Culture Wars The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter (z-lib.org)

THE ANATOMY OF CULTURAL CONFLICT

61

a central part of the drama of social change. Though this is hardly the place to launch into an exhaustive reviewand criticism of Gramsci's theoretical musings on the subject, one other point is worth adding.6 Gramsci m · ined that the division that evolves among cultural elites generally takes place between those he called "traditional" and those e called "orgamc." The labels are not well chosen but the are ve suggestive. "Tr I or traditionall oriented cultural elites pt:@SeHt themselves a• heirs to the truths of the past. Their legitinmg derives from their a ea! to historical continuit . "Or anic" intellectuals, by contrast present themselves as the new and dynamic sources o pr~ gressive soda! reform. Increasingly, they become polarized to the point of an all-out contest over the nature and content of the public order.7 The end of the struggle, according to Gramsci's model, is either the restoration of the old hegemony or the establishment of a new hegemony in the realm of public culture.

As we will see, these ideas are immensely relevant to understanding the contemporary. American situation.

PUBLIC CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA

America has always been a nation given to public idealism. Unlike the nations of Europe, its identity was never rooted in millennia of tradition. America compensated for this lack of a long national history through the construction of great myths about its origins and even loftier visiqns of its calling in the future. Among the Puritan settlers America was seen as a "new Jerusalem," a "city set upon a hill," and its citizens, a "people set apart for a special purpose." The millennial hope for America continued to be voiced throughout the nineteenth century, not only by Protestants who believed that America would be the nation from which Christ's kingdom would be established, but by Catholics and Jews who also believed that America was a land of real spiritual promise.8 Even in secular political discourse, America has long been portrayed in the most moralistic of terms. Every war in its history has been framed as a moral crusade-to defeat the "harlot of Satan" (the French and Indian War), to eliminate monarchical rule (the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812), to eliminate slavery (the Civil War), to make the world safe for democracy (the First World War), and to resist totalitarian expansionism (the Second World War, the Korean War, and Vietnam) and the expansionist exploits of dictators (the Persian Gulf War).9 Politicians and

62 INTRODUCTION

other national leaders continue to speak of America as a "mode! of democracy and freedom to the nations of the world" and the leader in "a new world order." Whether about foreign affairs or domestic politics, then, public debate in America has never been framed merely in terms of a competition of different interests but as a struggle between good and evil. Even throug.h ~he clamorous confusion of political discourse today, the echoes of American exceptjo~alism can still be heard; the high-minded imagery about its national character and purpose remains plain to see. 10

One.of the re~sons for .the persil!i~nc~ of.this .public idealism is related to the "religious" quality of the arguments. Religious ideals and symbols continue to hold a very prominent place in this debate; traditional religious elites continue to play a prominent role in shaping the arguments voiced on both sides of the cultural divide. Yet if there is one aspect of the contemporary cultural ·conflict that is striking, it is that the distinction between what is "religious" by conventional or technical terms, and what is not, has become very blurred and, finally, rather beside the point. The reason is that public discourse over the various issues of the culture war is almost always framed in rhetoric that is absolute, comprehensive, and ultimate-and, in this case, it is "religious" even when it is not religious in a traditional way, or when those who promote a position are hostile to traditional forms of religious expression.

In light of all of this, one would be hard pressed to argue that we Americans have become any more or any less idealistic about our nation. Even so, the nature of the public argument oflate has been transformed. The volume of the debate is louder, the pitch more shrill, and, more important, the substance of the argument and the players who champion particular positions have also changed.

Why This Is Occurring Now

This raises the question of why 'a cultural conflict of such dimensi~ns is taking place today. As with most things in life, the answer is not simple and·straightforward. In fact, a full explanation would require a separate volume.~ way of a brief answer, let it be said that the last decades.2,f the twentieth centur constitute, as Gramsc1 would have ut it a time of s 1eta c ange and transition. Perhaps the central factor in stimulating tfiis change was the transfOrn.iation of our economy from an industryoriented to an information-oriented system after the Second World War.

