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“God in Public: The Uses of Religion in Public Life in the US”
Victoria Women’s Association
March 24, 2010
Introduction
In the US, you can always see and hear a good bit about God in public. 1 My wife and I
were returning by car from a family reunion last spring when we stopped to eat. [Slide] This was
on the window of the restaurant, so I took a picture of it. [Slide] Here is the broader shot of the
restaurant . . . when my wife and I stop to eat, we pick only the best places! You can see the
window off to the left here. What should be made of images like these in public places, like fast
food restaurants?
[Slide] Here’s a t-shirt design that also states that the U.S. is “one nation under God.”
Note the clever use of Jesus Saves, which makes the USA the absolute center of the phrase. If
you want one of these t-shirts, you can order one at the web address listed there. [Slide] If that
particular t-shirt design does not appeal to you, there are several others expressing the “one
nation under God” theme. [Slide] Finally, the State of Indiana made new license plates available
in 2007 that combined “In God We Trust” with the American flag. These are now seen on cars
all over the state.
What does this kind of “God in public” language in the US really mean?
Not too long after I moved to Toronto, a new ad campaign began: “There’s probably no
God; Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” [Slide] When I saw this sign in the subway, I
looked at it, and said, “yep – I’ve definitely moved to a different country.” That is quite a
different mention of God in public than you find in the US. But as I reflected about it, I thought,
“You know, I think I prefer this mention of God to the US uses of God that link God so closely
to America’s policies and ways of life.” It is far less dangerous.
[Slide to Black] There is a tremendous irony at work in American history. The US is the
only major nation in the world today that constitutionally separates church from state. Yet, no
nation’s public rhetoric is more religious than the rhetoric one finds in America. The fact is that
the constitutional guarantee to separate church from state does not guarantee the separation of
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religion from public life - nor could it. In America, religion and public life are inextricably mixed
and extraordinarily confusing. When we stop to analyze it, we can note that all Americans are
drawn into a good number of religious rituals associated with public life.
One of the things we must understand, therefore, is, in the US, there has been a longstanding tendency to attach sacred meaning to US history, both to the activities contained within
it, and to the documents and monuments that emerge from it. When “God in public” is
connected to ritual, to words, to symbols, it is usually a form of what I describe as [Slide] “iconic
faith.” After talking some about the lines of this “iconic faith,” I will move onto another form of
“God in public,” one that is inherently more dangerous because it exhibits a form of certitude
and self-righteousness that refuses to listen to alternative views. I will describe this particular
form of “God in public” as “priestly faith.”
Iconic Faith
What do I mean by the term "iconic?" Another word for "icon" is "image." Most of you
will be familiar with icons on computer screens. But, historically, icons have most often been
pictures or some other tangible item or items that are venerated as having some sacred
significance. American public life possesses many tangible items that generate a notion of
reverence or awe that becomes attached to America's self-understanding as a nation. Many of
these are not necessarily Christian in their religiosity; they may not mention God at all. But they
do carry a strong sense of sacred meaning nonetheless. For example, there is something
religious about the [Slide] eternal flame at Kennedy's grave. Generally, it is a place for
reverence. This is also true for the [Slide] grandeur of the Washington monument, or the [Slide]
studied elegance of the Lincoln memorial. The Lincoln Memorial references itself as a
“Temple” – See behind Lincoln’s head there: “In this Temple, as in the Hearts of the People for
whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is Enshrined forever.” All of these
locations operate iconically in American culture in ways that evoke from those who visit them a
sense of reverence and awe.
