader vision that is particularly relevant to the current global economic crisis.  The organizer of the conference and long-time supporter of spirituality at work, Judith Neal, stated concisely this larger goal.  Workplace spirituality, she maintains, can potentially change our world by transforming human consciousness across the world.  According to Neal, since the most powerful institutions in today’s world are businesses, they are the carriers of vast social change, and therefore it is within the scope of spiritually driven businesses that some of our most challenging socio-economic problems might be overcome. 

In other words, it is business that is positioned to solve the world’s problems. 

This faith in the capacity of business, when guided by spiritual principles, to reform the world elucidates an uncanny confluence of liberal social agendas and neo-conservative ideologies.  On its surface, workplace spirituality appears as an eclectic mix of religiously liberal and New Age perspectives of human beings.  An inclusive movement, participants cling to a belief in the validity of multiple spiritual paths and the dignity of every person, regardless of their lifestyle.  Moreover, leading figures of the movement often voice a worldview reminiscent of the New Age.  Judith Neal, for example, claims in her book, Edgewalkers (2006),

…that a new kind of human being is emerging on the planet and that this has major implications for business, governments, religion, education, and all of our social institutions.  These Edgewalkers are people who walk between the worlds… In ancient cultures, each tribe or village has a shaman or medicine man.  This was the person who walked into the invisible world to get information, guidance, and healing for members of the tribe. 

The Edgewalker, according to Neal, represents the twenty-first century shaman, the individual equipped with abilities uniquely suited to lead humankind through the difficulties of contemporary life. 

Neal attributes the appearance of these Edgewalkers to the socio-economic context of globalization, high technology, and the increasing speed and unpredictability of life.  Edgewalkers hold the tools to navigate these tenuous conditions, and to teach the rest of us to follow in their footsteps.  Neal cites particular business leaders as the exemplars of Edgewalking, including figures like the founder of PeopleSoft, David Duffield, and Richard Barrett, founder of the World Bank’s Spiritual Unfoldment Society, who have dedicated their careers to creating models of socially responsible organizations and spiritually sensitive workplace cultures. 

What is needed, according to such views, is nothing less than a new understanding of work: work represents a sacred act, enlightened executives and managers become servant leaders and the shepherds to the spiritual needs of their flocks, and the workplaces serve as the primary space where profound individual transformation can occur.

Given this picture, the conference on spirituality in the workplace represents more than a goal to make room for religious practice at work.  It constitutes an entirely new religious movement in its own right, conveying a world led by the benevolence of the private sector, freed from government restraints and allowed to compete openly for resources and customers.  In this world, according to this logic, those organizations best suited to meet the spiritual needs of their stakeholders will naturally obtain an advantage over their competitors because workers will be drawn to work for these firms and as customers choose their goods and services over less conscientious brands. 

It is these underlying assumptions of the movement that reveal its intimate relationship with what thinkers like Ayn Rand refer to as “radical capitalism.”  Rand and the advocates of spirituality in the workplace agree on a picture of humanity in which certain individuals, be they Rand’s people of superior intelligence or corporate mystics like Lynne Sedgemore endowed with the intuitive charisma of an Edgewalker, should be allowed to rise to positions of leadership.  This state of affairs, of course, is only feasible when the market is unfettered and society understands the role of business as dominant in human affairs. 

Even though most of the participants at the conference would take issue with Rand’s devout atheism, they nonetheless possess a worldview curiously committed to laissez-faire principles.  In fact, the marriage of a libertarian portrait of the world with notions of transcendence where workers find ultimate meaning and purpose for their lives through business activity, I would argue, actually strengthens loyalty to a radical capitalism.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, most explicitly illustrates this confluence of spirituality and free markets with his involvement with “Conscious Capitalism,” an organization closely associated with the workplace spirituality movement.  “Accelerating the Integration of Consciousness and Capitalism,” its members stake their claim as “enthusiastic advocates for free markets, entrepreneurship, and competition” but with a twist: by “liberating each person’s entrepreneurial spirit and helping that entrepreneurial spirit creatively flow toward the collective good of all humankind.” 

