Cultural Consensus and Mainline Denominationalism
The most forceful argument for an American religion was Will Herberg’s famous essay Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955). Writing during the booming fortunes of the “mainline” religious groups in the U.S. postwar prosperity, Herberg claimed that the central tripartite distinctions of American religion (Protestant, Catholic, Jew) had become mostly variations on a central theme—the celebration of the “American way of life.” A comfortable denominational pluralism offered a judicious balance between identity and group membership while supporting civic order in the public sphere.
Other scholars have noted the development of an American religion but questioned Herberg’s rosy assessment of the situation. Niebuhr’s (1929) classic account of denominational pluralism was a critique of American religion. He located the social sources of denominations in ethnic, regional, and class identities. Niebuhr saw such divisions as an ethical failure, because they were divisions within Christ’s church. Niebuhr’s work also offered an important formulation of the “church-sect” dynamic that had the perhaps unintended effect of demonstrating empirically how “American religion” was created. Niebuhr noted that established churches spawned sectarian schisms, based on dissatisfactions with the institution’s worldly “compromises.” But forces such as the necessities of organizational survival, the challenge of keeping the second generation within the faith, and general American social mobility led many sects to develop the institutional trappings of “established” religions.
Thus were denominations born—reasonably open, “world-accommodating,” large-scale organizations, co-existing with other similar organizations, eschewing claims to have the only valid interpretation of absolute truth. They are less encompassing than European-style “churches” but less exclusive than “sects.” This very accommodation, of course, leads to yet another round of sectarian schism. One consequence of this cycle has been the increasing organizational and cultural similarity of the surviving denominations and their increasing similarity to nonreligious, formal organizations (see Scherer 1980).
Writing 20 years after Herberg, Cuddihy (1978) charged that the polite civility required for Herberg’s version of American religion robbed religions of their distinct traditions and historical authenticity. Cuddihy merged Herberg’s Eisenhower-era convergence with an ironic reading of Bellah’s “civil” religion and produced a stinging rebuke of a too-easy ecumenical unity. He noted that this civil faith was particularly disastrous for religious minorities. Cuddihy, however, did not deny the reality of American religion.
Wuthnow’s (1988) influential assessment of contemporary American religion noted that Herberg’s essay appeared just as the putative consensus of the 1950s was crashing on the ideological reefs of the 1960s. Driven by conflicts over civil rights and foreign military adventures, there was a restructuring of religious cleavages from denominational loyalties to ideological divisions. Further, the organizational bases for public involvement shifted from denominational bureaucracies to small, ideologically driven “special purpose groups.”
This is not to say that denominations were not part of the 1960s social conflicts. Hadden (1969) demonstrated how clergy working within denominational agencies were deeply involved in antiwar, civil rights, and social justice activism. This involvement helped polarize the “restructured” religious scene and contributed to the declining significance of denominationalism (Wuthnow 1988).
Thus an important body of work accounts for “American religion” in terms of a denominational pluralism that in the nineteenth century helped in the successful assimilation of many European immigrants and in the twentieth century played a major role in shaping the societal consensus so central to civil society. Eisenstadt (1991) goes so far as to claim that the denomination, as such, is a U.S. creation and only truly exists within the American context. Denominationalism’s integrating functions reached their zenith in postwar society just before the major challenges of the late 1960s emerged, and the U.S. religious scene and American culture in general began its transition to a more pluralist and ideologically charged landscape.