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Is There a Common American Culture?

Author(s): Robert N. Bellah


Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Autumn, 1998), pp.
613-625
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1466136
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Journalof theAmericanAcademyof Religion66/3

AESSAY
Is

There

American

Common

Culture?,

Robert N. Bellah

I MIGHTBEGINMY talk this morning somewhatfacetiouslyby asking


the question, not whetherthere is a common Americanculture,but how
is it that a plenary session of the American Academy of Religion is
devoted to this question in a society with so powerful and monolithic a
common culture as ours?The answer,however,is obvious: it has become
part of the common culture to ask whetherthere is a common culture in
America.
K.AnthonyAppiah,Professorof Afro-AmericanStudiesand Philosophy at Harvard,in a review of Nathan Glazer'srecent book WeAre All
MulticulturalistsNow (whose very title makesthe point) quotes the book
as saying"TheNexis database of majornewspapersshowsno referenceto
multiculturalismas late as 1988, a mere 33 items in 1989, and only after
that a rapid rise-more than 100 items in 1990, more than 600 in 1991,
almost 900 in 1992, 1200 in 1993,and 1500 in 1994.. ."(7). Appiahadds,
"Whenit comes to diversityit seems we all march to the beat of a single
drummer"(32). Thereis somethingvery congenialto multiculturalismin
common Americanculture,but such congenialityis not to be assumedas
naturalor sharedin all societies today.It is worth looking at the contrast
case of France.Rodney Benson, a graduatestudent in my department,is
RobertN. Bellahis Elliott Professorof Sociology,Emeritus,at the Universityof California,Berkeley,
Berkeley,CA 94720-1980.

* This
on November
asa plenaryaddressattheAARmeetingin SanFrancisco
22,
essaywasdelivered
1997.

613

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Journal of the AmericanAcademyof Religion

writing a most interestingdissertation,which, among other things comparesthe fate of multiculturalismin Franceand the U.S.Benson describes
a nascent French multiculturalismof the late 1970s and early 1980s as
ultimately being rejectedby virtually the entire ideological spectrum in
favorof a universalisticrepublicanismin the late 1980s,just when multiculturalismin the U.S.was taking off. Why Americanculturehas been so
singularlyreceptiveto multiculturalismas an ideology is a point to which
I will return.
But, first, a sociological point about why there not only is but has to
be a common culturein America:culturedoes not float free from institutions. A powerful institutional orderwill carrya powerful common culture. An exampleof just how importantthis relationbetween cultureand
institutions is comes from the recentreunificationof Germany.In the last
daysof the GermanDemocraticRepublicthe protesterschanted"Wirsind
ein Volk,"and the chant stirred euphoria among West Germansas well.
But the painful and unexpected experience of living together, as made
vivid to me by an outstandingHarvarddoctoraldissertationfiled earlier
this yearby AndreasGlaeser,using the integrationof East and West German police officers into a unified police force in Berlin as a microcosm,
showedthat they werenot, afterall "ein Volk,"but indeed "zwei'"It wasn't
just that the "Ossies"and the "Wessies"("Easterners"and "Westerners")
had differentviews on common problems,they had differentand to some
degree mutually unintelligible ways of thinking about the world altogether.Forty-fiveyearsof radicallydifferentinstitutionalordershad created two cultureswhich to this day arevery far from united, althoughthe
experienceof a unified institutional order will, almost certainly,though
not without time and pain, ultimatelyreunitethem.
The United States,surely,has an exceptionallypowerfulinstitutional
order.The state in America,even though it is multi-leveledand, to a degree,decentralized,has an enormousimpacton all our lives. Forexample,
the shift in marriagelaw in the late sixties and earlyseventiestoward"nofault divorce"was a response to but also an impetus for the emergence
of "divorceculture" in America as a serious competitor to "marriage
culture."The state is even responsibleto a degree for the construction of
multiculturalismthroughthe little boxes that must be checkedon a myriad of forms. Haven'tyou everbeen tempted to check them all or to leave
them all empty?If the state intrudes in our lives in a thousand ways, the
market is even more intrusive. There is very little that Americans need
that we can produce for ourselves any more. We are dependent on the
market not only for goods but for many kinds of service. Our cultural
understandingof the world is shaped every time we enter a supermarket
or a mall. I taught a senior seminarof about twenty students this spring,

Bellah:Is Therea CommonAmericanCulture?

