The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (9 page)

Many religious political groups in America see the United States and Christianity as inseparable. They believe the wrath of a god will come down if we don’t adhere to their interpretation of religious texts – largely based on Old Testament ideas imposed upon current political movements. They see everything from hurricanes to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as god’s judgment on the United States. As an example, in the words of Dinesh D’Souza, former policy adviser for Ronald Reagan,

Muslim extremists are attacking America because not everyone in the U.S. follows a moral code given by an ‘external being’
this new moral code leads to acts such as adultery and gay marriage.
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Human Rights Watch,
Egypt: Allow Citizens to List Actual Religion on ID Cards
[article on-line] (12 November 2007, accessed 20 November 2008); available from
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/11/12/egypt17306.htm
; Internet.

During the presidential campaign in 2008, Mike Huckabee, Republican presidential candidate, called for amending the Constitution to conform to god’s law.

[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards.

Religionists like D’Souza and Huckabee seek to bind the United States to the Christian virus as surely as Islam is bound to Egypt. It is a goal that has eluded fundamentalist Christians since the founding fathers refused to mention any god in the U.S. Constitution.

The Western enlightenment was a new kind of uncoupling, in this case splitting religion totally from culture. Beginning with attacks by early humanists like Erasmus in the 15
^th
century and later by competing Protestants in the 16
^th
century, the Catholics lost their monopoly on European culture. This allowed thinkers, from Hobbes to Rousseau, Voltaire and others, the opportunity to open a crack between Christianity and western culture. This crack grew slowly and did not break open fully until the American Revolution and the subsequent French Revolution. All of western European history from the enlightenment to the end of WWII may be viewed as a colossal struggle to uncouple culture from the hold of embedded religions, be they protestant or Catholic.

The appearance of a non-infected political structure is relatively new to history. No state had ever successfully prevented religious viral infection until the U.S. constitutional system was established on the foundations
of the enlightenment. Virtually every major state since the beginning of history had a state religion that played a role in legitimizing the ruler or the ruling class.
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Speech at Northwestern University, November 8, 2007.

The founding fathers of the United States knew that religion always tried to infect the central nervous system of the state. Due to the efforts of Madison and others, the Constitution makes no mention of a god, and church-state separations are enshrined in the First Amendment. The separation of church and state was one of the first attempts to isolate the political system from religious infection. This, along with the many competing religions in post-colonial America, effectively prevented any one religion from dominating or binding to the entire culture.

In biology, the rabies virus works its way quietly through the peripheral nervous system, using nerve pathways that are hidden from the immune system. Rabies weaves its way to the brain where it takes over the central nervous system in service of its own propagation.

God viruses work in the same way. They search for a pathway to the power centers of the state. Thus, regardless of statements to the contrary, religions tend to usurp the political system whenever they are dominant. Having the powers of state is by far the most efficient method of propagation and defense against competing religions.

It is wise to be skeptical of any religion that says it is not interested in political power. Given the right circumstances, most religions cannot resist the temptation. Every religion seeks political power as a means to bind tightly to the culture. It is in the very DNA of any religion.

In light of these ideas, let us look at the specific case of the American civil religion to see how religions attempt to bind with our own society.

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It could be argued that Rome was relatively free of strong viral influence during the imperial period. The worship of the Emperor was a brilliant attempt to create a virus for political purposes, but was not particularly successful as a god virus.

The American civil religion has been around since the first days of the republic. Robert Bellah (1967) described it in his ground–breaking work,
Civil Religion in America:

What we have, from the earliest years of the republic, is a collection of beliefs, symbols and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity ... American civil religion has its own prophets and its own martyrs, its own sacred events and sacred places, its own solemn rituals and symbols. It is concerned that America be a society as perfectly in accord with the will of God as men can make it, and a light to all the nations.
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The civil religion is a deeply embedded myth that has existed as a meta-religion since the nation’s beginning. Not tied to any one doctrine, this nebulous belief system is loosely based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, with claims that a god has blessed this nation and is a guiding force in its destiny.

Manifest destiny was a central theme of the civil religion through the early 1800s and was used to justify the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) as well as the displacement of Native American tribes and expansion across the continent.

John O’Sullivan’s famous 1839 essay captured the concept for the whole nation at the time:

All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man – the immutable truth and beneficence of God. For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut out from the life-giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads
now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the field. Who, then, can doubt that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity?
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Robert Bellah,
Civil Religion in America,
Daedalus (1967), 96,1, pp. 1-21.

