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John Murray Cuddihy
NO OFFENSE: CIVIL RELIGION AND PROTESTANT TASTE Reviewed by Patrick Killough Publisher: Seabury Press (1978) 232 pages # ISBN-10: 0816403856 # ISBN-13: 978-081640385 I. alibris.com Title of this review: Shouting religious truth in America is a no-no, August 1, 2008 By abuatticus, black mountain, NC Reviewer's rating of NO OFFENSE * * * * * FIVE STARS John Murray Cuddihy in his 1978 NO OFFENSE: CIVIL RELIGION AND PROTESTANT TASTE says that it is not uncommon in America for people, especially younger ones, when speaking of their personal religion to say, "I happen to be Baptist" or "I just happen to be Episcopalian." I myself have never heard anyone say that. But Cuddihy makes much of it. In America everyone is free to choose to enter or leave any religious denomination. Maybe that is not the way Protestantism, for example, sees itself. But that is the way America has tamed all faiths. Cuddihy argues that America has built over a couple of centuries its own Calvinist-derived, Freemason-approved "civil religion." On an optimistic, even triumphalist interpretation, America's civil religion is a kind of Judeo-Christian mission to the secular world. But Civil religion is even less than the least common denominator of various revealed, transcendental sets of beliefs. Social pressure has compelled them to become purely or mostly private. At some level almost all Americans, Cuddihy argues, adhere to the civil religion. Civil religion is all about surfaces, not depths. Indeed depths are taboo. Civil religion is polite, silently compels us to accept one another as social equals. It does not matter that our Judaism or Catholicism proclaims that it is uniquely God ordained, true, binding on all mankind or makes analogous universalist claims. Our national religion is a watered down, secularized version of Calvinist Puritanism, a religion that compromised, created a half-way house for the first generation of children born into families of people who had become true believers only in adulthood. As it takes root, America's civil religion increasingly makes the more explicit confessional religions mere matters of personal choice. "I just happen to be Jewish." I no longer rend my garments over blasphemies. NO OFFENSE is built around several case studies of how religious champions of Protestantism, Judaism and Catholicism tried -- in vain -- to champion their faiths by wrapping their thoughts around a new set of secularized religious practices and beliefs that have raced into the field faster than theology or ideology can follow them. A Jew might begin by asserting that Jews are God's chosen people (experienced by a young Philip Roth as "Jews are better.") But saying this loudly and with passion in public is perceived as rude, as disrespecting others. So he settles for Judaism as merely "equal" to America's other two established faiths. A Protestant will tell other Protestants that salvation through Biblical faith is the only way to go. But he stops trying to convert Jews out of civil politeness. A Roman Catholic may reluctantly admit as old dogma "extra ecclesiam nulla salus," i. e., "outside the Church there is no salvation." But he is sure to interpret it with escape clauses for Protestants, Jews and anyone "sincere" in his agnosticism or atheism. Thus civil religion doth make cowards of us all. Some adherents of each major faith do refuse to go along with civil religion's weakening of revealed religion. Rabbi Meir Kahane, Father Leonard Feeney, Reverend Dr. Billy Graham -- all stand out loudly for their old time religions. Never mind. Civil religion will sweep them into historic insignificance. John Murray Cuddihy's NO OFFENSE offers light, grounds (and rules) for debate. It explains why America frowns on discussing core religious beliefs in polite society. You may wish to be a zealot and shout God's truth from the rooftops. America's civil religion will simply smile knowingly and silence you. -OOO- http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?isbn=0816403856 08/01/2008 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= II. amazon.com Title of this review: America's "civil religion" trumps Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism, August 1, 2008 In NO OFFENSE: CIVIL RELIGION AND PROTESTANT TASTE (1978), Professor John Murray Cuddihy makes a simple, straightforward case. America has created its own special "civil religion" and that creation has driven religions imported from Europe out of the public forum. Civil religion is about behavior, not belief. It shuns depths, lives entirely on the surface of American social interactions. Its few commandments demand respect for the other fellow's religious point of view, without ever allowing him to explain what it is. Once upon a time Roman Catholic Christianity in Europe was something virtually everyone (except Jews) were born into. It claimed to be the sole channel of salvation and all men were invited to be baptized into it and never, ever leave it. Similarly, in Europe Jews usually lived in isolation, kept a strict, elaborate code of behaving and dining, did not intermarry with goyim and believed that they were God's Chosen People. After Christianity's Reformation, Protestants started out in America confidently asserting that they had found God's unique intentions for how to be worshipped, studied and theologized about. Sects, notably Pilgrims and Puritans wanted liberty of worship for themselves, but for no one else. In America, immigrant Catholics moved from despised minority to being socially tolerated making up with Jews and Protestants one of three accepted "denominations." By the late 1950s some Protestant theologians had given up on converting Jews. Jews were willing to have Jewish, Catholic and Protestant chapels at Brandeis University. After the Second Vatican Council (1962-63) Catholics began to sense that God wanted there to be Jews always. But there was a price to pay. The specifics of each of the Big Three faiths, the things that made each unique, had to agree to go underground, be restricted to family circle or place of worship. It was not seemly to probe another man's religion for details. Any American was free to join or leave any faith she chose. And yet, and yet. One was still born a Jew if he had a Jewish mother. A baby was a Christian if it was baptized. Religion was still in large measure inherited, initially, at least not optional. Cuddihy regards the compromises that led to America's civil religion at some level a missionary triumph for Calvinist Protestantism. Calvinists (Presbyterians, Baptists) feel more at home in the civil religion than do Protestants and Jews. After all it is their baby. Surprisingly few Americans were able to sense what was happening to them while it was happening. Fewer yet could articulate the changes. Among Catholics Father John Courtney Murray was able to baptize the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution. But his Jesuit confrere Leonard Edward Feeney would not accept the neo-Protestant civil religion. Both Murray and Feeney believed to their dying day that there was only one true religion and that God intended it for all men: papal Catholicism. But Murray was able to think his way to compromise and Feeney scorned selling out to the civil religion. For 7 1/2 years he and 80 followers thundered every Sunday afternoon in Boston Common, "There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church." For his pains he was silenced, stripped of his priestly faculties and for 19 years excommunicated. Similar things happened to Jews and Protestants who continued to assert their faith's uniqueness and superiority. The civil religion had quietly, politely but ruthlessless swept its competitors into public insignificance. -OOO- http://www.amazon.com/No-offense-Civil-religion-Protestant/ dp/0816403856/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1217206927&sr=11-1 III. bn.com not listed IV. epinions not listed file cuddihy_nooffense |