615

roughly divided into one-fourth Asian-American,one-fourth Hispanic,


one-fourth African-American,and one-forth Anglo. What was remarkablewas how easilythey talkedbecauseof how much they shared.Beyond
the ever-presentstate and market,they sharedthe immediate experience
of coping with a vast state university,with its demands and its incoherence.
Education,which is linked largelythough not exclusivelyto the state,
and television (and increasinglythe Internet) linked to the market are
enormouslypowerfulpurveyorsof common culture,socializersnot only
of children but of all of us most of our lives. Not only are we exposed
from infancy to a monoculture, we are exposed to it monolingually.The
culturalpower of American English is overwhelming,and no language,
exceptunderthe most unusualcircumstances,has everbeen able to withstand it, which is what makesthe EnglishOnly movementsuch a joke. As
Appiah notes, 90 percent of California-bornHispanic childrenof immigrant parents have native fluency in English and in the next generation
only 50 per cent of them still speak Spanish. One more generation and
you can forget about Spanish.When third generationAsian-Americans
come to college,they haveto learn Chineseor Japanesein languageclasses
just like anyoneelse-they don'tbring those languageswith them. Appiah
contrastsour societywith his own experiencegrowingup in Ghanawhere
there were three languages spoken in the household: English, Twi, and
Navrongo. "Ghana,"he writes, "with a population smaller than that of
New YorkState, has severaldozen languages in active daily use and no
one languagethat is spoken at home-or even fluentlyunderstood-by a
majority of the population" (31). Ghana is multilingual and therefore
multicultural,in a way that we, except for first generation immigrants,
have neverbeen. When language,which is the heart of culture,goes, then
so, in any deep sense, does culturaldifference.I don't say identity,which
is something I will come back to, but culture. Seriousmulticulturaleducationwould begin by teachingnativeEnglishspeakersa secondlanguage,
but that, unlike most of the rest of the world, almost neverhappensin the
United States.The half-heartedeffort to teach Spanishin Californiapublic schools results in very few native English speakerswith a secondary
fluency in Spanish.Why don't most Americansspeak anotherlanguage?
Becausewe don't have to-everyone in the world speaksEnglish-or so
we think. Tell me about multiculturalism.(The truth is that American
cultureand AmericanEnglishareputting their stamp on everyother culture in the world today.)
There are exceptions, though they are statisticallysmall, but I had
better talk about them. Enclavesof genuine culturaldifference,centered
on a languagedifferentfrom English, can persist, or even emerge, under

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special conditions: where socio-economic status is low and residential


segregationis effective.A particularlypoignant exampleis the emergence
among one of the oldest groups of Englishspeakersin America,AfricanAmericans,of enclavesof BlackEnglishdialectsin a few inner cities in the
northeasternU.S.that are mutuallyunintelligiblewith standardAmerican
English. This can happen under conditions of hyper-segregationwhere
opportunities to participatein the larger society are almost completely
denied. NativeAmericanlanguagessurviveon a few reservations,though
many are dying out, even with strenuousefforts to maintainthem. Since
thereis much less hypersegretationof Hispanicsor Asiansthan of Blacks,
enclavesof Spanishor Korean,or otherAsian languages,havethe generational transienceof, say,Polish or Italiana hundredyearsago.
If I am right, there is an enormously powerful common culture in
America,and it is carriedpredominantlyby the marketand the state and
by their agenciesof socialization:television and education.What institutions might withstand that pressureand sustain genuine culturaldifference? In simpler societies kinship and religious communities might do
so, but in our society families and churchesor synagoguesare too colonized by the marketand the state to provide much of a buffer.They may
give a nuance,an inflection,to the common culture,but familiesand even
religious communities are almost alwaystoo fragile to provide a radical
alternative.Nevertheless,such nuancesand inflections are important,not
only in their own right, but because they can provide the wedge through
which criticism of the common culture, and the possibilityof alteringit,
can occur.
What, then, is the content of this common culture?If we realizethat
the marketand the statein Americaarenot and haveneverbeen antithetical, and that the statehas had the primaryfunction, for conservativesand
liberalsalike, of maximizing market opportunities, I believe I can safely
borrowterminologyfrom Habitsof theHeartand saythat a dominant element of the common cultureis whatwe calledutilitarianindividualism.In
terms of historical roots this orientation can be traced to a powerful
Anglo-Americanutilitariantraditiongoing back at least as far as Hobbes
and Locke, although it operatestoday quite autonomously,without any
necessary referenceto intellectualhistory. Utilitarian individualismhas
alwaysbeen moderatedby whatwe calledexpressiveindividualism,which
has its roots in Anglo-AmericanRomanticism,but which has picked up
many influencesalong the way from Europeanethnic, African-American,
Hispanic, and Asian influences. Here, too, the bland presentism of contemporaryAmericanculture obliteratesits own history. Our Anglo students do not come to collegewith a deep knowledgeof JaneAustenor Nathaniel Hawthorneany more than our Japanese-Americanstudentsbring

