God''s Presence, Civil Religion, and Summer Reading

Many of the contributors at the Immanent Frame were asked to comment on their summer reading. Their responses are well worth reading – many good suggestions. One of the books I enjoyed the most this summer is An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith by Barbara Taylor Brown. The book details the many ways we encounter God (or should encounter God if we pay attention) in places far beyond the walls of a church building. Stephen H. Webb traces God’s presence in a different way in a 2004 book: American Providence. Webb thinks that God works through history and that God is working through the U.S. to promote democracy around the world.

I think liberal theology must settle on a less confident view of how God works in human history. It is quite difficult for me to accept Webb’s sunny view of the U.S. role in the world. Indeed, I find Noam Chomsky’s characterization of the U.S. role to be far more compelling. Another reaction I had to Webb’s book is that the link of God to American Providence is a part of what the Republicans are offering up as a part of our civil religion. This led me to explore Robert Bellah’s essays on civil religion (in the Robert Bellah Reader) where I discovered that it was a major point of his initial essay on civil religion and many of his subsequent essays to combat the kind of views entertained by Webb. For me, at least, Bellah’s essays are a joy to read. Similarly, Sidney Mead’s The Nation With the Soul of a Church is an oldie, but goodie in that it has insightful things to say about the role of civil religion in democratic life.