The Religious Crisis of American Liberalism
by: Dave Belden on January 27th, 2011 | 5 Comments »
Theo Hobson
Here’s an excellent analysis from across the Atlantic. British theologian Theo Hobson understands a great deal more about why Obama won the election and why there is no continuing populist movement on the left than anyone I have read in the pages of the Nation, Mother Jones or the Progressive, let alone the Atlantic, New Yorker etc. (not that I read them exhaustively at all). You’d most likely have to read Tikkun or possibly the Christian Century to get a piece as good as this. It’s a pleasure to see it from a different country’s perspective. Some key quotes:
During his campaign in 2008, Barack Obama seemed to be doing more than getting himself elected president. He seemed to be launching a revival of liberal idealism, shifting the United States’s political landscape in the process. This impression hardly lasted beyond his inauguration as president on 20 January, 2009. Never has a national mood of progressive optimism evaporated so fast.
That much we know. But what was unique about Obama’s campaign?
Barack Obama’s vision of hope had religious echoes. He boldly presented himself as the heir of the civil-rights movement, which, thanks to Martin Luther King and others, was an expression of liberal Christianity as well as progressive politics. King himself was inspired by the “social gospel” movement that influenced Roosevelt’s New Deal….
Obama knowingly drew on this tradition, with his impassioned talk of hope. This went much further than the “hope” rhetoric of other politicians; it often referred to the biblical concept of faith – implicitly, of course….
He understood that that the liberal vision is most powerful when in touch with its religious roots. Democrats had been routinely wary of pressing these buttons, which can misfire in various ways. Indeed the strategy almost misfired for Obama, thanks to his former pastor Jeremiah Wright.
What enabled him to play the “prophetic” card with such success was the racial element: he could offer himself as a sign of the overcoming of racial division, and therefore a living icon of the liberal Christian vision.
This prophetic rhetoric is admirably rooted in American history, and Obama was a master performer of it. So why did his support melt away?
The problem is that this prophetic tradition, for all its attractiveness, lacks clear roots in contemporary culture. For the cultural overlap of liberalism and religion has been weakening for decades. In a sense the appeal of prophetic hope-rhetoric is nostalgic: it reminds Americans of a previous era of idealism….
Here’s the central point:
This is the background to Obama’s roller-coaster reception. He implicitly promised to restore the broken relationship between America’s religion and its liberal idealism. This appealed to liberals on a deep level. But in reality the old synthesis cannot be restored just like that….
America must end its painful culture wars and reunite around its old-fashioned liberal faith. But such a major cultural shift cannot be effected by a presidential election. Obama was announcing the need for a movement that transcends normal politics. It is hardly surprising that no such cultural shift suddenly became apparent.
He ends with this question for the future:
Obama was hardly likely to repair America’s divided soul single-handed, but his campaigning rhetoric, and the angry reaction of the right, has helped to clarify the question. Can America reject the illiberal religion that has dominated for a generation, and rediscover, on new terms, the old alliance of faith and liberal idealism?
The only sign he sees that this might happen is the growing tendency towards a rediscovery of the social gospel and the adoption of an ecological one among some younger evangelicals. I agree that that’s a hopeful sign, though a slow growing one so far. But the country’s future can’t depend on liberal evangelicals alone. The secular liberal world has to hold out a hand to them to find the common ground. Tikkun has been laying the foundation for a revival of the old liberal faith in a new form that can appeal to members of nonChristian faiths and to agnostics and atheists. A lot of the intellectual groundwork has been done. I don’t know what would start to popularize that worldview in the secular world. If I did, our magazine would have hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
“… rediscover, on new terms”?
I think Obama got elected because the American economy crashed in the months before the election. I think the resistence we see from the Tea Party represents the vicious nativism that found its voice in selfish politics increasingly after Reagan took office. Above all, that fosters illusions that prevent us from learning from our mistakes by denying that we make mistakes.
Who talks about the savings and loan debacle, even while it modeled what happened more recently? Who talks about the emergence of organized crime during Alcohol Prohibition, even while the gangs in our cities flourish? Until Americans can admit our mistakes, we shall continue to repeat them.
Tikkun is a lonely voice. As I do not agree with Lerner’s constant critique of Obama, I shall not critique Lerner. We do not undermine the best leadership we have available, except when catastrophe looms. The dangers are real, but those who praise hope should practice it, too.
Obama at his best campaigns and delivers speeches from a playbook out of King; that much was obvious to most of the politically aware nationally from the time of his keynote speech at the Democratic Convention on 27 July 04.
But Obama does not govern from a King playbook; Obama governs from the same set of premises that have guided policy-making in the US for over 70 years: Niebuhrian realism.
Obama’s Niebuhrian realism rests on the following premises: that history resists both all our efforts to control outcomes and all utopian projects, that violence and war will persist in the world because humankind is inherently flawed and is not perfectible, that a dynamic tension must be maintained by policy-makers between an unflinching realism and our highest ideals, and that policy-makers must separate private ethical and spiritual positions from public decisions. All of Obama’s major policy decisions — and both the manner in which and the reason why many differ so dramatically from his statements and speeches — can be understood in this context.