We have •een ah~~;;n~l'~cl.~
~	l'b~VfV 'f!11r'·•-.fJ

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63

their livelihoods from the economics of knowledge, information, ideas, and the like. A central part of this transformation has been the expansion of higher education. The institutions of higher learning have grown prodigiously, as have the number of people who have access to the worldview-changing experiences of university life. These societal changes have been firmly established since the 1960s. These, in turn, have had their own consequences, one being the economic and political empowerment of women. All these changes in the structure ofour society contributed to the undermining of previous agreements about how Americans should order our lives together. The present culture war has evolved in this context as a struggle to establish new agreements over the character and content of American public culture. In Gramsci's terms, it is the leadership of the orthodox alliance who play the part of traditional intellectuals and the leadership of the progressivist alliance who play the part of the organic intellectuals, both struggling to establish their own interpretations of the American past and to articulate an agenda for the American future.

Motives and Resources

It should be clear from the outset that this struggle is not between those who sincerely advocate "truth" and those who either unwittingly or cynically pursue misrepresentations. Neither is it between those who selflessly champion the "best for America" and those who selfishly desire to exploit the blind faith and goodwill of its people to their ultimate ruin. Rather, this dispute is between groups who hold fundamentally different views of the world. On all sides the contenders are gen~rally sincere, thoughtful, and well meaning, but they operate with fundamentally opposing visions of the meaning of America: what it has been, what it is, and what it should be.

It should also be clear from the outset that although this struggle is joined at the cultural level, more is involved than just symbols found randomly throughout the population. To be specific, orthodox and progressive alliances tend to be located in the social world in relatively distinct ways. Consider the profiles of the six individuals we encountered in the prologue. All were middle-class Americans. That is true, as far as it goes. In general, however, the progressive alliances tend to draw popular support from among the highly educated, professionally committed, upper middle classes, while the orthodox alliances tend to draw from the lower middle and working classes. The association is anything but perfect,_

~)_

64 INTRODUCTION

yet it generally holds,_ even in the profiles. Having said this, it still would be a mistake to reduce the conflict to the artifacts of "warring material interests" between the lower middle and upper middle classes. Such a view is rooted in traditional Marxist categories that simply do not apply to this situation-or to anything else anymore! This is not a struggle over scarce economic resources, nor is the exploitation of the working classes even an issue. Again, Gramsci is closer to the truth in showing that the conflict is primarily among different kinds of intellectuals and knowledge workers-who may very well have identical educational credentials and class backgrounds. In this light, perhaps the most Marxist observation one could make is that this is a conflict over "the means of cultural production." The end, however, is to have the power to define the meaning of America.

In all of this, the language of confrontation, battle, even war, then, is not merely a literary device but an apt tool to describe the way in which the many issues contested in American public culture are being settled. It is no surprise that many of the contenders on all sides of the cultural divide use the very same language to understand their own involvement. The National Organization for Women, for example, has a "War Room" in its national headquarters in Washington, D.C., a windowless room with charts, maps, a conference table, and a dozen or so telephones.11 Both sides of the new cultural divide could.agree with the editor of Publisher's Weekly who declared that the controversy over the arts and publishing was a "war"-"a war that must be won."12 So, too, activists on both sides <;>f the cultural divide could agree with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who announced, "We are in a civil war of values and the prize to the victor is the next generation-our children and grandchildren."is Another activist observed that this "is a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas, it's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity, I think, and dedication as you would fight a shooting war."14

As with military campaigns, cultural warfare is always decided over the pragmatic problems of strategy, organization, and resources. Class position becomes a factor as does the favoritism of the state. Even more basic are such resources as money, the control over the media and other reality-defining mechanisms of society, and popular approval (or at least the perception of popular approval). The factions with the best strategies, most efficient organization, and access to resources will plainly have the advantage and, very possibly, the ultimate victory.

II

THE NEW LINES OF

CONFLICT

3

The Historical Roots of

the Culture War

All human experience has context. There are always preconditions and prior circumstances-there is always a history. And invariably, the larger context is a complex reality that defies simple explanation. Yet to even attempt to understand a facet of social life without at least partially reconstructing both the institutional and historical setting within which it is rooted would be folly. Our understanding would be flawed from· the outset.

The contemporary culture war is no exception. It would be frivolous to imagine that this conflict emerged spontaneously out of social and historical chance. Yet most discussions of the tensions in American society fail to consider the historical context. The truth of it is that the contemporary culture war evolved out of century-old religious ten- sions-through the expansion and the realignment of American religious pluralism. It is out of the changing contours and shifting balance of pluralism that the key actors in the contemporary culture war emerge.

