The tradition of civil religion in America has been successfully upheld by the nation’s presidents since before Robert Bellah even gave that tradition a name. Used as a means to unify the public, the civil religion, when articulated by the president, contains ideals and beliefs that resonate with all Americans. Many times, there are distinctly religious tones to that language, and therefore the need arose to differentiate the nation’s civil religion from actual, denominational religion. The two are definitely separate, scholars and theorists agree. Such a separation between the civil religion and actual religion parallels the separation of church and state. When civil religion is successfully rhetorically executed, there is no cause to feel that that separation is threatened. The key to that successful articulation, says Roderick Hart, is maintaining a balance between sacred and secular influences by means of a rhetorical contract between the two key parties in the civil religious tradition: government, personified by the president, and organized religion.
The Predecessors’ Contractual Legacies
My analysis of President Bush’s predecessors’ rhetorical execution of the national civil religion reveals a few major consistencies: an acknowledgement of the necessity of separation of church and state in the affairs and governance of the nation; a recognition of the moral
foundations religion can provide to individuals in their service to the nation; a tendency to use religious language in judicious amounts; and the tendency to identify organized religion and government as sporadic partners, if partners at all.
The guise of separation of government and religious organizations represents Hart’s first contractual element. In each of the post-World War II presidents’ texts I studied, there is a clear appreciation for the necessity of that divide. Time and again there are comments that the two should not meld—that this was the genius of the writers of the Constitution, and that as president, each man appreciates and acknowledges his duty to uphold that law. To the degree that any one president was encouraging cooperation with a particular religious group or denomination, that was not readily evident in the speeches and scholarly articles I sampled for this analysis.
In terms of the guise of existential equality between religious organizations and the government, President Bush’s predecessors maintained that contractual element by not revealing the degree to which organized religion played any major part in policy decisions. Instead, each president mentions religious ideals as a foundation for individual action in day-to-day life. Religious organizations are not consulted in the construction of law and programs for the betterment of society. Government is the major player, these presidents’ rhetoric affirms, and religious organizations serve a supplementary role at best.
Religious language seems to be the one element of Hart’s rhetorical contract that is most renegotiated by each president as he assumes office. In the texts I sampled, it was obvious that some presidents felt more comfortable with using direct quotations and stories from Scripture than others. Furthermore, some presidents also eagerly incorporated prayers into their ceremonial address as well as their daily meetings. In all cases, as Hart points out, the presidents asked for God’s guidance for themselves and the country as they attempted to execute the duties of the president. Overall, the predecessors’ religious language was not sermonic in tone. Instead, it conveyed the precepts of civil religion—that of moral fortitude and spiritual support—to the audience at-hand.
186 The most important part of Hart’s contract for my analysis, that wherein the two parties do not reveal to the public the exact extent of their cooperation, has largely been successfully implemented by Bush’s predecessors as well. While the presidents do acknowledge how religious organizations can be instrumental in facilitating programs to aid afflicted people, there is scarce mention of a substantial, definitive partnership between the two. The American public during the administrations of Bush’s predecessors remained largely unaware, through presidential address at least, of the degree of cooperation between religious organizations and government in the
execution of the country’s activities.
George Bush’s Faith-Based Legacy
While the speeches given by President Bush that I surveyed in this analysis do contain many traditional rhetorical applications of civil religion, the fact still remains that he has breached the terms of Hart’s contract. This break with tradition and violation of contract is most evident in the fact that Bush and his Cabinet officers have supported and funded religious organizations through the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Again, these religious
organizations are in no way expected to change their missions in order to receive federal funds, even if that mission includes converting individuals who seek assistance to a particular belief. The speeches provided on the White House Web site by the Faith-Based Office reveal that, more than lauding religious morals as a foundation for an individual’s actions in the world, religious
organizations should become actively involved in the ministering to the nation. Such ministration is enabled by federal funds without regard to organizations’ religious charters and missions. Bush details in these addresses how religious organizations may participate in seminars and meetings to learn how to access these formerly forbidden federal funds. He explains repeatedly that the federal government, up until the time of his administration, has discriminated against faith-based
groups simply because they are faith-based. Bush further asserts that the funding of such groups does not in any way violate the tradition and mandate of church/state separation. This is his biggest breach of contract, openly and repeatedly acknowledging the partnership between government and organized religion by means of funds distributed by the office created expressly for that purpose, the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
In terms of the other contractual elements, President Bush also fails to maintain his obligations regarding the guises. As for the guise of separation, while Bush does briefly mention separation of church/state and the fact that he believes it is good and just, his words are belied by the fact of his actions in the establishment of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in addition to Cabinet posts devoted to the project. President Bush says that based on his
judgment, his actions and Executive Orders do not violate the church/state separation. Bush does not maintain the guise of separation in deed, and only barely so in words.