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To some extent, the iconic structure of the American social world is necessary. It serves
mostly to bring disparate people together. All Americans participate in it. Some of you may
have visited the [Slide] National Archives to get a first-hand look at the Declaration of
Independence, or the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights. Every night at closing time, or at the
first sign of any threat, these documents, each enclosed in a protective and helium-filled glass
case, descend 20 feet into the bowels of the Archives, into a fireproof and bombproof vault made
of steel and reinforced concrete. The next morning, these documents rise up (a kind of religious
symbol itself) where they can be seen by lines of Americans. Americans can’t go to the National
Archives without feeling a sense of awe as they view the original founding documents of the
country. [Slide] The same is true for Americans when they visit the Vietnam War Memorial. A
wave of emotion overcomes them. I have visited the wall on several occasions, and it is always a
place for very hushed conversations. Rowdy or raucous behavior would be terribly out of place
in this sacred space. This is obviously less true at a baseball game [Slide]. But, when Americans
stand to sing the national anthem at baseball games, this also counts as a ritual associated with
iconic faith. All these experiences seem benign as they bring most Americans into iconic
participation and as they possess the ability to evoke something sacred about what it means to be
an American.
But, outside these tangible icons, iconic faith can also include an almost superstitious,
quasi-religious reverence for phrases (like “In God we trust” or “under God”) or a reverence for
objects (like Bibles in courtrooms) that appear to function religiously for masses of people quite
apart from any conscious awareness of the meanings or critical understandings that are usually
associated with them in a Christian context. The fact is the iconic context is different from the
Christian context and accomplishes something entirely different for those who enter it.
What does this Iconic Context accomplish for Americans? First, we should understand
that the iconic nature of US public life helps Americans to make sense of who they are when
they think of themselves as Americans. Robert Wuthnow, a sociologist of religion, explained
that "the very nature of our thinking and our social behavior takes place in terms of symbolic
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boundaries." These symbolic boundaries enable us to "make sense of our worlds." Therefore,
they are "fundamental to all of social life." 2 I do not think I do an injustice to Wuthnow's
description when I suggest that the lines of these symbolic boundaries are often drawn into our
consciousness as Americans by the public use of icons.
[Slide] Iconic faith fulfills at least three purposes. It serves as (1) A cohesive force
which has the potential for binding Americans into a common community; [Click] (2) An
adaptive force which has tended to temper, modify, and Americanize the various particular
religious groups in American society; (3) [Click] An exclusive force which tends to reject certain
forms of otherness that cannot be, or are not allowed to be, assimilated into a relatively
homogeneous Americanism. This iconic faith helps to tell you who is, and who is not, a good
American. A recent example of this is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. [Slide] When the news
clipped a few seconds from one of his thousands of sermons, masses of Americans concluded he
was not a good American because his speech appeared heretical to the dictates of iconic faith. In
fact, however, Wright’s sermon prophetically spoke against the iconic faith that so many
Christians in the US have absolutely confused with Christianity.
[Slide to black] The first thing to recognize about iconic faith is that it is not equivalent
to Christian faith, or even a derivative of it. There is a long history of religious rhetoric in
America that has very little to do with Christianity or Christian meanings and expressions, other
than the fact that words or symbols have been borrowed from Christian or Jewish sources. When
God-language is used by presidents, or Bibles are used in courtrooms, or God is trusted on coins,
the meanings associated with these things are not Christian. But these uses of religious language
form a symbolic context, an iconic context, that often affects how Christians understand the
relationship between Christian faith and public life in America. Americans don't think much
about this aspect of public life. They are so used to it that they take it for granted.
Most God language in American life, as in “God Bless America” at the end of all
presidential speeches, or “In God we Trust” printed on all money and coins, or “under God”
which was added to the pledge of allegiance by a secular Congress in 1954 – all these instances
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of God language are not meaningfully rooted in Christian faith. But they are good examples of
iconic faith. – [Slide] look at his example of pledging allegiance to the flag in a VBS). This is a
picture of a Sunday School class pledging allegiance before the salute was changed to “hand
over heart.” The pledge, particularly “Under God,” has recently been in the news again; the
Ninth Circuit in California ruled again on the matter on March 11. We can talk about that during
the question and answer if you like.
Americans possess a long history of using symbols drawn from Jewish and Christian
tradition for their public life. When early Americans were searching for a national symbol
appropriate for defining the new nation. [Slide] Benjamin Franklin suggested the image of
Moses parting the Red Sea and Thomas Jefferson suggested the image of the children of Israel
wandering in the wilderness. In 1856, Benson Lossing sketched the Great Seal proposed by
Franklin, showing the children of Israel crossing the red sea, with the motto of the American
Revolution around the outside.