THE EXPANSION OF PLURALISM

The Early Expansion

The story of American religious pluralism begins in the colonial period through the early decades of the republic. In this historical context there

68 THE NEW LINES OF CONFLICT

	was both unity and diversity. Though limited by the boundaries of Prot-
	estant faith and culture, the colonies themselves nevertheless exhibited
	a tremendous diversity: Congregationalists in Massachusetts, Connecti-
	cut, and New Hampshire; Anglicans in Virginia, Georgia, and the Car-
	olinas; Baptists in Rhode Island; Anglicans and Catholics in Maryland;
	Anglicans, Dutch Calvinists, and Presbyterians in New York and Mary-
	land; and Pennsylvania, as the New England consensus had it, was noth-
	ing less than "a swamp of sectarianism." The Second Great Awakening,
	coming on the heels of the republic's founding, only intensified the
	denominational diversity within the Protestant community. Religious sec-
	tarianism became widespread with the flourishing of the Campbellites,
	Stoneites, and Disciples, not to mention the Baptists and Methodists in
	the southern territories and the western frontier, the growth of the
	Shakers in New York and Massachusetts, and Unitarianism and Wes-
	leyan revivalism under Charles Finney in the Northeast.
	Yet the depth of dissension within the Protestant community should
	not be glossed over. Baptists distrusted Episcopalians, Congregationalists
	feared Presbyterians, Lutherans avoided Methodists and Quakers, "Old
	Lights" continued to resent "New Lights," and each denomination and
	faction was certain that its own version of the Reformation was the correct
	one while all the others were at least partially mistaken.
·	Still, a kind of "balance" was achieved in that sectarian division. The
	'l)fverwhelming majority of Americans were self-consciously rooted in

~variations of Reformed theology. Partly as a consequence of this, there.

/was widespread agreement on, among other things, the evils of both

:..Catholicism and infidelity, as well as an understanding of the spiritual mission of the nation-to be an exemplar of Christian (Reformational)

.virtue among the nations of the world in preparation for the coming Kingdom of God. Within this context there was also the balance of competing sectarian interests. No one denomination could press its own particular advantage without being directly challenged by the interests of other denominations. Thus, a measure of cultural consensus really emerged. All other differences aside, America was, in this cultural sense, a Christian, which again meant Protestant, nation.

The extent of the quasi establishment of a "common Protestantism" through the first half of the nineteenth century is rarely disputed and need not be described here. 1 In principle, however, it involved the accommodation of denominational differences and rivalries in the common effort to establish a Christian (Protestant) land. The practical outcome in many regions was not far from this ideal as Baptists, Pres-

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69

byterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, Christian Disciples, Lutherans, and others came together to forge a vision that would inform all of the major institutions of public life. The symbols and language of Protestant culture permeated republican political rhetoric and informed the conduct of electoral politics (in which anti-Catholic propaganda and parties provided rallying points). It influenced the formation and execution of law (seen clearly in the enforcement of blasphemy law and the like). It provided the vision for popular education: both the establishment of the common school and later the public school (where the moralistic schoolbook McGuffey's Reader became a staple of instruction and the reading of the King James version of the Scriptures a source of devotion) as well as the expansion of denominationally founded and governed colleges and universities. It offered the institutional mechanisms for the allocation and administration of public welfare. And finally, Protestant culture provided an agenda for social reform (as seen, for example, in the powerful initiatives of the temperance movement). It was, then, largely through the language and ideals of common Protestantism that the legitimating myths of institutions and society were formed and articulated.

But the "pan-Protestant" hegemony over American culture did not remain unchallenged. From the 1830s onward came a massive influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants whose net effect was to severely upset that "balance."

In the 1830s, for example, 600,000 Catholics arrived on American shores. Through the 1840s, 1,700,000 additional Catholics came; as many as 2,600,000 more immigrated during the 1850s. Nearly half (43 percent) of these were "Irish; roughly one-fourth (26 percent) were from Germany; one-sixth (17 percent) were from England, Wales, and Scotland; and the remainder were from Italy and Eastern Europe.2 By 1880 there were 6,259,000 Catholics in the United States. The growth in the Catholic presence through the heart of the nineteenth century was, then, remarkable. Indeed, at the time of the first census jn 1790, Catholics comprised only about 1 percent of the total population. Less than a century later (by the 1880s) they comprised up to 12 percent of the population. By the 1920s, 17 percent of the American population was Catholic, the single largest denomination in the country.