Bellah:Is Therea CommonAmericanCulture?

617

a knowledgeof LadyMurasakior Natsume Soseki.What they bring, they


bringin common: OprahWinfrey,ER,Seinfeld,Nike, Microsoft,the NBA
and the NFL.If the common cultureis predominantlyEuro-American,or,
more accurately,Anglo-American,in its roots, the enormous pressureof
the marketeconomy,and the mass media and mass educationorientedto
it, obliteratethe genuine heritageof Anglo-American,European,African,
and Asian culturewith equalthoroughness.
And yet, and yet. .. Nestled in the very core of utilitarianand expressive individualism is something very deep, very genuine, very old, very
American,somethingwe did not quite see or sayin Habits.HereI come to
somethingthat will be of especialinterestto this audience,for that core is
religious.In Habitswe quoteda famouspassagein Toqueville'sDemocracy
in America:"I think I can see the whole destiny of Americacontained in
the first Puritanwho landed on those shores"(279). Then we went on to
name John Winthrop, following Tocqueville'sown predilection, as the
likeliest candidatefor being that first Puritan.Now I am readyto admit,
althoughregretfully,that we, and Tocqueville,were probablywrong. That
firstPuritanwho containedour whole destinymight havebeen, as we also
half intimated in Habits,Anne Hutchinson, but the strongercandidate,
becausewe know so much more about him, is RogerWilliams.
RogerWilliams,banishedfrom the MassachusettsBayColonyby John
Winthrop,founderof Providenceand of the Rhode IslandColony,was, as
everyoneknows, a Baptist.The Baptistsin seventeenth-centuryNew Englandwere a distinct minority,but they went on to become, togetherwith
other sectarianProtestants,a majorityin Americanreligiousculturefrom
the early nineteenth century. As Seymour Martin Lipset has recently
pointed out, we are the only North Atlantic society whose predominant
religioustraditionis sectarianratherthan an establishedchurch(1996:1920; for a detailed contrast of the influence of church and sect religion in
America, see Baltzell). I think this is something enormously important
about our cultureand that it has, believeit or not, a greatdeal to do with
why our society is so hospitableto the ideology,if not the reality,of multiculturalism.
What was so important about the Baptists,and other sectarianssuch
as the Quakers,was the absolute centralityof religious freedom, of the
sacrednessof individualconsciencein mattersof religiousbelief.Wegenerallythink of religiousfreedom as one of many kinds of freedom,many
kinds of human rights, first voiced in the EuropeanEnlightenment,and
echoing around the world ever since. But Georg Jellinek,Max Weber's
friend,and, on these matters,his teacher,publisheda book in 1895 called
translatedinto Englishin
derMenschen-und Bargerrechte,
Die Erklidrung
1901as TheDeclarationof theRightsof Man and of Citizens,which argued

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Journal of the AmericanAcademyof Religion