As he admits in his book, Be the Solution (2009) , Mackey enjoins a philosophy of “personal empowerment,” built through years of engagement with spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation, and A Course in Miracles, to his professional decision-making.  When he spoke out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYcFCyZC8Sc

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2009, Mackey’s resolve stemmed from a belief that business has a higher purpose for which government intervention can only serve as an impediment. 

This broader relationship between neo-conservatism and workplace spirituality seemed lost on the participants at the International Conference for Faith and Spirit at Work.  What was missing was vigorous critique of the movement’s implications: that if work is the source both for material and immaterial well-being, and this source is anchored to particular organizational goals, little room is left for any fundamental critique of the supremacy of the market.  Instead, the conference proceeded under one assumption: that the integration of spirituality to the workplace was a good and even vital goal for the future of business and human life in the twenty-first century.  Such worldviews potentially mute democratic forms of action, replacing it with a benign faith in big business as the saving grace for us all.

*********************

James Dennis LoRusso is current PhD student of American Religious Cultures at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.  His work focuses broadly on the Religious Origins of American Capitalism, specifically on Spirituality in the Workplace and the intersection of advertising theory and the study of myth. 

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By James Dennis LoRusso 

Allow me to begin this article with a caveat: some will likely find what follows controversial, but I must caution the reader to understand this piece not as a refined argument but rather as a meditation on an important subject that, I believe, we should consider when thinking through issues of cultural appropriation.  Since the fall of 2009, I have followed closely the aftermath of the deaths of three participants in a so-called sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona, AZ.  On October 9, 2009, James Arthur Ray, self-described spiritual leader known for his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and in the film about the new age book, The Secret, led a sizeable group through the traditional Native American ceremony as part of a broader “Spiritual Warrior” retreat, for which each patron paid close to $10,000.  During the procedure, three members of the group met their untimely demise as a result of the physical stresses of the sweat lodge.  

Immediately, of course, numerous voices from a number of interests spoke out against the various elements that made such a tragedy possible.  The town of Sedona formally distanced itself from Ray and sought to reassure the public that while such events cannot be allowed to occur, spiritual retreats would nonetheless remain a vital and thriving part of the local economy.  

The Native American communities equally expressed serious outrage of the way in which their own traditions had been misappropriated for profit.  In fact, members of the Lakota nation filed a lawsuit against several parties, including the United States, the state of Arizona, and Ray himself. 

According to one spokesperson for the suit, Longblackcat, “We Lakota people continue to fight for our way of life.  The Sweatlodge—we call it Oinikaga or Inipi—is a purification ceremony—to make life.  Our sacred way of life was desecrated by a non-native man.  This is our property, and there are laws in the United States and in the United Nations that state that these customs are ours and that they are to be protected.”(1)  

While Ray is held out as an example regarding the dangers of profiteering from spiritual and religious practices, I believe that these events and concerns raised, provide us with a unique opportunity to ask much more provocative and challenging questions about our basic understanding of religion and culture.                                                           

First, there is the city of Sedona, which admits a vested interest in branding itself as place where individuals might come to attend spiritual centers and workshops of all kinds.  “Sedona’s world-wide reputation as a spiritual mecca and global power spot,” reads the official tourism website for the city, “has drawn some of our planet’s most amazing healers, intuitives, artists, and spiritual guides.” (2) The area, the website continues, exhibits a “unique energy” that amplifies its “tangible regenerative and inspirational effects.”  

Given that in the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution prohibits the government from either endorsing a religion or restricting its free exercise, if Sedona officials formally promote themselves as a center for religious and spiritual practices, is this a violation of the strict separation of church and state?  Some might point out that because Sedona does not actively support one specific religion over others in favor of a generic spirituality, it is not a transgression of the Bill of Rights.  

Leonard Levy, in his book The Establishment Clause, argues that, in fact, the framers after lengthy debate intended the First Amendment to counter such a position. (3) The Establishment clause eliminates any kind of public support for religion.  If Levy is correct, are cities like Sedona, then, in violation of the Constitution?  Moreover, if so, should Sedona be held equally accountable for the tragedy for its complicity in endorsing such activities?  