The guise of existential equality is also threatened by Bush’s rhetorical execution of civil religion. President Bush says on many occasions that government cannot put hope in hearts or make people love each other as a means to remedy social ills. He repeatedly asserts that it is the role and province of religious institutions to provide that support. By repeatedly announcing what government is incapable of doing, Bush gives more influence and relevance to religious
organizations than Hart’s contract allows. Instead of government being the more powerful party in the contract, religion gets an added boost by Bush’s declaration that government is incapable of performing the social service tasks for which it is largely responsible. There is a hierarchy, and government is clearly not at the top of it.
As religious language goes, President Bush is consistent overall. Sometimes, he cites directly from the Bible; sometimes his words are thinly veiled, yet still Biblical in origin. At all
188 times, he acknowledges God in the history and success of the nation and the people who inhabit it. This element of the contract is perhaps the most flexible in terms of the speeches I have studied, and it depends largely upon the assembled audience. On occasions where President Bush
addresses a religious group, his language is naturally more devout in nature than when he is among a secular audience. However, even in such cases where he is speaking to secular officials, Bush does not hesitate to include religious themes, terms, and precepts in his address.
Given the four elements of the rhetorical contract between organized religion and government provided by Hart, President Bush can be said to have breached each one: he fails to maintain the guise of separation between government and religious organizations, he fails to maintain the guise of existential equality between the two parties; he fails to curtail religious language in accordance with situation and audience; and, most importantly, he routinely divulges the extent of the cooperation between organized religion and government in the nation’s affairs, specifically with regard to the establishment of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.
That religion plays such an important part in President Bush’s ideas of how to govern the country leads to my assertion that he is applying his unique and modern-day version of new pastoral power in order to regulate his American constituency. Those that favor religious precepts as a means of governance are divided from those who do not agree with such a method. When Foucault described new pastoral power as enacted by government officials, he noted three elements in particular. I have interpreted and applied them as follows.
The first tenet of new pastoral power is that it assures individual salvation in this world, not the afterlife as traditional religion promises. This idea is evident in the faith-based plan Bush promotes, along with a traditional smattering of religion. He routinely mentions that the social
entrepreneurs and the soldiers in the armies of compassion are working miracles on a daily basis to save the lives of afflicted people. The emphasis is on these daily works to remedy ills in the immediate future—there is no direct mention of the afterlife, though of course it is implied by the inclusion of religious teachings in the salvation of people’s souls. More than just a recipe for helping people overcome personal problems, the faith-based plan encourages those providing the services to remain true to their personal missions, and these missions oftentimes include
conversion of individuals and spreading of a particular religious, often Christian, message. Federal funding of these programs not only threatens the separation of church and state, it also perpetuates such teachings and programs throughout secular society.
The second aspect of new pastoral power, and most relevant to my analysis, is that it aims to increase the number of agents of that power. Again, President Bush infuses old characteristics into new pastoral power with his relentless recruiting of religious organizations for participation in the faith-based initiative. With the establishment of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and Bush’s insistence that members of his Cabinet actively recruit and work with faith- based (and community) programs to secure funds, the number of agents will necessarily increase. With each visit to a ministry or a group of religious leaders, President Bush effectively increases the number of active participants in his faith-based social program. Furthermore, these
organizations and individuals are being coached in the ways to best secure federal funds with the assurance of the president that the days of discriminating against a group simply because of its religious foundation are over. With such assurances, many organizations have applied for and received federal funds.