Lincoln used the civil religion expertly to guide the nation through the Civil War, setting the standard for its use among politicians. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King, Jr., used it as a vehicle for the Civil Rights Movement, Governor George Wallace used it as justification for segregation in the South. While it may seem ironic that both men could use the civil religion for such opposing purposes, that is the nebulous nature of this myth. Wallace believed “states rights” were god-given, just as King felt racial equality was. Both ideas have held sway in the civil religion at various times.

The civil religion is as viral as any religion. Recall how any religion disables the critical thinking areas of the brain in its followers with respect to their own religion. They can see the irrationality of others’ religious beliefs but are blind to their own. The civil religion has a similar ability to dull the critical thinking skills of entire groups so that criticism of the nation is tantamount to blasphemy. For example, those who criticized the Vietnam War were told, “America, love it or leave it” by some of the most religious people and leaders. More recently, many a minister preached a thinly veiled sermon in support of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Others called those who dared to speak out against the invasion unpatriotic. War and religion usually go hand in hand into battle. Here are the words of Bob Jones, the fundamentalist President of Bob Jones University, on Larry King Live, March 11, 2003,

And the war in Iraq will help to do a lot to address the source of a lot of this terrorism. And I don’t see how anybody who loves peace could really be against this war and those who did destroy peace.

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John O'Sullivan, “The Great Nation of Futurity,”
The United States Democratic Review,
6, 23, (1839): 426-430. Also see John O'Sullivan,
Manifest Destiny
[article on-line] (1839, accessed 20 November 2008); available from
http://www.civics-online.org/library/formatted/texts/mani-fest_destiny.html
; Internet.

The civil religion also imbues religious power to the president and expects certain religious acts from him (or her) in the name of the nation, like prayer breakfasts, regular references to god and conspicuous church attendance. As a result, the president is seen as the high priest of the civil religion by much of the nation. When disaster or national tragedy strikes, he is expected to call for prayer and attend services at high-profile churches like the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. The very existence of a church named “The National Cathedral” is a testament to the power of the civil religion. All recent presidents have attended services at the National Cathedral in times of national crisis or grief, even when they are members of some other church.

The civil religion is bound so strongly with American culture that many Americans cannot conceive of America without reference to this religion. George H. W. Bush illustrated this in an August 27, 1987 news conference: “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” Implicit in the statement is the idea that only those who believe in the god of the civil religion can be citizens. Those who have no god or those who worship something other than the Judeo-Christian god are not equal citizens.
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Another example of the expression of the civil religion happened in the U.S. Senate in 2007. It is the custom and privilege of each Senator to invite religious leaders from their home state to serve as guest chaplains and lead the Senate in prayer and meditation. On July 12, 2007, Rajan Zed of the Indian Association of Northern Nevada (Hindu), was invited by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid to lead the U.S. Senate in prayer. This did not go unnoticed; Christian fundamentalists were in the gallery ready to disrupt the prayer. Zed was interrupted twice, before the Senate gallery was finally cleared. As an expression of the civil religion, all chaplains have been Christian or Jewish since the tradition began in the 1790s, and none of them have ever been interrupted. The fact that the Hindu chaplain was invited was a milestone and a challenge to the civil virus and not surprisingly caused a reaction. In the following days, there was an outcry among many
fundamentalists about the protesters being kicked out of the gallery.
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To date, the American civil religion does not have room for full Hindu citizenship and less room for the Atheist. When will the Senate invite a Wiccan, Pagan or Atheist to lead the Senate in prayer or meditation?

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Being from Texas, President Bush may have been influenced by the Texas Constitution, which states in Article I, Section 4; Religious Tests:
No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.
The author of this book could not hold public office in Texas. A Buddhist or polytheist might not meet the criteria either.

One could argue that the civil religion was a benign force before WWII. With the rise of the competing Marxist virus in Russia, American religion was transformed into a weapon of the cold war. The presence of a challenging virus often evokes fundamentalist movements. American civil religion rose up to confront the “godless communism” of the Soviet Union. Each virus fed off of the other – Christianity vs. Marxism. It is no coincidence that the Pledge of Allegiance was changed in 1954 to include “under God” and the motto on U.S. paper money came to incorporate “in God we trust” in 1957.