It is possible no only to campaign but also to govern from the King playbook; it is certainly more difficult to so do than to govern from the template of Neibuhrian realism which has been the dominant political ideology in the US since the 40s. To govern from King requires more work, as King produced very little direct guidance for policy-makers — could it be that Obama either does not recognize a philosophy of governance in King or considers it to be unrealistically utopian? To govern from King requires a different mind-set, not only from the policy-makers but also from the electorate — could it be that Obama believes that the majority of the electorate lacks the prerequisite mind-set for governance in the King mold? Is Obama correct in any of these beliefs?
If King is unrealistically utopian, I doubt that we will know until governance which applies King’s principles is actually tried. At the time of the American Revolution and writing of the Constitution, there were many who considered our grand experiment to be unreasonably utopian.
How many American voters recognize the imperative of transforming our culture from the thing-oriented to the person-oriented — and are willing to take the necessary steps to make the change? How many actually see the way in which racism, poverty and militarism are entrenched and entwined in our culture — and are willing to take the necessary steps to eradicate them? How many see their primary loyalty as being to the planet and to humanity rather than to the nation-state and to their own ethnicity and religion — and are willing to make the necessary sacrifices? How many are willing to hold our policy-makers accountable to our highest ideals, above and beyond ‘political necessity’? How many American voters have the right mind-set for governance from the King playbook?
Dave, you said, “I don’t know what would start to popularize that worldview in the secular world.” It is not the secular world alone that is the problem. There are many deeply religious people, not only in the US but around the world, who are blind to the nexus of racism, poverty and militarism; whose first loyalty is to their nation-state, their religion, their ethnicity; who will blindly follow their political leaders, especially when these leaders cover themselves with the mantle of religion. I believe that it is these people, more than the secular folk, who are the road-block to governance from the King template.
Even so, I do wish that Obama would make the leap and attempt King-playbook governance. It would be refreshing to see an American president withdrawing our troops and sending in our engineers and builders, adhering strictly to the treaties and conventions to which we are signatories, strengthening Social Security and Medicare, working to make Medicare for
Everyone the basis for health care, returning strict people-first regulation to our financial markets, etc. The likelihood of this is slight. King produced very little which is directly aimed at political philosophy (and if Obama recognizes a philosophy of governance in King he may not see it as practical but rather as ideal and utopian), and Niebuhr is a favorite of Obama’s as well as an American tradition.
Perhaps the key to understanding President Obama lies in “Team of Rivals”, a Doris Kearns Goodwin book c. 2005. She tells the story of how President Lincoln was able to entice some of his rival political figures into forming his government – which blundered through to the completion of the Union war effort. If so, this Lincoln Administration model may account for many of the Obama policies, such as:
1) Retaining or elevating potential political rivals to various Obama Administration jobs.
2) An obsessive quest for “bipartisanship” in our fractious, bankrupt and floundering Imperial City on the Potomac.
Dr. Theo Hobson is correct that President Obama has the oratorical skills of Dr. King, albeit President Obama lacks dedication to Dr. King’s agenda. And we are still fighting cultural battles that we sought yet failed to resolve in the 1780s, 1860s and 1960s.
Also, the observations of Robin Vosburg are perceptive about the Niebuhrian realism of President Obama. And Niebuhrian realism is seductive, but it has some limits because:
“As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.” – Christopher Dawson
Anyway, in the end discretion and luck were what separated the fates of Frederick the Great and Napoleon. Thus far, President Obama gives no sign of being anymore aware of their history than Congresswoman Michele Bachman.
I am a little in awe of how much projection has gone into a presidential candidate who happened to be Black, was a Rockefeller Republican/blue dog democrat (Rockefeller was a moderate republican who championed social security increases) and a product of the Chicago Democratic Machine which has never been radical., The now President Obama is being what he advertised himself as, a friend of business, dedicated to a safety net of limited sorts, and caring about Civil Rights and human rights.
I think he has been consistent with his image. He did not go after big business with the Katrina debacle because he believes big business is the place where the economy happens. He does not push for taxation of the rich because he does not wish big business to get mad at him, more mad than they are already. He has no real idea of how capitalism operates and what is wrong with it, truly. Look at his advisors. They are precisely the people who created the crisis in the first place!
He has been given the labels liberal and progressive, neither of which are accurate.
Why not elect a real liberal, or even a radical???? Why not clearly campaign for actual radical policies which challenge power where it lives? Why not clearly introduce a single payer plan for healthcare in congress and keep introducing it until it passes.
Let the American people here the rhetoric of radical political and economic change. Europe has survived listening to it. We can too.
I had been an ardent supporter of Barack Obama since his July 2004 speech. Painful as it is for me, I know realize he is an opportunist and a phony. He gave a brilliant imitation of Martin Luther King. A master manipulator craftily exploiting the color of his skin and the power of certain loaded words like “hope”, “change”, “faith”, etc., THIS MAN CAMPAIGNED LIKE A SECOND MARTIN LUTHER KING BUT IS GOVERNING LIKE A THIRD GEORGE BUSH. No wonder millions of his most ardent supporters feel so wounded and betrayed. Obama may have singlehandedly made a whole generation of Americans completely cynical about politics. To counteract this despair, it is crucially important to SEE how we were taken in by this man and the carefully orchestrated “Obamamania” of 2008. We must have the guts to cry out that this Emperor has neither clothes nor integrity and the courage to learn the “TRUE audacity of TRUE hope”. This is the end of an illusion, but it need not be the end of the world. The land of the free can still triumph over the hordes of the phonies. YES, WE THE PEOPLE CAN.