With his program, President Bush has demonstrated the third aspect of his brand of new pastoral power as well: that he understands the role of the individual and the community in the
190 application of such programs. He lauds religious messages as a means of securing a moral foundation upon which each person can build and exercise her or his influence as social
entrepreneurs in the execution of this new power. With the federal funds and without threat to the mission of the administering office, the individuals are sent out into the communities ostensibly with the goal of helping people, but also with the goal of gaining more recruits and transforming a community. Those welcomed into the social programs provided by the religious organizations may feel obligated to continue the work that helped them. This begins the cycle of an ever expanding religious influence on secular life, funded by faithful and freethinker taxpayers alike. Again, the key is that the federal government, as directed by Executive Order, is mandated to implement this program until such time as a future president overturns the Order.
Consequences of Bush’s Contractual Breach
As the representative of government, President Bush has breached the rhetorical contract between organized religion and government, mainly with the establishment of and continued funding and support of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives whose services include providing federal funds to organizations who may maintain their missions without regard to church/state separation. The very establishment of this office required President Bush to circumvent Congress and to establish the office by means of an Executive Order. Since the establishment of that office, there has been plentiful documentation on the dispersal of funds and the actions of groups receiving the funds. Whether or not those in the office may have been completely involved with the Bush plan, the fact still remains that money went out to primarily Christian organizations. This is problematic because such dispersal makes a mockery of Bush’s attempts at inclusion of the myriad religious faiths when he speaks of Christian, Jew, or Muslim organizations. An already existing fissure in the American consciousness about the role of
religion in government is exacerbated by such discrepancies in words and acts. The cultural divide attested to and studied by scholars, journalists, and the average citizen alike can only be broadened by such policy.
By breaching the contract, President Bush has set a precedent for those who will follow him. His success indicates that future presidents may be able to implement similar plans with some success should their personal beliefs dictate such actions. In this way, the
nondenominational and nonreligious civil religion that has served America for so long may likely become decidedly more religious in nature. The balance of power between the government and organized religion, with the successful implementation of programs like that funding faith-based groups, will be disrupted both figuratively and literally. No longer will rhetorical explanations be enough of a guise for the actual involvement of government and religious individuals in
administering the business of the nation. A new kind of pastoral power reminiscent of older, far- away religion-fraught nations may revisit the United States of America—precisely the sort of conditions that many of the Founders came here to distance themselves from. Citizens might register their dissent at the voting booths, but once entrenched by repetition and successful execution, such a program might be hard to overturn.
The increasing importance and influence of religion is even evident in future potential presidents’ words as they campaign for the 2008 election. Consider, for example, presidential candidate Barack Obama’s assertion that “we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in people’s lives, in the lives of the American people. I think it’s time that we joined a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern pluralistic society” (NPR, “Obama”). Early in the campaign, Obama says that he is dedicated in his quest to “figure out how we can stop using religion as a divisive force in the body politic and how can we tap into that
192 sense that our values, or deepest moral commitments can be harnessed in order to bring about changes that might have seemed impossible if you were just looking at the realities of the here and now” (NPR, “Obama”). This quotation reveals a revived tendency in American politics to readily embrace religion and religious organizations in the administration of the country. That
presidential candidates are already pontificating about the role of religion in society nineteen months away from the election is critical. It suggests that they are keenly aware that in order to garner the large Evangelical vote, they must convincingly speak in accordance with faith and all its ancillary values. This is one of many signs that President Bush has opened a rhetorical and religious door through which even Democrats must pass en route to the presidency. When asked whether such announcements of faith were helpful in campaigning, Obama’s response was “You know, what I think is that Democrats need to show up. I think it’s important that we don’t just abandon the field” (NPR, “Obama”). President Bush’s enthusiastic and voluminous religious commentary has paved the way for, and in some sense mandated, religious Republicans and Democrats alike to speak their truth to the American people.
The one aspect of Bush’s plan that means it may be reversed is the fact that he was forced to establish his faith-based initiative by Executive Order. Unlike a law that has successfully traversed through Congress, an Executive Order might be overturned by the next president, providing he is not of the same ideological stripe as President Bush. At the start of 2007, it is as yet difficult to predict who the next president might be. He or she will also inherit the
responsibility to articulate the nation’s civil religion. He or she will also be charged with the task of unifying an increasingly diverse American public. Hart’s rhetorical contract may be honored once again, or the new president may also disregard those terms in favor of an ideologically straight-jacketed approach to governance whereby religious precepts are disbursed into the public