On Garry Wills's Head and Heart
First, thanks to Frank for buying me a copy of Head and Heart for Christmas. I finally finished the book this weekend. Its an important book that I would encourage folks to read for a number of reasons.
Wills breaks down the religious history of the United States in a way that is helpful to our own thinking today. Too often, we accept the current times as something new, when really history works in cycles, each cycle building off of the lessons of the last. For example, we often hear from the Religious Right that the nation was founded as a Christian nation. Wills notes that nothing could be farther from the truth. Many of the founders were deists, held a Unitarian theological view, and were products of Enlightenment thinking. Indeed, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison demonstrated very little religiosity in their personal lives, let alone in the public sphere. No reference to Christianity exists in the Declaration. No mention of God exists in the Constitution. Indeed, both Federalists and Jeffersonians argued for the separation of church and state, even if disentanglement at the state level came well after the founding. This is not to say some folks didn't decry the separation as they do today. But for all those strict constructionists ought not allow themselves the liberty of selectivity on issues of church-state separation. There is no doubt that the founders intended the separation.
Wills notes that there are really two forms of religion in the United States, evangelical and enlightenment. Evangelical religion was that of the Puritans, of the Great Awakenings, the Populist-Prohibition-Progressive Era, and our current Religious Right upswing culminating in George Bush's "faith-based government". Evangelical religion is cross denomination and usually includes a fundamentalist theological worldview, a fervor for evangelizing, and a desire to enact a social conservative through the government. Enlightened religion is the religion of the founders, the transcendentalists, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Progressives, the New Deal and in some ways the 1960s social revolutions. Enlightened religion is characterized by an embrace of science and reason over dogmatism, a belief in the necessity of the separation between church and state and a lack of proselytizing. Wills describes the cycles in our history as the body politic moves back and forth between its embrace of either form of religiosity. Such movements create major social and political waves.
After providing an arms length view of American religious history, Wills inserts himself into the abortion debate and offers his views of the Bush-Rove years. I would encourage folks working on the abortion paper to read his section. His essential argument is one that Frank has offered. That there is no definitive Biblical statement as to when life begins and so it therefore is not a religious issue. He notes that the Catholic Church has used natural law, not scripture to interpret when life begins which therefore opens up the floor to disagreement, even for those who hold a fundamentalist theological view. He does do some work to find common ground so its worth checking out.
Beyond the abortion debate, this is an important book for our times. Whereas Jim Wallis claims we are moving to a post-Religious Right world, Wills notes that the historical cycles and that any decline is temporary. Wills notes that America is at her best when we balance enlightenment and evangelical thinking. I think that’s often what we are doing on CrossLeft and IPC and what makes us stronger even through all the debates.