The founders settled on other images, of course. [Slide] Notice the back of the dollar bill
pictured here. Of course, all American money, either coin or bill, carries the phrase "In God We
Trust,” the motto for the nation that replaced “E Pluribus Unum” following a joint resolution of
Congress in 1956. You see it there above the word “One”. But look particularly at the two
symbols pictured there that represent the front and back of the Great Seal of the United States:
[Slide] On the right side of the bill is an eagle with the olive branch (for peace) and thirteen
arrows (representing willingness to fight) with the words "E Pluribus Unum" -- "out of many,
one" – located in the ribbon to the left and right of the eagle’s head. This was the national motto
that served America until 1956. [Slide] On the other side is the image of the unfinished pyramid
(I’ve always thought this unfinished pyramid was a good image for a government project). This
pyramid is topped by the all-seeing eye of God. Above the pyramid is a Latin motto: "Annuit
Coeptis" meaning "God has favored our undertakings (or, has smiled on our beginnings)," a
roundabout way of saying “God Bless America.” On the bottom runs another Latin phrase,
Novus Ordo Seclorum, meaning "A New Order for the Ages." These two visual symbols are
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meant to capture the spiritual meaning of the nation as a nation chosen by God and favored by
God for the fulfillment of a particular sacred destiny.
Christian symbols are also co-opted by the public life for use in the iconic faith. As time
has passed in American history, politician and citizen alike have concluded that all American
rhetoric about God, and about America’s standing under God, an early affirmation of the
Founders rooted in their recognition that America stood under the judgment and authority of
God, now routinely implies an inherent morality, a "chosen-ness," a “special” standing. This
doctrinal understanding has often found expression in belief in a God especially identified with
American institutions. This rhetoric has nothing to do with the one Christians claim is connected
to Jesus Christ and concerned about the redemption of the human family and creation. Rather,
along the way, Americans began to emphasize a "God" who is especially interested in the
success of the American experiment, one who makes no particular demands upon it other than
that it continue to succeed and spread that success to the corners of the globe. As Sidney E. Mead
has put it [Slide], In America, "God, like Alice's Cheshire Cat, has sometimes threatened
gradually to disappear altogether or, at most, to remain only as a disembodied and sentimental
smile." 3
[Slide to Black]
Even though Bush often spoke of America as the hope of the world, he often also spoke
about God. David Domke and Kevin Coe have documented that President George W. Bush
mentioned God twenty-four times in his combined first-term Inaugural and State of the Union
Addresses. In his second Inaugural address and first State of the Union address of his second
term, both in 2005, he added another eleven mentions of God. Bush averaged 5.8 references to
God per major presidential address. Only Ronald Reagan, among presidents, even comes close
(at 5.3 references). But, perhaps even more interesting, Domke and Coe also noted a difference
in the way President Bush used God-talk.
Presidents since Roosevelt have commonly spoken as petititioners to God,
seeking blessing, favor, and guidance. [Bush] adopted a position approaching that
of a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world.
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Among modern presidents, only Reagan has spoken in a similar manner – and he
did so far less frequently than has Bush. 4
In other words, Bush knew exactly what God wants, and used his presidential rhetoric to
proclaim it.
[Slide] Like God, the use of the Bible in American culture is also disembodied and
sentimental. Americans have a rather superstitious, quasi-religious reverence for the Bible which
has little to do with any real knowledge of its contents. In American public life, the Bible is
revered as an icon, as an object, but not revered for its content. 5
Note these statistics that demonstrate this truth:
[Slide] 93% of all Americans own a Bible.
61% believe the creation story told in Genesis is to be understood as “literally true”
65% believe the Bible “answers all or most of the basic questions of life.”
[Slide] 34% of Americans believe the Bible should be taken literally, word for word, as
the actual word of God.
Another 48% believe it should be at least understood as the inspired word of God. This
means that, combined, a full 82% of Americans believe either in a literal or inspired word of
God.
But only 16% claim to read the Bible at least once daily.
