K. Healan Gaston, Lecturer on American Religious History and Ethics, delivered the following remarks at Morning Prayers in Harvard's Memorial Church on February 20, 2020.
♦♦♦
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. —Reinhold Niebuhr
Many of you will recognize this as the famous “Serenity Prayer,” used by Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs and originally written by the mid-twentieth-century Protestant thinker Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr is a prominent figure in a book I recently published, Imagining Judeo-Christian America: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy.
It looks at how the term “Judeo-Christian” emerged as a descriptor for American democracy and national identity and then how its meanings shifted over time, as it was caught up in one round after another of our culture wars. Of course, many people associate that term with Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was the first president to use it. Eisenhower presided over a nation grappling with its newly “tri-faith” character, as encapsulated by Will Herberg’s 1955 book Protestant-Catholic-Jew. Yet, Eisenhower became increasingly wary of Judeo-Christian language as the global struggle for democracy intensified in the late 1950s. As decolonization picked up steam, he worried about the term’s exclusion of non-Western religions and abandoned it.
Meanwhile, the rise of the civil rights movement began to shift the term’s center of gravity. Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked Judeo-Christian principles as he sought to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice. Yet by the mid-1970s, a wide swath of the population, especially young people, associated that language with the moral hypocrisies that fueled the Vietnam War and chafed at its exclusivity as the age of multiculturalism dawned.
The ascendant Christian Right then took up the Judeo-Christian framework as its own, as the current phase of the culture wars opened. In fact, Ronald Reagan was by far the most prolific user of Judeo-Christian language in the White House, even as he turned it against the vision that prophetic leaders like King had in mind. This tug of war over the meaning and relevance of the term “Judeo-Christian” is as consequential today as it has ever been, a time when our current president’s allies call for a global defense of what they term “the Judeo-Christian West.”
As I’ve discussed the book in various forums, I’ve been struck by the number of people who recognize that America’s longstanding culture wars have become potentially fatal, as they prevent us from even beginning to address the reality of climate change and the threat it poses to our planet.
At a recent talk, an older man rose from audience and skeptically observed that I hadn’t said much in my talk about “Judeo-Christian values.” I explained that, while readers would find many of the figures in my book making robust statements about Judeo-Christian values, my point in writing it was to take a step back from either defining or defending Judeo-Christian values and to look instead at how they have been defined and defended in American public discourse since the 1930s.
A history of a political discourse required a particular methodology. I explained that it wouldn’t do for me to cherry-pick the evidence I liked; I had to offer a comprehensive account of how the discourse had changed over time. And I added that my hope in undertaking this study was that it might help us move beyond our cultural conflicts, in a moment where they’ve become simply too dangerous to continue.
The room erupted in applause. I’ve never experienced that in a question and answer session. It was a stunning moment of realization about the extent of our collective frustration with the linguistic parameters of democratic politics today. I do believe we can find new words, and with them, new ways of imagining our nation and its democracy. As in the past, however, it will take a new generation to help us find our way.
Let me close, then, with “A Prayer Amid Culture Wars and Climate Wars,” inspired by Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer and also incorporating a few of his most famous words from his meditation on democracy in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.
God, in this time of great uncertainty and bewildering changes, of culture wars and climate wars, please grant us the serenity to embrace the many lessons of the past; the courage to address the challenges of the present and future with every tool, old and new, at our disposal; and the wisdom to see both science and religion as valuable ways of knowing ourselves and our world. Help us remember that these powerful ways of knowing each have their strengths and weaknesses, governed as they are by the mysteries and contradictions inherent in human nature and the whole of your creation. As we employ them, help us to recognize the “finiteness and contingency which creeps into the statement of even the sublimest truth.” May we never forget that wisdom requires courage, curiosity, and humility in the face of both the verities and the uncertainties of our lives in this wondrous world.
Amen.