In 1955 a Jewish sociologist named Will Herberg published a book
that caused a stir in religious circles. The book’s title was Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and its premise was that by
the time of the postwar religious boom then going strong in America, the
country had become religiously tripartite.
Most people probably took this as welcome affirmation from social
science of the toleration and mutual acceptance accompanying religious
pluralism that by then were well along in becoming established parts of
American life.
That, however, was a simplistic reading of Herberg. His further
point, one he by no means welcomed himself, was that Protestantism, Catholicism
and Judaism in the U.S. had been reduced to expressions of basically the same
“great overarching commitment” — a commitment to the American way of life. Now,
he added, all three were at risk of losing their distinctive religious
identities in the great American melting pot.
I thought of Herberg and his book when I heard of the passing of
Billy Graham, the famed American evangelist who died last month at the age of
99. Graham was a sincere believer and by all accounts an eminently decent man.
His personal commitment to Christ and Christianity was transparently evident
and highly edifying. Undoubtedly he did a great deal of good.
But along with all the pluses, Graham also was a de facto
embodiment of the broad-based, non-dogmatic, undifferentiated version of religion
that Herberg, who wrote as Graham’s star was on the rise, had in view in
warning of the growing assimilation of Protestants, Catholics and Jews into
American secular culture in a process that involved a thinning out of religious
identity.
Mainline Protestants had of course been first to travel that
particular road, even as evangelicals and fundamentalists were retreating into
largely self-imposed cultural isolation following the disaster of the Scopes “Monkey
Trial” in 1925. But by the mid-1950s the Catholics, Jews, and, increasingly,
popular evangelicals such as Graham were catching up with the mainline
Protestants while, as Herberg put it, “losing their capacity to resist
dissolution in the culture.”
Much has changed in the world of American religion since then.
The religious boom has long since faded. Other religious bodies, notably
including Muslims, have become a presence on the American religious scene. And
the number of religiously non-affiliated Americans has risen dramatically.
But one thing hasn’t changed. The constant is ongoing cultural
assimilation, and the accompanying loss of religious identity, that was and
today continues to be a central part of the American religious experience,
described by Herberg as “essentially the ‘Americanization’ of religion in
America, and therefore also its thorough-going secularization.”
To make his point, Herberg quoted a remark attributed to
President Dwight Eisenhower: “Our government makes no sense unless it is
founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” To
which Herberg added: “And why didn’t he care what it was? Because, in his view,
as in the view of all normal Americans, they ‘all say the same thing.’”
Much was said in praise of Graham after his death, and much that
was said was well deserved. But along with praising Graham the individual
Christian, one must also express reservations concerning the limitations of the
version of culturally assimilated religion he stood for.
Protestants, Catholics and Jews haven’t yet worked out a viable
response to the challenge of cultural assimilation in secular America. And
Billy Graham, for all his decency and personal commitment, was not much help in
doing that.
Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington and author of American Church: The
Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America.