51% admitted to reading it less than once per month or never.
How familiar are Americans with the content of the Bible?
[Slide] Only 49% knew the first book of the Bible was Genesis.
65% did not know the content of John 3:16.
35% knew who ruled Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.
And only 40% could name the trinity.
[Slide] Worse, only 34% knew who delivered the sermon on the mount.
These statistics indicate that the American public reveres the Bible much more than reads
it. 6
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You see, the Bible of the "Iconic Faith" is rarely read. It simply is. It is everywhere and
nowhere. "Everywhere" in its presence, but "nowhere" in its content. [Slide] Thanks to George
Washington, a man who never meaningfully referred to the Bible in any of his many writings, it
maintains a prominent place in most political inaugurations. Washington brought along his
[Slide] Masonic Bible to his first inauguration and, after the oath was administered, he reverently
kissed it. Today's politicians ignore the role of the Bible in inaugurations only at their own peril.
It operates as a sacred object to insure truthfulness. For similar reasons, the Bible finds a home
among most of America's voluntary organizations as well. Even though they are at opposite
ends of the ideological spectrum, both the [Slide] Ku Klux Klan and the [Slide] Red Cross share
the same basic ceremonial ritual to assure transition of leadership. 7 [Slide] In America,
everybody likes to use the Bible for their own purposes.
What do these allusions to God and iconic reverence of the Bible by politicians or
government officials in US public life really mean? [Slide to Black] Do they really mean that
America is truly a Christian nation, and that dedication to Christ and to Christianity naturally and
meaningfully pervades the public life? Of course, they do not. When politicians speak of God in
their addresses or use the words of the Bible in the public arena, they are not interested in
espousing Christian themes. Even though these symbols are often derived from the Christian
tradition, generally, in their meaning and in their use, they are not Christian. In most instances,
the use of these symbols does not even represent a nominal Christianity. Rather, talk about God
or the use of passages from the Bible serve as convenient proof-texts for expressing what one
already believes to be true. They are not references to a God who is related to Jesus Christ in
order to redeem a wayward humanity. Rather, they are used to refer to America, its place in the
world, and the national confidence that God blesses its place in the world. Both God-talk and the
Bible, in other words, are transformed into supporting materials for an existing political agenda.
So, a word in summary: A good number of Christians are confused by America’s use of
these religious allusions. This iconic confusion is represented, for Christians, in three particular
circumstances: (1) [Slide] where cultural icons are located and affirmed in the sacred spaces of
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Christian contexts (like flags in sanctuaries of Christian worship); and (2) [Slide] where
Christians assume the use of Christian images or icons in public life witnesses to America’s
commitment to Christian faith when, in fact, these icons are created and utilized to support the
development of American public life, not to support Christianity (like Obama’s use of Lincoln’s
Bible in his presidential inauguration ceremony); and (3) [Slide – where Christians want to claim
a prominence in public locations for icons specific to Christian commitments, beliefs, or
understandings (like stone monuments of the ten commandments placed on courthouse lawns),
as if America was actually a Christian country.
In all these cases, Christians confuse iconic faith with Christian faith. If this confusion
continues, Christians face the possibility of sliding into priestly faith, a much more dangerous
style of using “God in public.”
[Slide] Priestly Faith
I want to turn now to a brief description of how this priestly faith is different from iconic
faith, and how it is considerably more dangerous. The word "priest" means different things to
different people. In this instance, we are not using the term in a biblical sense, or in a churchly
sense. Rather, it has nothing to do with the ministry, or with the church. Instead, we are relying
on the way sociologists of religion have occasionally used the term “priest” to describe a
sociological category operating in religious ways in the culture.
Joachim Wach, a sociologist of religion, emphasizes the role of the priest in culture as the
“guardian of traditions and the keeper of the sacred knowledge . . . the custodian of the holy law,
which corresponds to the cosmic moral and ritual order upon which the world, the community
and the individual depend.” He is the “interpreter of the law” and therefore may function as
“judge, administrator, teacher and scholar” in order to “formulate standards and rules of conduct
[for the culture] and enforce their observance.” 8 Priests are always confident of the nature of
their revealed truth. As priests, they teach the faith's precepts and guide the newer members into
deeper knowledge. When questions arise, they are able to provide definitive answers. Since
there is only one true faith, they are not satisfied with ministering only to the converted. Thus
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priests in America are interested in rooting out heresy and keeping American public life, and its
foreign policy, pure and free from error.
