De Tocqueville on Religion in America

During this year I have been making my way through the wonderful Democracy in America By Alexis de Tocqueville.

He published the book in 2 volumes ( 1835, 1840 ), and I've just begun reading the 2nd Volume in an edition of the Book published by the Library of America.

The 1st Volume is the more scholarly of the 2 what with its discussion of history, politics, and more, being butressed with statistics, and quotes galore.

The 2nd volume is the the more philosophical of the 2 as the author delves into all sorts of issues, and subjects related to the society, culture, religion, politics, and more, of America, and is far from shy about expressing not only his philosophy, but his thoughts on the philosophies of the people of the United States.

That brings me to the subject of this post.

In the last 25 years religious belief has played a significant role in the shaping of American politics, and the so-called Culture Wars.

I'm not the most religious person around, despite the variety of beliefs practiced by various relatives I've lived around all my life, but that does not mean that I don't find the subject interesting , and learn much from reading books, articles, and Blogs of a religious nature.

In light of recent debates in the media, from the battle over religion on school, and college, campuses, Creationism vs. Evolution in our schools, to the ACLU's war against All Things Christmas, I found a chapter in Volume 2 of particular interest, and wish to share some excerpts.

It is my hope that these exerpts might spur discussion, and debate, among religious, and secular blogs, and their readers, about the current state of religion in America compared to 170 years ago.

From a chapter titled: How Religion uses Democratic Instincts in the United States:

1. There is virtually no human action, no matter how particualr we assume it to be, that does not originate in some very general human conception of God, of his relations with the human race, of the nature of the human soul, and of man's duties toward his fellow man. inevitably, these ideas are the common source from which everything else flows.

Men therefore have an immense interest in developing very definite ideas about God, the soul, and their general duties toward their creator, and their fellow man, for doubt about these fundamental points would would leave everything they do vulnerable to chance and in a ssense condemn them to disorder, and impotence.

2. Definite ideas about God and human nature are indispensible to people's everyday activities, yet their everyday activities prevent them from acquiring such ideas.

This, I think, is without parallel. Among the various branches of knowledge, some are not only useful to the multitude, but within their reach/ others are accessable to relatively few people, and are not cultivated by the majority, whose needs are limited to their untimate applications. When it comes to knowledge of god, and human nature, however, daily practice is indispensable to all, even thought the cultivation of such knowledge is innaccessable to most.

3. When a people's religion is destroyed, doubt takes hold of the highest regions of the intelect, and half paralyzes all the others. Individuals become accustomed to making do with confused and fluctuating notions about the matters of greatest interest to themselves, and  their fellow men. They defend their opinions  badly or give them up altogether, and because they despair of resolving on their own the greatest problems with which human destinu confronts them, they cravenly cease to think about such things at all.

Such a state inevitably enervates the soul; it weakens the springs of the will and prepares citizens for servitude.

Not only will citizens then allow their liberty to be taken from them; in many cases they surrender it voluntarily.

When no authority exists in matters of religion, any more than than in political matters, men soon become frightened in the face of unlimited independence. with everything in a perpetual state of agitation, they become anxious, and fatigued. with the world of the intellect in universal flux, they ant everything in the material realm, at least, to be firm, and stable, and, unable to resume their former beliefs, they subject themselves to a master.

For my part, I doubt that man can ever tolerate both complete religious independence, and totoal political liberty, and I am inclined to think that if he has no faith, he must serve, and if he is free, he must believe.

After reminding his readers of how, in the 1st volume of his work he had shown "how American Clergymen stay out of public affairs, he goes on to say that "This is most striking, but not the only, example of their restraint."

4. In America, religion is a world apart in which the clergyman reigns but which he is careful never to leave. Within its confines he guides men's minds. Beyond those limits, he leaves them to their own devices and abandons them to the independence and instability intrinsic to their nature and to the times. I know of no country in which christianity is less cloaked in forms, rituals, and symbols than in the United States, or in which it lays clearer, simpler, or more general ideas before the mind of man. although Christians in America are divided into a multitide of sects, they all see religion in the same light. This applies to Catholicism as well as to other faiths. Nowhere else are Catholic priests less interested in small, individual obsevances or extraordinary and particualr methods of seeking salvation, and nowhere else are they more devoted to the spirit of the law and less to the letter. Nowhere else is the doctrine of the Church that prohibits worhiping saints and limits worship to God more clearly taught or more strictly obeyed. nevertheless American Catholics are very docile and very sincere.

5. Another remark concerns the clergy of all faiths: American Clergymen do not seek to divert and focus all of man's attention on the life to come. They are quite willing to allow his heart to dwell in part on the concerns of the present. They seem to regsrd the goods of this world as important, though secondary. Although they do not take part in productive labor, they are interested in its progress and applaud it, and, even as they hold out the other world to the faithful as the great object of their hopes and fears, they do not forbid the honest pursuit of prosperity in this one. Rather than show how these things are distinct and contrary, they seek instead the point of contact and connection between them.

6. All American Clergymen are aware of the intellectual power of the majority, and respect it. They support conflict with it only when neccessary. Thye do not involve themselves in partisan disputes, subscribe readily to the general opinions of their country and time, and put up no resistance to the tide of feelings and ideas that carries everything before it. They strive to correct their contemporaries but do not part company with them. Public opinion is therefore never their enemy. Rather it supports and protects them, and their beliefs prevail partly through their own strength and partly through the strength that the majoroty lends them.

Thus religion, by respecting all democratic instincts not hostile to it and by enlisting some of them in its own behalf, successfully struggles against the spirit of individual independence, which is for it the most dangerous.

As I read this chapter I came across a paragraph that was startling in its relevance to the current American, and Western Society's, involvement in the Middle East:

Mohammed professed to derive from heaven, and placed in the Koran, not only religious doctrines but also political maxims, civil, and criminal laws, and scientific theories. By contrast the Gospels deal only in a general way with man's relation to god, and men's relations with one another. Beyond that, they teach nothing and oblige one to believe in nothing. Among countless other reasons, that alone is enough to show why the 1st of these 2 religions cannot rule for long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, whereas the 2nd is destined to reign in such times as in all others.

Powerful, thought provoking, writing of a sort rarely surpassed since, and reason enough for thoughtful people, interested in the future of our nation to consider reading this still relevant book and a fascinating, classic, Biographical "Companion" Volume from the 1930's, today.

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Arthur Goldhammer writes about translating Tocqueville's Democracy in America.