Bible Echoes & Civil Religion

Vice President Pence created some controversy last week at the GOP convention by borrowing biblical language:

Let’s run the race marked out for us. Let’s fix our eyes on Old Glory and all she represents. Let’s fix our eyes on this land of heroes and let their courage inspire. And let’s fix our eyes on the author and perfecter of our faith and freedom and never forget that where the spirit of the Lord is there is freedom — and that means freedom always wins.

The borrowed language was from Hebrews 12:1-2:

…and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Some critics complained of blasphemy. Others alleged “Christian nationalism.” Still others criticized it as civil religion.

But borrowing biblical language for political speeches, novels, poetry, plays and all sorts of literature, plus mundane conversation, is as old as the Bible itself. Every culture influenced by the Bible is suffused by direct or indirect references to it. Is appropriating biblical words and cadence for not directly spiritual purposes inappropriate? If so, the English language with much of its treasury of literature is sacrilegious.

One of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous addresses is his “House Divided” speech to the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention. He said: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.”

Lincoln borrowed from Matthew 12:25, where Jesus says: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.”

Was Lincoln blasphemous for appropriating Jesus’s words?

In 1861, Lincoln famously said the Declaration of Independence “was the word, ‘fitly spoken’ which has proved an ‘apple of gold’ to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it.”

Lincoln was appropriating Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” Again, was his biblical language applied to U.S. founding principles sacrilegious?

Winston Churchill knew the Bible well no less than Lincoln and often borrowed its best phrases. In his famous 1940 “Blood, Swear and Tears” speech, he spoke of a postwar world built “in justice, in tradition, and in freedom, a house of many mansions where there will be room for all.” He was recalling Jesus in John 14:2: “In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

Was Churchill blasphemous to echo Jesus’s promise of eternal life to describe a new world order of peace and justice? If so, he was even more so years earlier when describing the British Empire as a “house of many mansions,” a phrase he often lyrically employed. There’s no record that clergy or other Christians objected. Why would they?

To my mind, the Bible is a gift not just for divine redemption but also for endless contributions to language, literature, art and culture. If politicians great or small borrow from it, the Bible’s glory is all the greater. Whatever the intent, all language is ennobled by the sonorous rhythm of biblical rhetoric. Orators of many faiths and no faith have endlessly mined its eloquence.

As to Pence’s oration supposedly representing “Christian nationalism,” if so, nearly every U.S. president for 230 years is guilty, along with countless politicians of every party. Americans are largely religious, and politics across the spectrum have always assumed providential national purpose. “Christian nationalism” is defined of late by critics as a merger of American and Christian identities in ways that unconstitutionally privilege Christian faith. If so, the most ardent original church-state separatists like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, based on their generic references to deity and America, were “Christian nationalists.”

Pence’s language is not “Christian nationalist” but is firmly within the tradition of nonsectarian civil religion. Some critics have said exactly so, as for them civil religion possesses its own evils. It is, some claim, just another way of conflating national purpose with the divine will. Or some purists complain that civil religion substitutes for authentic religion.

These critics miss the genius of civil religion. It mostly was crafted by American Protestants across denominations to facilitate nonsectarian spiritual language in political discourse. It was intentionally inclusive so that Catholics, Jews and others could seamlessly join the conversation without compromising their respective doctrines. It contrasted sharply with other national cultures where state religions mandated particular orthodoxies, or where extreme secularism effectively prevented any religious reference in political discourse.

American civil religion’s high points include the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, FDR’s D-Day prayer, and MLK’s “I Have a Dream.”

Some critics complain that some American Christians conflate Christianity with civil religion. If so, the fault is not civil religion’s, as it was never intended to substitute for the particular theology of any religious institution. Civil religion is a venerable tradition of unifying and uplifting spiritual public discourse. Churches perhaps can do better to explain the respective differences. Some clergy denounce civil religion, fearing it as a rival, without really understanding what it is.

Michael Peppard of Fordham University denounces Pence’s speech but describes civil religion well here:

At its best, civil religion appeals to the better angels of our nature. It inspires hope in a universal providence that transcends us all. It foregrounds compassion and helps to forge the hard-won unum out of our factionalized pluribus.

And:

American civil religion has been traditionally rooted in humility and submission to God’s will, the sense that God is not aligned with any party or faction in this passing world. Speechwriters alluded to texts of near universal resonance, with special fondness for themes of liberation. Both the descendants of voluntary immigrants and the descendants of former slaves could read themselves into the story of Exodus and make it their own. Our greatest civil-rights leader had himself “been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land” on April 3, 1968.

Here’s a very important point. America’s most effective practitioners of civil religion have been Lincoln and MLK. And civil religion has been most effective as an instrument for racial justice and equality. America now as much as ever needs the unifying and reforming influence of civil religion at its best.