BOOKS, FAITH, WORLD & MORE

From Jonathan Edwards to Karl Rove

A Review of Head and Heart

Head and Heart: American Christianities, by Gary Wills. The Penguin Press, 2007.

This is a useful book, even though I perceive that its focus is too narrow. The history of Christianity in America is covered from a centrist perspective, generally emphasizing English traditions. Churches with other ethnic origins are hard largely ignored. Mennonites have three references in the index but Church of the Brethren and even Lutherans are not mentioned. Disciples of Christ and Free Methodists appear only briefly. Assemblies of God and Pentecostals are not included.

However, Wills appears not to be concerned to cover denominational variety but rather to chronicle certain religious developments in America. He is interested in the civil rights movement, but conscientious objection to war does not appear on his screen. References to war generally report how the churches supported war.

Yet there is a lot to be learned from this book. In the beginning the author indicates his intention to consider religion of the head as in the Enlightenment and religion of the heart such as Evangelicalism. "The dominant religious culture of the colonies, in both the Congregational North and the largely Anglican South, was Calvinist" (5). He does not trace this back to Calvin, but we remember that, in Geneva, Calvin sought to keep church and state in touch so that the one supported the other.

A significant difference in the U.S. has been the separation of church and state. This separation was designed by early American leaders who, as Wills documents, were not pious Christians, as some today would like to see them, but mostly deists. It is true that Washington was an Anglican who attended church, but he did not take communion. When this became an issue, he quit attending church.

This separation of church and state is discussed at length in the book, and it occurs to me that it is more important to us minorities than we might remember. Recently I read the article on "Alsace" in Mennonite Encyclopedia and was impressed by the pressure to conform to European militarism, a pressure which sent numbers of Mennonites to the new world.

This separation has never been complete, for some still like to see religion influence government and vice-versa, particularly in times of war going back to the American Revolution. An oral family tradition says that John Hertzler, son of our Hertzler patriarch, Jacob Hertzler, was imprisoned in Reading, Pennsylvania, and threatened with execution for his refusal to join the Revolutionary army. According to this tradition, a Lutheran pastor defended him, and his life was spared.

Wills begins with Puritanism, a Calvinist perspective which did not perceive a separation between church and state but which had to concede as time went on. Some interesting details in the book tell of ethical practices of early leaders: Jonathan Edwards, a famous Puritan theologian, kept slaves. Also Ben Franklin and George Whitefield, a famous revivalist. Whitefield owned a ranch in Georgia and declined to free his slaves even though some Christians challenged him.

Numbers of Quakers also held slaves, but several Quakers witnessed against this with some success. One was John Woolman, whose name is familiar. Others were Benjamin Lay and Anthony Benezet to whom the book is dedicated. Benezet is "a person now less famous than Woolman but more influential in his day, not only in the colonies but in Europe and the Caribbean" (145).

Wills’ thesis is that both Enlightenment (head religion) and Evangelicalism (heart religion) influenced our history. "Benezet and Woolman had a foot each camp and their moral arguments would serve as a basis for nineteenth century abolitionism" (152). A problem they faced was that numbers of slaveowners claimed there is no clear-cut argument against slavery in the Bible. So the abolitionists went beyond literal Bible verses to oppose it.

Key to Wills development is his description of three Great Religious Awakenings. These were times when heart religion appeared to prevail. But, as Wills shows, all passed. The first in the 1730s and 1740s cooled almost as fast as it began and, as Wills reports, played "a preparatory role for the Enlightenment—not as a precursor of it but as a provocation. The Enlightenment was spurred by the reaction to the Awakening" (102).

The second part of the book is entitled "Enlightened Religion" and deals with various reactions to the Awakening. By roughly 1800 "the Enlightenment had done its work. It had founded the nation, and drafted the Constitution and passed the first Amendment. And in the labors of the Quakers it had begun the long struggle to end slavery in America" (134). Woolman and Benezet are given their due as part of this process.

From here Wills begins an extended discussion of the effort to "disestablish" religion in the American democracy. He observes that "The theology of establishment is simple and still appeals to many in America. The argument is that a nation must honor God in order for God to bless and protect it" (176). 

He describes at some length the efforts of early leaders to separate faith and politics, an effort which has never been completely successful. From here he goes on to the second Great Awakening, which began in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was to help fuel the Civil War when both sides perceived that God was on their side. It would lead eventually to Prohibition. 

