Ceremonial Deism?

     Recently I've had a couple of what you might call Touchstone Magazine experiences.  The professors in the Great Books program at Faulkner University in Montgomery had invited me to speak to their students and interested people from the community on Shakespeare and Dante -- specifically, Dante's Purgatory.  Now Faulkner is affiliated with the Church of Christ.  Not only do they not believe in purgatory (purgation is a different matter), but even if they should be joining Dante's purgatorial mountaineers in singing the Te Deum or the Te lucis ante terminum, they would be doing it a capella, as the church does not allow accompaniment for hymns.  Whether they would allow an Italian Catholic to lead them in the Regina coeli is, I daresay, highly doubtful.  But I spoke about the poem and about its lessons for the Christian ascetic life, and felt entirely at home.  That was partly because of the great kindness and generosity of my hosts -- and I'll offer here a grateful tip of the hat to Dr. Robert Woods and Dr. Michael Young, who believe deeply in the value of studying the poets, philosophers, and theologians of our heritage.  But there was more: without making light of our denominational and theological differences, we professors and students were united in our Christian faith, or, more accurately, we were united in our commitment to follow Christ.  They were my brothers and sisters, and so how could I not feel at home?

     Saturday night our local homeschooling group celebrated a commencement for four graduating seniors.  It was held at a small non-affiliated Baptist-leaning church, with the pastor in attendance and his wife playing a medley of Christian hymns on the organ as people wandered in.  The church was packed: Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Catholics (lots of them), and some well-wishing unchurched cousins and in-laws.  Our president, a former Episcopalian, now attending an Assemblies of God church with his large family, introduced the commencement speaker, a professor of English at Providence College who had translated Dante.  I spoke about the meaning of that day, for us as homeschoolers and as Christians.  (The text was Psalm 127, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.")  We also did what cannot be done in any public school in this land, without risking "offense" from the professionally touchy, and hoots of derision from the students.  We sang all the verses to America, the Beautiful and My Country, 'Tis of Thee -- national hymns.  So it is that Christians of all manner of backgrounds and professions joined to invoke the Lord:

     Our fathers' God, to thee,
     Author of liberty,
     To thee we sing:
     Long may our land be bright
     With freedom's holy light;
     Protect us by thy might,
     Great God, our King!

     I'd like to pause to note how novel this form of ecumenism is -- and what it reveals about religion and the state.  Ten or fifteen years ago it would have been unimaginable, but the natural unitive force of Christianity, ironically set free at last by the cultural solvent of radical secularism, has caused us to set the family quarrels aside for future resolution -- I am not saying we should be indifferent about them or should whip up our denominations into an ecclesial souffle -- and treat one another as the brothers and sisters we really are.

     In addition, it strikes me as odd that precisely when religion in general and Christianity in particular is slandered as divisive by its very nature, because it is supposed to have been founded upon irrational and unarguable feeling, it is only in such a setting as our commencement that those hymns of national unity can be sung.  That is in part because of the secular state's apostasy from reason: having rejected natural law, and along with it the natural theology that suggests a Creator and a transcendent end for man, and that prompted the pseudo-Deist Benjamin Franklin to pray for the assistance of divine Providence, the secular state has nothing to appeal to beyond itself.  If it does not itself become an idol for worship, as happened in Germany and as the Soviets tried their damnedest to have happen in Russia, then there really is nothing left to unite a people, nothing to make them sing in patriotic gratitude.  The people are "united" only in their mutual agreement to be atomized, identifying themselves by their desires, and taking for granted that those desires are below the reach of rational analysis.

     A few years ago, one of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court attempted to defend the singing of such hymns at graduations by draining it of all meaning: it was, he said, an example of "ceremonial Deism," not to be confused with the claims of a full-blooded faith.  Well, I'm far from claiming God of our Fathers for a Roman Catholic hymn, but it is something more than ceremonial Deism, too.  Most people do not shed tears pro forma while singing.  These songs, though not denominational, were meant to stir real devotion and patriotism in the hearts of citizens who believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Their political import, too, was quite clear: only because we worship God can we claim that we need no king, whether that king be a man or a state.  We were defining ourselves as the kind of people whose freedom was a gift of God, and guaranteed by God.  Take God out of the hymn -- that is, remove all traces of natural law and natural theology from our civic lives, and our view of the state must change: we are a people who have agreed to enjoy a somewhat democratic society, but we are not committed to it, and there is nothing in the nature of reason or of man that prevents us from doing, as a people, anything we happen to desire.  Such a people become their own tyrants and their own slaves.  They must snicker when they come upon lines like these, in America, the Beautiful:

     Confirm thy soul in self-control,
     Thy liberty in law.