I suspect some might find my position a bit on the extreme, considering that Sedona’s interest in spirituality is limited to the economic.  What about this assumption that religion and spirituality as a product can be supported by the state, because such aid is not done for any religious purpose?  After all, this is precisely the logic that the state of Kentucky has used to justify its subsidy of a biblically themed amusement park. (4) 

Although an appeal to the economy often serves as a trump card over other factors, it is not a free pass to advocate for religion.  By this reasoning, the state should be able to publically support any religion that proves profitable for any sector of the economy, public or private.  Thus, if declaring Christianity as the official religion of the United States could bring us out of a recession, should we, as rational citizens, be prepared to do so? 

Besides church-state questions, a more ominous dilemma lurks over the sweat lodge deaths and the ensuing Lakota legal action.  This second question, which I expect to generate at least some criticism, involves one question: Can a religious or cultural practice be owned?  I do respect and support the efforts of the Lakota to maintain the integrity of their traditions, but the nature of this lawsuit reveals some issues that remain unexplored thus far.  

Akin to the contemporary struggle to protect Yoga as a Hindu practice, this lawsuit seeks to redescribe religious elements as objects that belong to a particular people, as private property.  Indeed, in the quote above, Longblackcat explicitly refers to the sweat lodge tradition as the “property” of native peoples.  Although this claim appears benign—meant to protect indigenous cultures from Euro-American capitalist interests—it simultaneously rests on the assumption of religion as a legitimate form of private property.  In this way, the Lakota suit employs the conceptual language of the free market in order to resist its encroachment onto native terrain.  

While I do not have a thorough and coherent response to these questions, I do think that they are areas of contradiction that deserve further examination if we, as human beings concerned with respecting the variety of religious traditions and cultural practice that season the spectrum of human life, desire to avoid the kind of cultural imperialisms that could lead to the loss of more human life in the future. 

__________________________________________ 

1. Longblackcat, quoted in “Lakota Nation files lawsuit against parties in sweatlodge incident,” by Nina Rehfeld, Sedona.biz, 12 Nov 2009, at http://www.sedona.biz/lakota-tribe-files-lawsuit-sweat-lodge-incident-sedona111209a.php, accessed 20 Feb 2010.
2. http://www.visitsedona.com/article/151.
3. http://www.amazon.com/Establishment-Clause-Religion-First-Amendment/dp/080782156X
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/us/06ark.html

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By James Dennis LoRusso 

In a piece last week from ReligionNerd, I critiqued a fellow colleague for his claim that the Tea Party looks increasingly like a religious movement.  Essentially, I argue that the particular manner in which he makes this comparison hinders rather than advances popular understanding of either the Tea Party or religion.  As I wrote this piece, the thought occurred to me that while I easily might make and defend such accusations, actually providing an example of how the study of religion can help us make sense of the Tea Party isn’t quite so simple.  Still, a difficult project shouldn’t keep scholars from attempting a resolution, which is why this article will be the first of a series showing how religious studies clarifies our understanding of Tea Party and, more broadly, American political culture.  

I must begin with a few words about “theories” of religion and how I am approaching them here.  To do this, I defer to an influential scholar of American religion, Thomas Tweed, who maintains that theories are useful when we see them as interpretations rather than claims of absolute truth.  In his book Crossing and Dwelling, he notes that a theory provides,

 a positioned sighting of the shifting terrain, a situated account of the complex ways that women and men have negotiated meaning and power through religions. 

Durkheim

Further, Tweed asserts that all theories have shortcomings, or “blind spots,” but as long as they are “internally coherent” and “contextually useful,” they remain helpful for bringing a subject into focus.  In this series, therefore, I do not intend to show merely how the Tea Party fits one definition of religion rather than another.  Instead, I will bring a particular theory of religion to bear on the Tea Party and explore what it tells us about American political culture generally.  In this way, we get a more comprehensive view of where the Tea Party movement (TPM) is situated in relation to a larger terrain.  In this article, I examine how the theories of Emile Durkheim, one of the founding figures of both sociology and religious studies, shed light on the Tea Party movement in America. 

Durkheim proposes the following definition of religion in his classic work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: 

a religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things… that unite its adherents in a single moral community called a church.

Now, even though no “church” of the Tea Party exists, its participants arguably believe in the sacred nature of things, namely the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the Founding Fathers of the nation.  Further, these representations of the sacred seem to provide an anchor with which these adherents form a single moral community.  Thus, Durkheim’s definition illustrates how the Tea Party movement resembles other social groups that we more readily recognize as religious.  