The massive immigration ofJews did not start until nearly fifty years after the first wave of Catholic immigrants arrived. In the late 1830s there were probably fewer than 15,000 Jews in a total American population of 15 million-barely one-tenth of 1 percent of the population.3 By the 1880s, when the first surge of German Jewish (Ashkenazim)

70 THE NEW LINES OF CONFLICT

immigrants arrived, the number of Jews had increased to roughly 300,000.4 By the mid-1920s, the number of Jews had jumped to 4 mil- lion-from only about one-half of a percent of the American population to a full 3 percent, all in the course of four decades.

These Catholic and Jewish immigrants were not immediately diffused through the larger population and territory. Because of their pride in national heritage and culture, their often observable non-Anglo- Saxon characteristics, and their concern to maintain the theological and religious distinctives of their faith, there was a strong rationale (not to mention outside pressures) for concentrating their numbers in homogeneous communities. This they did in the largest cities of the Northeast and Midwest: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Baltimore, Worcester. In New York, for example, the proportion of the foreign-born grew from 11 percent in 1825 to 35 percent in 1845 to more than half of the city's residents by 1855 (and more than half of these were Irish Catholics).5 The highly visible immigrant concentration in these centers of industry, commerce, and opinion formation created the impression that their impact in American life was even greater than their numbers alone would allow. It was no wonder, then, that many Protestants believed that "their" world was being threatened. In reality, it was. It is in this context that one can understand the legacy of antiCatholicism and anti-Semitism described in chapter 1.

Eventually, though, accommodations slowly evolved. Open, govern- ment-tolerated discrimination gradually ended. The crust of old prejudices slowly softened. In short, as pluralism expanded in this way, so did institutional and individual tolerance. By the middle of the century Will Herberg, in his famous book Protestant, Catholic, Jew, could observe that American culture had become a roughly comparable amalgamation of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish inftuences.6 No one would deny the Protestant tilt of this consensus. Even so, the Catholic and Jewish communities had become large and formidable participants in American cultural life whose claims in public discourse could no longer be denied. Even the idea of returning to a more or less exclusive Protestant control over American culture was becoming less and less plausible and desirable in Protestant communities.

A New Consensus

What was happening, in fact, was that a new pluralistic "balance" was being forged around a broader Judeo-Christian consensus. New

THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE CULTURE WAR

71

competing sectarian interests were an important factor in achievi!lg this balance, to be sure. Yet, above this was the continued, tacit acceptance or. the part of all of the major players of a public discourse Informed by, among other things, the suppositions of a biblical theism.

The role of biblical theism as a cultural cement in American public life requires some elaboration. Even in the middle of the nineteenth century when anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic sentiment was strongest, biblical theism provided the primary institutions and ideals through which an expanding and increasingly diverse immigrant population (Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish) adapted to a new life in America.7 As Rabbi Solomon Schechter declared at the dedication of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1903, "This country is, as everybody knows, a creation of the Bible, particularly of the Old Testament." 8

At one level, biblical theism provided the language in which differences could be talked about. Thus, for example, although much of the anti-Catholic hostility was born out of economic rivalry and ethnic distrust, it took expression primarily as religi,ous hostility-as a quarrel over religious doctrine, practice, and authority. So too the latent and overt hostility of Protestants toward Jews was often legitimated through the language of religious antipathy.

At a more profound level, however, biblical theism gave Protestants, Catholics, and Jews many of the common ideals of public life. Chief among these were the symbols of national identity. As Timothy Smith has argued, the migration and resettlement of bonded groups in the new land made the biblical imagery of the Exodus seem to be a metaphor for the American experience as a whole.9 The linking of the American purpose with the Kingdom of God was, in reality, a prominent theme not only for the English Puritans, Scottish Presbyterians, the Dutch Reformed, and the French Huguenots, and all of their descendants, but for immigrant Mennonites, German and Scandinavian Lutherans, German and Russian Jews, and Irish and East European Catholics as well.

Related to this were the ideals of progress. The millennial and messianic promises of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures provided the common symbols of hope for the future. This became particularly clear at the end of the nineteenth century as the traditional ethical idealism common to each of these faiths matured as denominational ideologies

and as programs of public welfar	aism and religious Zion-
ism, Catholic trium halism an	em nt

l espouse t e idea s of social progress, all believed in the continuous