This is a totally frightening poll:
Yes, you read that right: 42 percent of Christian Americans are Christians before they are Americans. In general, Christians in America are about as conflicted in their identities as Muslims in France. And they call atheists un-American...
I'd be curious if there's any historical data on this poll question. Have Americans become more likely to self-identify as Christians over time? My sense is that one of the side-effects of globalization is to minimize the perceptions of difference between the citizens of different nation-states. Everybody drinks the same cola, and drives the same car, and wears the same clothes, and listens to the same music, and eats at the same fast-food chains. Being an American no longer makes us so unique.
My hunch is that globalization makes people search for other ways to understand their personal identity. The sameness of everybody everywhere makes tags like "I'm an American" a little less meaningful. If everybody eats McDonalds and drives a Camry, then people have to distinguish themselves in some other way. This is where religion comes in. Believing in God gives you a meaningful identity and social community. It lets you distinguish yourself from all the Chinese and French and Brazilians who are also obsessed with Britney Spears' haircut. In this sense, even as globalization collapses all sorts of old distinctions, it leads people to exaggerate the differences that still exist.
I'm also curious how the various presidential candidates would respond to this question. Is Romney an American before he's a Mormon? What would Brownback or Huckabee say? It seems to me that if you aren't an American first, then you shouldn't be running for president.
Update: Perhaps I should explain why I find this poll frightening. Unlike Dawkins and Harris, I believe that the primary historical lesson of the 20th century is that excessive nationalism is very dangerous. (Too much religion can also be very dangerous, but that may be the historical lesson of the 21st century.) So I'm not scared by the religious beliefs of Americans per se. What I'm more troubled by is the shattering of collective identity. I'd naively assumed that most Americans are Americans first. That's our common denominator. But if everybody is something else before they are Americans, than a pluralistic society seems like a pipe-dream. I'd always understood that first generation immigrants might have conflicted identities - that's only natural - but I'd never suspected that 42 percent of Christian Americans would also have conflicted identities. So that's what I find frightening. Our great melting pot might really be a collection of separate moieties.
Comments (14)
Is that really that frightening? I think excessive nationalism is probably more dangerous in contemporary America than excessive religiousity. The comparison with France is also a little shaky; the French seem to be very nationalist compared to the other European nations for both Muslims and Christians.
Posted by: MattXIV | March 1, 2007 4:29 PM