In fact, the movement firmly espouses a belief that the sacrality of the Constitution has been transgressed; the government essentially “profaned” the Constitution when it moved to bailout failing financial giants and the fledgling housing market.  Prominent supporter of the TPM and bane of many progressives, Dick Armey, writes in his book, Give Me Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto, 

resolving the financial crisis supersedes any constitutional concerns, it was argued during the legislative debate over TARP.  But the constitutional constraints placed on government power are particularly relevant during times of crisis.  Once liberty is taken, it is seldom returned.

 Here, Armey imbues the 2008 financial crisis with an apocalyptic tone.  Congress moved outside the sacred boundaries of legislation established in the Constitution and upset the cosmic order, likely revoking for all time the liberties that it insured.  Without liberty, the moral community unravels; “America” ceases to exist, and government inaugurates a new era of control and paternalism. 

While some might cringe at the amplifying rhetoric Armey employs when he portrays the crisis, it important to remember that this is nothing new.  Truly, the use of religious overtones in political discourse has a long and vibrant history in American culture.  A good look at any presidential inaugural speech should suffice to demonstrate this point.  In Eisenhower’s first inaugural, he elevates US-Soviet tensions to a struggle between the Godly and the ungodly, stating that “the forces of good and evil are massed and opposed as rarely before in history.”  Even though progressives might see this simply as another example of American conservatism inappropriately co-opting biblical language for political ends, the political left has not been immune from this tradition either.  For instance, FDR, the darling of contemporary liberals, states how “the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization,” invoking Christian New Testament imagery to explain the financial crisis of another era.  Thus, in couching its ideas within religious dimensions, the Tea Party movement participates in an American political tradition.  

Merely discerning this tradition through history, however, is not enough for Durkheim.  For him, religion and society always remain entangled; one cannot exist without the presence of the other.  More specifically, religion represents a universal symptom for all societies in all times and places.  Collective representations, such as “the Bill of Rights” or “the Liberty Bell,” serve as more than historical documents or artifacts; they are surrogates, or what Durkheim calls “totems,” for American society as a whole.  When we exalt these materials, when we worship them as anchors of ultimate truth, Durkheim proposes that we actually constitute a sense of ourselves, and, therefore, make the social order “real.”  “The idea of society,” he writes, “is the soul of religion.”  In this way, any exhibition of nationalism, national pride, values, or even national history, constitutes, for Durkheim, an example of religion. 

All in all, I am not claiming that Durkheim is entirely correct, as many articulate and worthy critiques from astute scholars can attest.  Still, his ideas draw our attention to an inherent religious element within most, if not all, American political discourse.  The Tea Party movement proves no exception here.  Rather, Durkheim challenges us to ask: Is religion an essential component of politics and popular movements?  Perhaps the religious dimensions of the TPM are precisely the elements that render it potent and attractive to its adherents.  From this perspective, acting religiously becomes an asset, not an obstacle.

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By James Dennis LoRusso 

In the last 18 months, the political landscape in the United States has undergone seismic shifts.  The ever-widening ideological chasm between progressive and conservative renders constructive dialogue problematic at best, and no phenomenon better symbolizes this dilemma for both sides of the political spectrum than the Tea Party.  On the right, the Tea Party increasingly captures the essence of frustration that characterizes life in America of the twenty-first century, while the left views the movement as a nativist agenda threatening the very principles upon which the United States claims to rest.  Little hope remains for an end in sight as both sides cling firmly to claims of the moral high ground.  From outbursts by Congressmen during Presidential Addresses to the daily mockery of ignorant and misled “teabaggers,” the political dialogue in the United States resembles less a reasonable debate among concerned members of the community than a bar room brawl.  From Washington down to street corner conversation, people dig trenches from which they can defend their positions, rather than sitting down at the bargaining table to think seriously about the problems expressed on each side.  