that the ultimate source of all modern notions of human rights is to be


found in the radicalsects of the ProtestantReformation,particularlythe
Quakersand Baptists.Of this developmentWeberwrites, "Thusthe consistent sect gives rise to an inalienablepersonal right of the governed as
againstany power,whetherpolitical,hierocraticor patriarchal.Suchfreedom of conscience may be the oldest Right of Man-as Jellinek has
argued convincingly, at any rate it is the most basic Right of Man because it comprises all ethically conditioned action and guaranteesfreedom from compulsion, especially from the power of the state. In this
sense the concept was as unknown to antiquityand the Middle Ages as it
was to Rousseau... " Weberthen goes on to say that the other Rights of
Man were laterjoined to this basic right, "especiallythe right to pursue
one's own economic interests, which includes the inviolability of individual property,the freedom of contract,and vocationalchoice"(1209). I
will haveto returnto the link to economic freedom,but firstI want to talk
about the relationbetween the sectariannotion of the sacrednessof conscience and what we mean by multiculturalismtoday, starting with the
BaptistRogerWilliams.
It is worth rememberingthat one of the sources of Williams'sproblems was his unhappinesswith John Winthrop'sassertion that the Massachusetts Bay Colonists were building "a city upon a hill,"because, in
Williams'sview, it was somebodyelse'shill!The hill belonged to the native
Americans,and if the otherPuritanswereinclinedto overlookthat, Roger
Williamswasn't.
When Williams was banished from MassachusettsBay in Januaryof
1636, he probablywould not have survived the winter in Rhode Island
without the "courtesy"of the Indians, with whom he had, not surprisingly,an excellentrelationship.Of this courtesyhe wrote, in his charming
doggerel:
Thecourteouspaganshallcondemn
Uncourteous
Englishmen,
Wholivelikefoxes,bearsandwolves,
Orlion in his den.
Letnonesingblessingsto theirsouls,
Forthattheycourteousare:
Thewildbarbarians
withno more
Thannaturego so far.
If nature's
sonsbothwildandtame
Humaneandcourteousbe,
Howill becomesit sonsof God
Towanthumanity.(Miller:61-62)

Bellah:Is Therea CommonAmericanCulture?

619

Williams would have nothing to do with the idea that Europeanswere


superior to Indians. He wrote, "Nature knows no difference between
Europeand Americans[thatis, NativeAmericans]in blood, birth,bodies,
God having of one blood made all mankind (Acts 17) and all by nature
being children of wrath (Ephesians2)." (Miller:64)And he admonished
his fellow Englishmen:
Boastnot,proudEnglish,of thybirthandblood,
ThybrotherIndianis bybirthasgood.
Of onebloodGodmadehimandtheeandall,
Aswise,asfair,as strong,aspersonal.
Bynature,wrath'shisportion,thineno more,
Tillgracehis soulandthinerestore.
Makesurethysecondbirth,elsethoushaltsee
Heavenopeto Indianswild,butshutto thee.(Miller:64)
Weknow that the passageof the Virginiaact for religiousfreedomand
of the FirstAmendmentto the Constitution (and it was no accident,following Jellinekand Weber,that it was indeed the FirstAmendment), of
which I will have more to say in a moment, depended on an alliance of
enlightenment Deists like Jeffersonand Madison, and sectarians,largely
Baptists. The fundamental Baptist position on the sacredness of conscience relativeto governmentaction is brought out in a passagediscovered by Lipsetin TheFirstNew Nation. The idea must seem quaint to us
today,but in 1810 Congress passed a law decreeing that mail should be
deliveredon Sundays.In 1830a Senatecommittee reportednegativelyon
a bill to abolish Sunday mail delivery.The report, written by Richard
Johnson,a Kentuckysenatorand an activeBaptistleader,arguedthat laws
prohibitingthe governmentfrom providing service on Sundaywould be
an injusticeto irreligiouspeople or non-Christiansand would constitute
a specialfavorto Christians.The reportspelled out these principles:
Theconstitutionregardstheconscienceof theJewassacredasthatof the
Christian,andgivesno moreauthorityto adopta measureaffectingthe
conscienceof a solitaryindividualthanthatof a wholecommunity.. If
Congressshalldeclarethefirstdayof theweekholy,it willnotsatisfythe
Itwilldissatisfybothand,consequently,
convert
JewnortheSabbatarian.
neither... It mustbe recollectedthat,in the earliestsettlementof this
country,the spiritof persecution,whichdrovethe pilgrimsfromtheir
nativehomes,wasbroughtwiththemto theirnewhabitations;
andthat
some Christianswerescourgedand othersput to deathfor no other
crimethandissentingfromthedogmasof theirrulers...
If a solemnact of legislationshallin onepoint definethe God or
pointout to the citizenone religiousduty,it maywith equalpropriety
defineeverypartof divinerevelationandenforceeveryreligiousobliga-

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Journal of the AmericanAcademyof Religion

ofthe
ofworship,
theendowment
tion,eventotheformsandceremonies
of theclergy...
andthesupport
church,
to all-to theJeworGenItisthedutyof thisgovernment
to affirm
of ourbenigandadvantages
tile,Pagan,orChristian-theprotection
nantinstitutions
on Sunday,
aswellas everydayof theweek.(Lipset
1963:164-165)