Billy Sunday exemplified the excesses of Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism. He supported both World War I and Prohibition. The second decade of the twentieth century brought Evangelicals low. "Prohibition failed, the Scopes trial exposed them to ridicule, and compromising involvement with the Ku Klux Klan and other anti-Catholic efforts made them look bigoted in the campaign against Al Smith, the Democratic candidate for president" (415).

But evangelical political power would rise again in the presidency of George W. Bush, who said “that he felt God had called him to run for president in 2000. . . .” He “promised his Evangelical followers faith-based social services” and gave them “a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science” (498).

This was possible because Bush’s political “handler,” Karl Rove, knew how to find the right people to engineer these operations. “No campaign consultant,” Wills asserts, “ever went on to be such an arbiter of all things political within an administration as Karl Rove. . . .”

“Rove made the executive branch of the United States more openly and avowedly religious than it had ever been,” avers Wills, “though he had no discernible religious beliefs himself. His own indifference allowed him to be ecumenical in his appeal to Protestants, Catholics and Jews” (516).

In "Life After Rove" Wills observes that enough persons in Florida voted for Nader in 2000 to give the election to Bush. "This means that the voters for Nader are responsible for the war in Iraq, the huge tax cuts (and resulting deficit), and the whole faith-based government that resulted from the 2000 election." But, "The way to a post-Rove is open, if only the American electorate will follow it" (546).

The Epilogue proposes "Separation, Not Suppression." Wills observes that "It is hard to strike the right balance between the two religious tendencies. . . . but the comforting reflection is that hard self-examination on both sides has brought them back toward the precarious but persisting balance. It is an inspiring thing to watch" (552).

As I wrote above, I find this book a useful review of a certain line of American religiosity but more narrowly focused than I would prefer. Non-English traditions are scarcely noticed. Significant American theologians do not get noticed. H. Richard Niebuhr has one mention and his brother Reinhold has three. Walter Brueggemann, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and William Willimon are not heard from.

Wills seems preoccupied with religion as a source of political power. Is there no other way to conceive of the relation between church and state than power in the ballot box? I found a sort of answer to my discontent in Interpretation (July 2010), an issue dedicated to conversation between Jews and Christians. A Jewish writer,Randi Rashkover, has written an article with the impressive title, "Judaism, Multiculturalism, and the Power of Politics: Reconsidering Judaism’s Role in the Public Square." What have we here?

Near the end of the article Rashkover draws from John Howard Yoder, "The Spirit of God and the Politics of Men" where Yoder finds that the political posture of the Christian is "liturgical, it is testimonial. . . . a Christian political posture remains focused on its commitment to God in its perpetual designment of the character and actions appropriate to this commandment."

Further, "It’s power funded by the God whom it praises, the community may proceed with the important work it must do, devoid of the fear or sense of scarcity that drives most political missions, it can engage freely and on behalf of others whose needs and interests must be recognized and served" (282, 283). Rashkover finds here a model of political strategy which he perceives that Jews can also follow.

The chapter he refers to is chapter 11 in For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical (Eerdmans) published in 1997, the year that Yoder died. This chapter was based on a lecture given in South Africa in 1979, a time when Christians in South Africa were in a position to ponder their options. The development of the theme is typical Yoder. He points out that the topic "should not be taken to mean—as many like to think—that God and his Spirit are in one world and ‘men’ and their politics in another" (221). The difference is rather that there is a politics of the Spirit and another of men.
Yoder reviews Isaiah 42, 49, and 50 as an example of the Spirit’s politics in an earlier time. He moves on to the gospel of Luke and finally to issues of the current time. 

Basic to Yoder’s development is a list of contrasts between "the politics of rebellious mankind" and that of the Spirit of God. For example, "In the politics of rebellious men, all history is a zero-sum game. Pillage is as good as cooperation as long as you get what you need. In the Spirit of God, on the other hand, we hope, we communicate, we invent. We are free to improve the rules of the game so you can win without my losing" (231).

In Wills’ religious history, some have won while others lost. A typical example was the Civil War when, as he points out, the churches had divided before the government did. Both sides were convinced that God was on their side. Wills hope for better. Yoder and Rashkover suggest a better model than any Wills has reported or evidently imagined.

—Daniel Hertzler, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, is an editor, writer, and chair of the elders, Scottdale Mennonite Church.