Robert Bellah’s Prophetic Religion in a Democratic Society (2006) is essay number 10 in the series Essays on Deepening the American Dream, sponsored by the Fetzer Institute. It is short, with the text only 25 pages in length, but it carries a lot of philosophical weight.
The idea behind the Fetzer Institute series was to explore if the “American Dream” is a thing of the past or if it has relevance today and has even more potential in the future. Reading the purpose of the series caused me to immediately go to the question of whether or not the American Dream was ever intended for, or accessible to, all Americans. Particularly in the current political climate where efforts are underway to disenfranchise some American citizens of their voting rights, there are many who would assert that the American Dream was intended only for certain people.
Bellah’s essay probes the question of religious freedom and its relationship to democratic participation. He drew attention to different interpretations of the 1st Amendment – one based on “no establishment” of religion (precluding a state church) and the other “free exercise” of religion which supported multiple religions and an individual’s free choice of which s/he would embrace. Bellah’s own perspective is that voicing religious perspectives is legitimate in public life and, in addition, a belief that “public consensus should arise from a discussion involving many religious and secular views” (p. 1).
American history has shaped views of religion and democracy in important ways, including the fact that Protestantism dominated or influenced Catholicism and Judaism in its early days, creating a loosely understood tolerance across religious differences. However, American culture’s focus on individualism, and particularly avoidance of state intervention, has undermined one of the principles common to all the Abrahamic faiths and others as well – solidarity and concern for the common good. Bellah’s view is that, “It would be hard to imagine anything more secular, more opposed to the teachings of Christianity…” (p. 9) than the modern social values of, “individualism, self-sufficiency, and localism” (p. 9) that are construed to supersede one’s compassion and care for one’s neighbor.
The troubling chasm of wealth inequality that now exists in the U.S.A. has deepened over time through involuntary poverty. This involuntary poverty has been perpetuated through the “systematic dismantling of the public services that help the poor, most notably in our public education system and in our health system, while income has been dramatically redistributed to the wealthiest” (p. 17).
Bellah proposed that a life commitment to sufficiency, based on seeking a comfortable life of reason, is an important way to begin to correct the involuntary poverty experienced by so many. He advises that, “a life based economically on sufficiency rather than the expectation of ever-increasing income is, in today’s world, a form of voluntary poverty” (p. 22). Such a life of service, “might allow time for genuine creativity in art or thought” (p. 23) that will drive an enhanced American Dream that is available to all, rather than just a few. Seeking life sufficiency is where Bellah proposed people of faith can put their values in action in ways that not only redeem the individual but also society at large.
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