My fellowsociologistof religion,PhillipE. Hammond,has written


a remarkable
book, WithLiberty
forAll:Freedom
ofReligionin theUnited
States,whichI havebeenprivilegedto seein manuscript,
detailingthevicissitudesof this sectarianProtestantconcernfor the sacrednessof the
individualconscienceas it got embodiedin the FirstAmendmentto the
Constitutionandhasbeengiveneverwidermeaningby thejudicialsystem, especiallythe SupremeCourt,eversince.ForHammond,the key
movewasto extendthe sacrednessof consciencefromreligiousbeliefto
A keymomentin thistransformaanyseriouslyheldconvictionwhatever.
tion wasthe Court'sdecisionto extendthe rightof conscientiousobjection to militaryserviceto thosewhosebeliefswerenot in anytraditional
sensereligious,butwereferventlyheldnonetheless.Individualconviction
and consciencehavebecomethe standardsrelativeto whichevenlongestablishedpracticescan be overturned.Hammondarguesthat Roev.
Wadeis an exampleof the extensionof this principle,andthatits logic
will ultimatelyleadto the legitimationof gaymarriage.In the courseof
the extensionof the sacrednessof individualconsciencefromreligionto
the entirerangeof belief,Hammondargues,the sacredcoreof the consciencecollective,
theverysacredcenterof oursociety,whatmightevenbe
calledour civil religion,has movedfromthe churchesto the judiciary.
Whetherwe needto go thatfarwithHammondcouldbe argued,but he
hassurelyuncoveredsomethingveryimportantaboutoursociety,somethe sacredness
thingdeeperthanutilitarianor expressiveindividualism,
of the individualconscience,the individualperson.And,I mightaddas
an aside,here,in the city of SanFrancisco,whereyou can probablydo
almostanythingwithinreasonandstillnot raisean eyebrow,it is allultimatelythanksto the Baptists,eventhoughsome Baptiststodayfind it
ratherupsetting!
It is withthisbackground
in mindthatI thinkwe canunderstand
why
multiculturalism
as an ideologyis so appealingto Americanstoday,but
A commonculturedoesnot
whytheemphasison cultureis so misleading.
meanthatwe areallthe same.Commonculturesarenormallyrivenwith
andconflict.Thosewho imaginethatin Habitsof
argument,controversy,
theHeartwe werearguingforhomogeneous"communities"
languishing
in blandconsensuscouldhardlyhavegottenus morewrong.Difference
betweencommunities(andwe must also rememberthat thereare dif-

Bellah:Is Therea CommonAmericanCulture?

621

ferences within communities, starting with the family,which someone


recentlydefined as "theplacewe go to fight"),even when the culturaldifferencesbetween them are remarkablythin, such differencescan give rise
to significant differences in identity. Identity is not the same thing as
culture, but it can be just as important. RememberBosnia, where Serbs,
Croats,and Muslimssharea common languageand probably99 per cent
of their culture, but where the memory of ancestralreligion, in a highly
secularizedsociety,has led to murderousconflicts of quite recentlyconstructedpoliticalidentities.'
And yet in Americathe rise of identitypolitics on a local or a national
scaleprobablysignifiessomethingelse, somethingmuch closerto the core
of our common culture.Again,AnthonyAppiahhas put it well:
Butif we explorethesemomentsof tension[betweengroupsin contemporary America] we discover an interesting paradox. The growing
salience of raceand gender as social irritants,which may seem to reflect
the call of collectiveidentities,is a reflection,as much as anythingelse, of
the individual'sconcern for dignity and respect.As our society slouches
on toward a fuller realization of its ideal of social equality, everyone
wants to be taken seriously--to be respected, not "dissed."Because on
many occasions disrespect still flows from racism, sexism, and homophobia, we respond,in the name of all blackpeople, all women, all gays,
as the case may be... But the truth is that what mostly irritatesus in
these moments is that we, as individuals,feel diminished.
And the troublewith appealto culturaldifferenceis that it obscures
ratherthan diminishesthis situation. It is not blackculturethat the racist disdains, but blacks. There is no conflict of visions between black
and white cultures that is the source of racial discord. No amount of
knowledge of the architecturalachievementsof Nubia or Kushguarantees respect for African-Americans.No AfricanAmerican is entitled to
greaterconcern becausehe is descendedfrom a people who createdjazz
or producedToniMorrison.Cultureis not the problem,and it is not the
solution. (35-36)