Even scholars of religion, it seems, have now become complicit in this inability to bridge the gap.  Good public scholarship makes a crucial contribution to intensely debated issues in democratic societies, as it aims more to clarify the various positions rather than justify one or the other.  Discerning an opponent’s position facilitates mutual understanding, encouraging productive discourse, which is the essence of healthy democracy.  Still, public scholarship can occasionally deepen the rift, as Matthew Schmalz, Professor of Religion at Holy Cross, seems to have done with his latest opinion piece in the Washington Post last week, “Is the Tea Party Movement Religious?”  In this article, Schmalz characterizes the Tea Party as not merely supported by elements of the American Religious Right but as a kind of “religious” movement itself.  Instead of illustrating how we should understand this group and encouraging dialogue, however, the article provides an oversimplified interpretative lens through which to view the Tea Party, and thus, obscures understanding and diminishes opportunities for reconciliation between opponents.  Additionally, Schmalz’s article serves as a cautionary tale for scholars of religion who might scan the peaks and valleys of popular culture for indications of “religion” where none is explicitly attested.  

Schmalz begins his analysis of the Tea Party by defining religion as “beliefs and practices concerning superhuman entities,” which of course allows him to point out how Tea Partiers tend to treat the Constitution and Founding Fathers as superhuman.  Adequate definitions for religion, however, as Schmalz even admits, are hard to find, and this seems hand-crafted for the specific purpose to proving the religious nature of the Tea Party.  In fact, the definition renders any form of rhetoric, propaganda, or ideology as a form of religion.  While some scholars might certainly include ideologies such as Marxism or nationalism as religions, certainly this definition cannot account for everything identified with or as religion.  Some religious beliefs and practices fail to address anything superhuman, and I suspect that members of religious communities participate in traditions for reasons quite unrelated to official religious doctrine.  For instance, individuals might attend worship or celebrate a holy day merely to be in community with friends or family.  My point is that religion can be much more and much less than Schmalz contends.  Ideologies are not necessarily all religious, and religions cannot be reduced simply to human behaviors related to the supernatural.  

In addition to definitional problems, Schmalz’s claims depend on an overly simple, and rather obstructive view of how religions function that does not account for actual aspects of human history.  He uses terms such as “sect” or “cult” to describe the way religious movements might break apart from larger traditions and become antagonistic towards the surrounding culture, rendering the Tea Party as a kind of sect of the Republican Party.  The usefulness of terms such as “sect” and “cult,” and for that matter “religion”, depend entirely on the context in which they are deployed.  At what point is a new religion no longer a sect?  Are religions never antagonistic towards the larger society?  In probing the history of religion in America and the world, we might discover that these distinctions obscure rather than clarify our understanding of these groups. 

Indeed, we probably learn more about the people using these terms than the communities to which they refer.  If I name something a sect, I decrease its authority to stand on its own by associating it with another larger and “more legitimate” organized tradition.  In this way, Schmalz seems to say that the GOP is legitimate, while the Tea Party is just some spinoff that distorts orthodox political conservatism.  Further, as legendary religious studies scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith argues, “religion” has often been used throughout modern history to marginalize a group perceived as threatening, evident in the nineteenth century American debates about the “Catholic Religion” or even the discussion raging today about whether Mormonism constitutes a version of Christianity or a separate religion.  Likewise, in portraying the Tea Party as a religion, Schmalz invokes in his readers a sense that this movement is not just politics, but driven by deeper more profound differences from “us.”  Therefore, the Tea Party as religion becomes something irrational and full of individuals zealously committed to particular and uncompromising beliefs.  Under such conditions, how can healthy debate about our problems occur?  Clearly, one cannot reason with the Tea Party if it’s religion, motivated by irrational beliefs about society.  

Through all of this type of rhetoric, so prototypical of all the progressive polemics against the Tea Party, an important goal is dismissed: any attempt to take the grievances and positions of the Tea Party movement seriously.  In order to converse with the Tea Party, after all, the left must listen to them first.  Name-calling stifles debate, and when scholars participate in such practices, we merely make the already slow and difficult task of democracy nearly unattainable.  All in all, to name something as a “religion” is a political move, and scholars cannot enter into the circus of American politics lightly.  We must be cautious and always ask in both our scholarly and our public assertions, is it helpful to understand something as “religious” or as a “religion? And, how so?  If such a move merely serves to reify existing prejudices and biases, then we have done a disservice to our society, the academy, and ultimately, to ourselves as human beings in the pursuit of knowledge.

Link:  Dr. Mathew N. Schmalz  article can be accessed at:  http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/mathew_n_schmalz/2010/09/partyreligionsectcult.html