Though often expressed as if the primary concern is God, the priestly interaction of God
and public is usually an attempt to “restore the nation” to the purity of its “origins,” or,
alternatively, to describe the mission of the nation as somehow directly representing God’s
purposes in history. In other words, the primary concern is the nation itself, and an attempt to
represent the nation, its history and its purposes, in a particular way.
For priestly faith, the nation is the church. This happens, for example, when Christians
attempt to legislate what they consider to be Christian behavior for the nation as a whole. But it
also happens when Christians understand important national values to be normative for the
church. Throughout American history, members of the church have often accepted national
values as if they were synonymous with God’s will, whether these values expressed slavery, the
segregation of the races, anti-communism, the need to protect the family from the evils resulting
from women joining the workforce in increasing numbers. In American history, all these
cultural values found very clear expression in the life of the church.
[Slide to Black] The tendency to connect God’s will with national initiatives, whether
dealing with domestic or foreign policy, is, essentially, an idolatrous one. Priestly faith connects
the national mission with the divine mission in the world. In doing so, it makes ultimate what is
only relative. In the priestly case, ultimate loyalty belongs to the nation, rightfully conceived.
Those who oppose that rightful conception of the nation and its mission are demonic and
represent all that is evil in the world. This is true because opposition to the nation is understood
to be opposition to God. Certainty pervades priestly faith. One always knows what is good and
what is evil. Those who espouse the priestly vision of the nation understand it as God’s vision
for America. And America stands for all that is good in the world. Priestly faith always
connects the nation and God so there is virtually no difference between them.
[Slide] A clear example of this has been found in the rhetoric used by President Bush in
the war on terrorism. Peter Singer, a philosopher and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, has
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analyzed President Bush’s speeches and found reference to “evil” in 319 of them, 30% of the
speeches he delivered between taking office and June 16, 2003. In most of those usages, evil is
used as a noun, not as an adjective. For Bush, evil is an active power, visible and clearly
identifiable. Evil, in Bush’s usage, is rarely what people do; evil is either a “thing, or a force,
something that has a real existence apart from the cruel, callous, brutal and selfish acts of which
human beings are capable.” 9 And people can be evil – in their very being. So you don’t define
their actions as evil; rather you define them as evil. In other words, his use of evil is theological,
indicating a state of being that stands over against God and all that is good. His belief that
America is called to eradicate evil (including evil persons), therefore, is equally theological, and
places America clearly on the side of the angels, in the role of the “church,” standing with God
and with all that is good over against this massive evil in the world.
[Slide] Another example is found in President George W. Bush’s speech
commemorating the first anniversary of 9/11, a speech he delivered at Ellis Island. He did some
interesting things with the Bible in this speech.
Tomorrow is September the 12th. A milestone is passed, and a mission goes on.
Be confident. Our country is strong. And our cause is even larger than our
country. Ours is the cause of human dignity; freedom guided by conscience and
guarded by peace. This ideal of America is the hope of all mankind. That hope
drew millions to this harbor. That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in
the darkness. And the darkness will not overcome it. May God bless America. 10
The last two sentences, prior to the benediction, are a direct quote from John 1:5, without
any quotation marks or note or reference to that fact. That passage in the Bible describes the
Word of God, in whom “was life, and the life was the light of man. (John 1:4).” Here Bush is
not quoting the Bible to espouse Christian themes. In fact, he uses no quotation marks at all.
These words have been filled with new, and very different, content. Bush has taken these words
from the Bible, words that refer solely to the Word, to Christ and the purposes of Christ in the
world, and co-opted them to refer to the ideal of America as the light of hope to all human
beings, to the entire world. In these few words, Bush replaces the Christian hope in Christ, with
the hope found in America’s commitment to freedom. These few sentences from President Bush
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demonstrate rather clearly how politicians will often use the Bible in public life, but how they, at
the same time, totally ignore both its context and its religious meaning.