1 WilliamFinneganin a fascinating
article(1997)describesthe hungerforidentitybut theshalforit in AntelopeValley,
a recentlydeveloped
suburbof LosAngeles.For
lownessof culturalresources
to
example,hementionsa girlnamedMindywhobecamea Mormonbutbeforethatshehad"wanted
becomeJewish.Butthathadturnedout to be too muchwork.Becominga Mormonwasrelatively
andbecamea Nazi,in the
easy.AllthiswasbeforeMindygotaddictedto crystalmethamphetamine
a sociologistatAntelopeValley
"Martha
ninthgrade"(62-63).Finnegan's
articleconcludes:
Wengert,
arenotyetcommunities.
Kidsareleft
College,said,'Thisareahasgrownso fastthatneighborhoods
withthisintenselongingforidentification.'
andallmannerof 'beliefs'arise
Gangs,racenationalism,
forthe
fromthislonging.I thoughtof DebbieTurner's
Mindy'senthusiasm
inabilityto comprehend
Dr.Wengert
likesof CharlesMansonandAdolfHitler.'TheKidsreachoutto thesehistorical
figures,'
Thereareno booksat
said.'Butit'sthroughTV,throughcomicbooks,throughword-of-mouth.
Theseidentitiesthatlackanyculturaldeptharenonethehome,no ideas,no senseof history'"(78).
lesspowerfulenoughto be literallymattersof lifeanddeathfortheyoungpeopleinvolved.

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Journal of the AmericanAcademyof Religion

If the problem is disrespect for the dignity of the person, then the
solution is to go back to that deepest core of our tradition,the sacredness
of the conscienceand person of everyindividual.And that is what a great
deal of the ideology of multiculturalismis reallysaying:We are all different; we are all unique. Respectthat.
But there is another problem, a very big problem, and its solution is
hardto envision. Justwhen we are moving to an evergreatervalidationof
the sacrednessof the individualperson, our capacityto imagine a social
fabric that would hold individuals together is vanishing. This is in part
because of the fact that the religious individualismthat I have been describingis linked to an economic individualismwhich, ironically,knows
nothing of the sacrednessof the individual. Its only standardis money,
and the only thing more sacredthan money is more money. What economic individualismdestroys,and what our kind of religiousindividualism cannot restore, is solidarity,a sense of being members of the same
body. In most other North Atlanticsocieties a tradition of an established
church, however secularized,provides some notion that we are in this
thing together, that we need each other, that our precious and unique
selves aren'tgoing to make it all alone. That is a traditionsingularlyweak
in our country,though Catholicsand some high church Protestantshave
tried to provide it. The trouble is, as Chestertonput it, in Americaeven
the Catholics are Protestants.And we also lack a tradition of Social Democracy such as most Europeannations possess, not unrelated to the
establishedchurch tradition, in which there is some notion of a government that bearsresponsibilityfor its people. But here it was not Washington and Hamilton who won but Jeffersonand Madison, with their rabid
hatredof the state,who carriedthe day.
RogerWilliamswas a moral geniusbut he was a sociologicalcatastrophe. After he founded the FirstBaptistchurch,he left it for a smallerand
purer one. That, too, he found inadequate,so he founded a church that
consisted only of himself, his wife, and one other person. One wonders
how he stood even those two. Since Williams ignored secular society,
money took overin RhodeIslandin a way thatwould not be true in Massachusetts or Connecticut for a long time. Rhode Island under Williams
gives us an earlyand local exampleof what happenswhen the sacredness
of the individualis not balancedby any sense of the whole or concern for
the common good. In Habits of the Heart we spoke of the second languages that must complement our language of individualism if we are
not to slip into total incoherence. I was not very optimistic then; I am
even less so today.Almost the only time this society has ever gotten itself
togetherhas been in time of war,and I am sure that my understandingof
America is deeply formed by experiencingthe depression as a child and
the SecondWorldWaras an adolescent.It is not easyto hearthose second

Bellah:Is Therea CommonAmericanCulture?

