nationalism

Superman and the American Christian Nation

Superman is renouncing his U.S. citizenship and Mike Huckabee is none too happy about it.

Huckabee, responding to the comic book flap Sunday on Fox News, called it “disturbing” that the larger than life superhero would give up his citizenship.

“Well it is a comic book, but, you know it’s disturbing that Superman who has always been an American icon is now saying I’m not going to be a citizen,” he said. “I think it’s a part of a bigger trend of Americans almost apologizing for being Americans.”

Huckabee said he wouldn’t purchase the comic book, and that American kids should be taught that their country is great.

“I’m disturbed by this whole globalist trend. I think we ought to be teaching young Americans that they’re young Americans, that it means something to be an American,” he said. “There’s something great about this country.”

I’m not a comic book reader or fan, nor am I a scholar of comic culture, but, if we take comic books as pedagogical at some level then it’s interesting to think of the shift Superman’s newfound internationalism symbolizes. I’ve been working with 19th century schoolbooks lately and thinking about the ways these books constructed “the American” for readers. I was especially interested in geography books because of the ways the located a white/Protestant/Enlightened/moral American nation in a world full of lesser nations and people. (For more on these schoolbooks and there representations see this paper from the 2010 AAR meeting.) In these books the American was always superior to the foreign. But now, in the 21st century, Superman is offering a new view of the globe.

“I intend to speak before the United Nations tomorrow and inform them that I am renouncing my U.S. citizenship,” Superman says in a comic book released last week. “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy. ‘Truth, justice and the American way’ — it’s not enough anymore.”

The 19th century schoolbooks I’ve examined stressed the moral superiority of America. Superman is questioning this moral superiority and that’s what bothers Mike Huckabee so much. Furthermore, 19th century books connected American moral superiority to its Christianity. Children were taught that Protestantism was the basis for American freedom; for ‘truth, justice, and the American way.’ For folks like Huckabee, who believe that America was founded as a “Christian nation” (whatever that means), Superman’s repudiation (or maybe it’s a refudiation?) signals a shift in our national pedagogy. The “globalist trend” Huckabee decries questions the morality of a specifically American form of Christianity that is grafted into American nationalism. The nationalist message of a white/Protestant/Enlightened/morally superior/civlized America gives way to a global message of tolerance, diplomacy, and international justice. The American way just isn’t enough any more. Superman is not a tool of American policy. He now stands for global truth and international justice.

Now, I only wonder if Superman was dancing in the streets Sunday night.

Is there a difference between ideology and religion?

The U.S. Intellectual History blog has an interesting guest post from Corey Washington on “After Ideology.” Here’s a bit:

There is good scientific evidence that political reasoning is based on innate, non-rational principles. Nevertheless, the fact that people reason so badly about politics is striking given that people are intelligent and believe strongly that it is important for their political beliefs to be true. Religion may also be innate and non-rational, but if people are rational enough to give up God-oriented religion because there is not sufficient evidence, why do they not give up ideologies as well?

When I ask this question, the responses are quite similar to what you hear when you discuss atheism with a religious person. Atheists/agnostics cannot imagine how you could act ethically, or more broadly make sense of the world, without an ideology. That is, ideology seems to give many atheists/agnostics a value system just as religion does for believers. I believe ideologies also provide people with a community of like-minded friends, as do religious beliefs, and people are loath to alienate themselves from their friends. But if your goal is to have an accurate political view of the world, what use are such ideologies and communities if they are based on beliefs one has very little reason to think are true?

Those two sentences I bolded struck me. Of course ideology functions like religion! Washington is right on the money with this. But so was Emile Durkheim. Religion and ideology, as sketched by Washington here, both form what Durkheim called “moral communities” in his Elemental forms of Religious Life. What Washington doesn’t outline in his post, thought I suspect it is to be worked through in his book, is the relationship between ideology and religion. Too often religion becomes subsumed under ideology. Thus, socially constructed notions of the sacred are reduced down economics or psychology or what have you. Instead, religion and ideology should be placed alongside one another as products of cultural and social imagination and construction. For example, nationalism (and here I’m following my recent reading of Benedict Anderson) as an ideology has the incredible power to motivate men to die. Anderson begins his discussion of nationalism with a comparison to religion. They both share this same power-a power that will motivate humans to lay down their lives. To go back to Durkheim, we can call this socio-culturally produced power ‘the sacred.’ Questions then follow. How is the sacred produced in cultures and societies? What is sacred in an ideology or religion? How dies it function?How do humans move between or occupy overlapping sacralities (i.e. a communist nationalist Christian)?

However one approaches the question of ideology and religion and whether one wants to use the term ‘sacred’ or not, the goal should be to  avoid reducing the phenomenon down to a single ’cause’ and instead to uncover their messy cultural production and practice.