[Slide to Black] Christians who represent Priestly Faith fill the symbols of public life
with their own particular Christian understandings and then assert these meanings to represent
the only true way of being both Christian and American. They require new tests of Christian and
American loyalty: One’s loyalty to both America and to Christianity is tested by how one votes
on an abortion amendment, or by how one stands on the question of preventive war in Iraq.
Randall Terry, who attempts to shut down abortion clinics, provided a clear example in 1993
when he said, “If a Christian voted for Clinton, he sinned against God. It's that simple.” 11 Or,
consider the priestly example of Pastor Chan Chandler, of the East Waynesville Baptist Church
in North Carolina, who kicked nine members out of the church in May 2005 because they voted
for John Kerry instead of George W. Bush. 12 [Slide] Last month, in the Texas school board,
fundamentalist Christians on the board rewrote history in the textbooks for the school system,
generating this editorial cartoon. The priest perverts not only Christian faith, but also the ideals
represented in America’s founding documents.
But there is also a non-Christian form of priestly faith, one that is different from the kind
of priestly faith expressed by the religious right. In many expressions, especially when they
come from politicians in American history, priestly faith is equivalent to nationalism, ultimate
loyalty to and confidence in the American nation. With ultimacy attached to America and its
cause, priests promote American culture, interests, and style of democracy as if they were
synonymous with everything that is good, just, and righteous for the human community as a
whole.
[Slide ] These attitudes have, in US history, been translated into an aggressive foreign
policy, or as Conrad Cherry has termed it, “a muscular imperialism that cloaks American selfinterest with platitudes about saving the world for democracy, a racist myth that justifies
American actions abroad because of ‘Anglo-Saxon superiority.” 13 When Americans understand
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America as acting on behalf of God in the world, then their slide into national self-righteousness
is quick and usually rather costly.
[Slide to Black]
1
I have covered this topic extensively in my book, God in Public: Four Ways American Christianity and Public Life
Relate (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006).
2
Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 10.
3
Sidney E. Mead, The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York: Harper & Row,
1976), p. 152. Conrad Cherry uses this illustration from Mead as well in his “Introduction,” in Cherry, ed., God’s
New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1998), see p. 17.
4
Sightings is an internet newsletter dealing with religion and public life, produced by the Marty Center of the
University of Chicago Divinity School. See David Domke and Kevin Coe, “Petitioner or Prophet?” Sightings (May
26, 2005). The index for Sightings is found at http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sightings/index.shtml
5
See Marty's essay, "Scripturality: The Bible as Icon in the Republic," in Religion & Republic: The American
Circumstance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 140-165.
6
George Gallup, Jr., and D. Michael Lindsay, Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs
(Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999), pp. 35, 49-50.
7
John Wilson insightfully raises this point in Public Religion in American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1979), p. 77.
8
Joachim Wach, Sociology of Religion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Edition, 1971), 365.
9
See Peter Singer, The President of Good and Evil (New York: Dutton, published by the Penguin Group [USA],
Inc., 2004); the quote and statistics are from p. 2. The word “evil” is used as a noun 914 times in Bush’s addresses
during this period, and as an adjective only 182 times.
10
“President’s Remarks to the Nation,” Ellis Island, September 11, 2002. A student, named Trent Williams, brought
this particular address to my attention in Fall 2005 after a lecture in class dealing with the unique meanings
presidents often give to Bible passages by the context within which they use them.
11
Quoted in “Terry Preaches Theocratic Rule: ‘No More Mr. Nice Christian’ Is the Pro-Life Activist’s Theme for
the '90S.” The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana (August 16, 1993), p. 1A.
12
This story was published in various national news sources. See, for example, “Democrats Voted Out of their
Church Because of Their Politics,” USA Today (May 7, 2005). The article is posted on the web at
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-05-07-church-politics_x.htm
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13
Cherry, God’s New Israel, p. 20.
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