623

languagestoday,andsomeof thosewhoaretoo youngto havesharedmy


experiencesseem hardlyable to recognizethem even when they hear
them.Butthe poignantrealityis that,withouta minimaldegreeof solidarity,the projectof evergreaterrecognitionof individualdignitywill
collapsein on itself.Underthe ideologicalfacadeof individualfreedom,
the realitywill be, is alreadybecoming,a societyin whichwealth,ever
in a smallminority,is theonlyaccessto realfreedom.
moreconcentrated
"Themarket"will determinethe livesof everyoneelse. So, muchas we
owethe Baptists,andI wouldbe the firstto affirmit, we cannotlook to
them for a wayout. Allyou haveto do is look at the two Baptistsin the
WhiteHouseto seethat.Andyes,I knowHillaryis a Methodist-I meant
ClintonandGore.
But,if I canpullmyselfbackfromthe abyss,whichsometimesin my
moodis almosttheonlythingI cansee,I candescribeevennow
Jeremiah
resourcesandpossibilitiesfor a differentoutcomethanthe one toward
whichwe seemto be heading.Bythe timewe cameto publishthe 1996
editionof Habitsof theHeartwe realizedthateventhe biblicalandcivic
hadmade
republicantraditions,whichwe hadcalled"secondlanguages,"
theirown contributionto the kindof individualismthatwe hadlargely
blamedon utilitarianism
andexpressivism
in the firstedition.Thisdoes
not mean,however,thatthe secondlanguageshaven'tstillmuchto teach
us, evenif whatwehaveto learnfromthemmustpassthroughthefiresof
self-criticismfromwithinthesetraditionsthemselves.Oursituationis
curiouslysimilarto thatof post-CommunistEasternEuropein at least
onerespect.VaclavHavelandothershaveopposedaneffortto distinguish
too sharplybetweenthe guiltyandthe innocentin the formerCommunistregimes,sinceit wastheverynatureof thoseregimesto drawalmost
everyoneinto somekindof complicity.Theline betweenguiltandinnocenceranthroughratherthanbetweenindividuals,it wasargued.I think
of thebannerin anEastGermanchurchshortlyafterthefallof theBerlin
wallwhichread:"WeareCainandAbel."Withrespectto ourAmerican
evenin itsmostdestructive
individualism,
forms,it is uselessto tryto sort
out the good guysfromthe badguys.Weareall complicit,yet changeis
neverimpossible.
HereI wouldliketo returnto thereferenceto nuancesandinflections
in our commonculturethatI madeearlyin this essay.Recognizingthat
we areall,of whateverraceandgender,temptedto exaltourownimperial
egosaboveallelse,we canstillfindthosesocialcontextsandthosetradiwhichcanmoderatethategoismandoffera differtionsof interpretation
ent understanding
of personalfulfillment.Everychurchandsynagogue
thatremindsus thatit is throughloveof Godandneighborthatwe will
find ourselveshelpsto mitigateour isolation.Everytime we engagein
activitiesthathelpto feedthe hungry,cloththe naked,giveshelterto the

624

Journal of the AmericanAcademyof Religion

homeless, we are becoming more connected to the world. Everytime we


act politically to keep the profit principle out of sphereswhere it ought
not to set the norms of action we help to preservewhat JiirgenHabermas
calls the lifeworld (1987), and, incidentally,to prevent the market from
destroyingthe moral foundations which make itself possible. It must be
obvious from the exampleof recenthistorythatwithoutthe legaland ethical culture of public morality a marketeconomy turns into Mafiagangsterism.We still have more of what has come to be called "socialcapital"
than many other nations, but it cannot be taken for granted.It survives
only when we in our religious and civic groupswork strenuouslyto conserveand increaseit.
It is the specialresponsibilityof those of us who areintellectualsto appropriateand develop our culturalresources,even while criticizingthem.
William Dean in his The Religious Critic in American Culture has given us

a splendid example of the work that needs to be done. He drawsheavily


from the tradition of American Pragmatism,especiallyWilliam James,
and from contemporary thinkers as diverse as George Lindbeck and
CornelWest,to arguefor the necessityof conventions, and indeed sacred
conventions, for a viable culture. He speaks of the "religiouscritic"as a
public intellectual,situated not just in the universitybut in third sector
institutions,includingchurches,workingto criticize,but also to reclaima
viable myth of America.
Thus, I still believe that there are places in the churches, and other
religiousand civic organizations,and even nooks and cranniesin the universities,to which we might look. But the hour is late and the problems
mount. In this hour of need in our strangerepublic,it is up to us to teach
the truth as we discernit.

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