1. Religion and Society in America The Transformation of American Religious Life Week 9 – Lecture 2

2. The Transformation of American Religious Life Thinking About America’s Religious Past Issues Raised in Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion Final Questions

3. Thinking About America’s Religious Past How would you characterize religious life in America? Is or can America be understood as a religious nation? If so, what kind of religious expression? What is the relationship between individual religious expression and communal commitments?

4. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion 1950s - 60s – Growth of Post-Protestant America Internal Critique: Tolerance escapes doctrinal issues Example: Evangelical conservative, Carl F. H. Henry argued, “The New Testament upholds specific doctrinal affirmations as indispensable to genuine Christian confession.” He further asserted, “The modernist tendency to link Christian love, tolerance, and liberty with theological inclusivism is therefore discredited.” In other words, “modernists pleas for religious tolerance were basically a strategic device for evading the question of doctrinal fidelity.”

5. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion 1950s - 60s – Growth of Post-Protestant America Internal Critique: Christian “realists” argue that liberal theology is venturing into areas it was unintended to frequent (psychotherapy, Eastern mysticism, etc.) Realists argue the results will be a Christianity that is diffuse, plastic, and humanistic in its own conceptions of Christianity

6. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion 1950s - 60s – Growth of Post-Protestant America Internal Critique: Liberal Christianity not necessarily sentiment or focused on making Christian living easy (example: Harry Emerson Fosdick) Pragmatic, “up-by-the-bootstraps” emphasis concerning life’s ethical questions Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) “You can Win.” This attitude often found expression in secular and psychological terms

7. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion External forces: Vietnam War and a historically parallel disenchantment with western ideas/social forces in 1960s leads to the spread of eastern religions in U.S. “Beat Zen” of Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and others helped with the diffusion of Buddhists ideas in American culture Buddhism leveraged out of traditional monastic settings in U.S.

8. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion Deeper External forces: Growing disenchantment and disillusionment with traditional western religion and its anthropological claims 1960s witnessed a deconstruction of notions of selfhood associated with American individualism Immolations were visible forms of Buddhist expression which addressed these profound existential sufferings

9. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion Zen Buddhism at one level is extremely goal oriented – meditation is satori, or enlightenment The emergence of Buddhism in the United States developed in relationship to competing forms of personalism associated with Christian theology Dalai Lama in 1990s publishes The Art of Happiness which he asserts “The very motion of our life is towards happiness.”

10. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion External forces: Conceptions of gender and its relationship to society breed a form of self- consciousness that is detached from religious claims First generation of feminists in America claimed equal rights, suffrage, social equality, and right to contribute to society because of God-given moral instincts inherent in their nature

11. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion Later generations of feminists would reject these types of “naturalist arguments” in order to attain reforms by arguing “womanhood” was a social construction Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystic (1963) popularized this assertion In light of this new development or perspective, religious claims were examined because religion deals with the limits of human experience and humane behavior and transcending those limits.

12. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion Rosemary Radford Ruether, for example, led the way in focusing this new critique on the Christian Church, holding up an egalitarian model of Church and arguing the virtue and integrity of any religion could be measured by its promotion of a woman’s full humanity

13. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion External forces: Academic study of religion promotes idea or understanding of religion as a universal phenomenon, which in turn, advances an appreciation of non-Protestant and non-Western traditions Democratic forces at work which call into question the structure, not necessarily the content, of religious claims Tendency to divorce of religious experience from moral virtue

14. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion Traditional Christian theology becomes reconfigured in light of these changes Example: Paul Tillich – argues that “sin” was “existential estrangement,” not violation of one’s neighbor, disobedience to God, or transgression of moral law Such tendency toward personal introspection, helped traditional western religious claims lead to what Christopher Lasch has described a “culture of narcissism” which devalues others through its lack of curiosity and impoverishes one’s personal life

15. Porterfield’s Transformation of American Religion Fusion of spiritual idealism and pragmatic concern in American religious thought and expression more and more became detached from its Protestant base in America which has fueled individualistic expressions of religious life void of metaphysical speculation

16. Final Questions: ????