Religious Definition of the American South

Please forgive the lack of posting lately; I've been moving from College Station, TX, to Charlottesville, VA.  Having previously lived in Maryland and the Federal City, and having married a gal from Mississippi, I've thought a bit about what defines the American South.  The conventional definition is that "The South" consists of those states which declared their succession from the Union during the Civil War.  But such a definition pegs current cultural divisions to events which happened a century and a half ago.  I certainly believe history matters, but it still seems a curious way to cast the definition.

I was struck, however, by this map of religious observance in the US:

The concentration of Baptists in the South is striking, a point made even more striking by its obverse: almost nowhere outside the South do Baptists form a plurality.

Religious identity adds some interesting developments to the definition of the South.  Almost anyone will tell you that peninsular Florida is not culturally South; the religious map bears that out.  Likewise, although West Virginia was created as an anti-Confederate state, many West Virginians today seem to have forgotten that, a fact likewise paralleled on the religious map.  On the other hand, many Southerners (or those from the Deep South, ie Mississippi to South Carolina) contend that places like Texas and Missouri are not really Southern.  I'll not enter into that debate, but the map suggests they at least  belong in the Greater South, as does southern Illinois, which is certainly culturally distinct from Chicago and the north end of the state.

Map courtesy of American Ethnic Geography.

A Brief Note on the Social Utility of Religion

In most discussions about the role religion should play in public life in America, there seem to be two basic positions. Conservatives generally argue that religion is essential to a healthy society because it instills in citizens good morals, a love of order, and a spirit of obedience toward authority. This conservative argument based on morals can trace its lineage at least as far back as Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and the argument for religion as a guardian of order and obedience certainly extends as far back as Martin Luther. Most liberals, on the other hand, argue that religion is bad for society because it leads to social conflict in the form of clashes between rival orthodoxies. In making this argument, modern liberals are drawing, whether consciously or unconsciously, on the more radical writers of the Enlightenment, such as Thomas Paine and Voltaire.

Underlying both these arguments is the idea that religion removes doubt and encourages unity in action. The difference between the two lies in the extent of the unity: conservatives favor religion when it encompasses an entire society, while liberals fear religion in the form of a sect. Nevertheless, both positions seem to assume that religion is a tool for giving answers and providing unity. Conservatives support religion in society because it gives good answers to ethical problems for all of society, while liberals oppose religion in society because it gives bad answers and encourages factiousness, pitting unified groups against each other.

But, is that assumption right? Not according to Christopher Lasch, who had this to say in his essay on "the soul of man under secularism" in The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy:

What has to be questioned here is the assumption that religion ever provided a set of comprehensive and unambiguous answers to ethical questions, answers completely resistant to skepticism, or that it forestalled speculation about the meaning and purpose of life, or that religious people in the past were unacquainted with existential despair.

Interestingly, Lasch includes this essay on the soul of man under secularism in a section of his book entitled "the dark night of the soul." There is a reason why this expression comes not from Voltaire but from St. John of the Cross. Catholic mystics interpret the dark night of the soul as a purification of the soul, a training in faith, hope, and love--not as a final overcoming of all life's problems. If the dark night of the soul is one of the most profound and authentic experiences in religion, perhaps religion is not as socially useful as so many people think.

The Enthymemic Nature of Discourse

There are many current events in the Church and State that merit our consideration and discussion: the Pope's meeting with the President, Caritas in Veritate, and the Palin resignation come immediately to mind. It seems to me that as important as considering and discussing these events are, some treatment of how we consider and discuss them is of fundamental importance. I think that a helpful way to consider our interpretation of and discussion about current events is found in the Aristotelian concept of the enthymeme and Richard Weaver's application of it to discourse.

Many readers of this blog may have run across Aristotle's enthymeme in courses on logic or rhetoric; the enthymeme is usually described as a syllogism that lacks a middle term; compare:

Syllogism:

All men are mortal;
Socrates is a man;
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Enthymeme:

All men are mortal;
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
(The middle term is left unstated; presumably understood by the audience.)

This description does not do great justice to the enthymeme, though Aristotle himself is not terribly helpful ("kalo d' enthymema men rhetorikon sylloyismon"--"Accordingly I call an enthymeme a rhetorical syllogism"; Rhetoric, 1.2.8; 1356 b). What is important to note about the enthymeme in discourse is that it relies on the audience to make the connection between statements; the audience cooperates in the creation of meaning. As such, in the hands of a skillful rhetor, the enthymeme can be more persuasive than the syllogism, insofar as the minds of the audience are engaged in a cooperative process of reasoning.

How does the enthymeme apply to discourse? Though he doesn't use the term, Richard Weaver recognizes it as the underlying mode of discourse within a given culture, explained through the problems of academic speech:

"In the speech of a culture maintained by a traditional society, there will occur many elisions and ellipses of meaning. It is not necessary to state them, because anyone can supply the omissions; it is rather the awkwardness of pedantry to put them into words. But the man who is outside the tradition, or who is self-consciously halfway between the tradition and something else, goes about it in a different way: its beliefs, values, and institutions are 'objects' to him, and he refers to them with something of the objective completeness of the technical description. This is why professors 'sound so funny' when they talk of something that is an everyday subject to the ordinary man. This ordinary man wonders why the professor, instead of using lumbering phrases to designate the obvious, cannot assume more. It may also explain why professors as a class are suspected of dissidence. Their speech does not sound like the speech of a person who is perfectly solid with his tradition, which is oftentimes the case." (Richard Weaver. Visions of Order. Wilmington, DE: ISI Press, 1995 [1962]. Page 8, footnote 2)

In other words, the average person's language is enthymemic; the interlocutor's agreement regarding key omissions is taken for granted. Most significantly, we tend to assume and demand this kind of enthymemic agreement when making statements.

