New Civil Religion

Past Member Monday sessions have taken on the subjects of Reimagining America and Religion's Role In A Democracy. The two issues conflate as we now address a potentially malignant sort of creation myth arising out of Trump's ashes in the form of a new civil religion ( Trump's New Civil Religion).

The thrust of the threat harkens back to the experience of the post-Civil War days marked by the rise of the myths that helped define the South even in the face of its military defeat. A so-called Lost Cause mythology -- the nobility of the Confederacy and the moral vacancy of its enemies -- arose as rituals and symbols were inculcated and blossomed throughout the South's collective memory and, eventually, into its very consciousness. The facts be damned.

Trump's defeat likewise raises the specter of a grievance-based narrative rising to a Lost Cause mythology buttressed by evangelical narrative, ritual, symbols, and imagery and -- voila! -- the birth of a new religion, a new civil religion. Squint and see the January 6 movement by the stop-the-steal wing of the MAGA party as midwife at the birth of a permanently disaffected contingent. It becomes the beast that refuses to die.

Now add to this religious theme the magazine cover from the most recent edition of the Jacobin, the American socialist quarterly, which depicts a crowd of suburban laymen here on Earth celebrating a bare-chested and haloed Biden as he ascends to Heaven while surrounded by various kneeling partisan "saints," fawning journalists, and the "holy spirit" of twitter. Behold a new civil religion of a different sort.

Let's discuss how mythology, as it morphs into secular religion, might fit in a reimagined America. The Lost Cause narrative is as real as the picture of the Confederate flag carried in the Capitol building on January 6. There is also little doubt as to the depth of the religious fervor with which Trump was, and will likely continue to be, worshiped as a messiah by a sizable contingent of the American electorate.

Then, satire or not, the mock icon depicting Biden's holy ascension makes for stirring imagery. Even as it galvanizes the crowd emotionally vested in having brought down the Great Satan, it may also serve to become the losing party's Confederate flag equivalent as it vows a fight to death the notion of government as god. That's the reflex of a hyper-religious mindset.

We previously addressed the role of myth-like connections in our MM session Sapiens with Harari's concept of social constructs or shared imaginations -- whether it be family, money, religion -- necessary to bind and defend the tribe as it grew beyond the level supporting a natural extended-family trust. The advent and proliferation of new "civil religions" raises the question whether duelling "deities" might now be seen to have become the ultimate polarizing agent.