Recognizing this fact, we see why political and religions discussions in our culture (particularly in the online culture, as I've come to discover) are often doomed to discord: we do not, as 21st-century Americans, have a robust set of traditional cultural assumptions, and thus our enthymemes often assume agreement on premises that does not exist. Consider the following two (actual) examples:

Person on observing the American flag at half-staff earlier this year: "I guess it's mourning the death of American democracy."

Person commenting on the 2004 election in 2004: "This is the end of democracy in America."

If one were to fill in the elisions of these two statements, one would get something like this:

"President Obama won the election; liberal policies are not democratic; these policies are contrary to real democracy; American democracy is dead."

"President Bush won the election; conservative policies are not democratic; Bush will continue conservative policies; America is no longer a democracy."

Notice how in each case, the person speaking to me expected assent, expected that I shared their assumptions that need not be stated. The flaw in both statements, of course, is that policies that one dislikes are, de facto, policies contrary to democracy. In fact, in the previous two examples, both candidates won solid victories in democratically conducted electoral processes, making their victories examples of democracy in action.

An oddly heartening aspect of this example, however, is that the unstated premise common to both is that democracy is an unquestionably good thing, and that its end is somehow tragic. The two contradictory edifices of assumptions share the common foundation of faith in democracy. Thus we get something like a common cultural assumption shared by both people.

Thus there are two points I wish to make here, displayed in this example:

1. Recognizing that it is natural for us to talk this way, and that without a unified cultural tradition enthymemic discourse may be problematic, let's consider our audience in discussions of current events, and how they might fill in our elisions. Such a consideration may save much wasted time and energy, and get to more productive dialogue.

2. Even in a culture as fragmented as our own, there may be shared assumptions that can provide a foundation on which to build; getting down to these common foundational principles of our worldview may be the best way to begin learning from one another (and learn much about ourselves).

Religion as Contract

I was sitting yesterday morning in a review session for one of my law school exams. We were analyzing a hypothetical problem (based on a real-life case) in which a Catholic priest delivers a fire-and-brimstone sermon at the funeral of a young homosexual man who died in a tragic accident. The priest seems to have restated the Catholic Church’s position on the sinfulness of homosexual acts, albeit in rather stark and indelicate terms. The parents then sue the priest for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress.

I don’t want to discuss the legal issues, because I simply don’t know enough about the 1st Amendment (freedom of speech and free exercise of religion) at this point to give an adequate answer. I also don’t want to discuss the priest’s behavior. Rather, I want to discuss the reactions of some of my classmates for what it reveals about their attitude toward religion. Some of them, in order to find the priest liable, analyzed the case not from the perspective of tort law, but of contract law. Their basic argument was that the family had hired the Catholic Church to hold a funeral Mass for their son and that the priest, the Church’s agent, had breached the contract by delivering a sermon critical of their son’s conduct. My classmates, however, failed to make clear what the essential terms of such a contract are. The contract would look something like the following:

“We, the bereaved parents, pay the Church/priest valuable consideration of X in exchange for the service of saying nice things about our son in front of our friends and family at his funeral Mass. Furthermore, the views of the Church with regard to our son’s conduct are irrelevant and therefore not to be mentioned.”

I find such a contract, and the underlying view of religion, disturbing for two reasons. First, this contract reduces religion to a matter of mere personal choice. Joining the Church (or any other religion, for that matter) has no ontological effect on the individual which would make leaving problematic. Baptism, in this scheme, means just getting wet, and Confirmation is just getting some nasty oil rubbed on one’s forehead.

Second, according to this contract, the Church has absolutely no right to speak on important moral issues. If a member of the Church says he disagrees with certain teachings, no priest could present the Church’s teaching in a forceful manner for fear of a lawsuit. At the same time, the Church would be required to be at the beck and call of all her members. The Church bears all the obligations of the contract, and the individual member bears none.

I think the root problem of this “contractual” view of religion is that it doesn’t even rise to the level of a real contract. Any other contract this one-sided would be voided by a court for unconscionability. The individual demands complete autonomy and freedom, and the Church is told to recognize that. The Church cannot demand anything of the individual, but the individual can demand everything of the church.

Even a real contract, however, between man and Church/God would not be enough. The ancient Romans were said to regard religion as a matter of do ut des: I give so that you give. This at least is a contract; both sides are required to do something for the other party. Such an attitude, though, should strike any Catholic as somehow vulgar, at the very least. Who am I to demand anything from God, if He made me? Can I take Him to court if He doesn’t perform as I expect?

Such a contractual view of religion appears even in the Old Testament, in some misguided understandings of covenant, and still crops up today. It is for some reason extremely hard to avoid. I am referring to the so-called Deuteronomic theory of history, which views all evil as a direct punishment from God for failing to live up to the terms of the covenant. This theory was refuted first in the Book of Job, and later in the death of Jesus. Jesus taught that the sun rises for the just as well as the unjust man. Loving God in this life must be something more than a mere contractual duty, because God makes no guarantee that life will go as we wish, if we love Him.

Some may raise the objection that belief in the afterlife is merely a postponed performance. Yes, it is true that we believe that evil cannot conquer forever. However, the proper response is that we are to love God for His own sake, and not for our sake.

Anyway, I’ve gone on longer than I meant to. Just a few thoughts on contractual views of religion.