From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Love Bombs at Home
A new holy trinity tradition: Judeo-Christian-Islamic.
The U.S. is "one nation under God," but whose God? Judaism's Yahweh? Christianity's Christ? Islam's Allah? Since Sept. 11, the answer seems to be all of the above.
In the past few months, President Bush has visited a mosque, met with Muslim leaders and referred repeatedly to Islam as a "religion of peace." The House opened its current session with a prayer by Georgetown University's Muslim chaplain, and Muslim clerics are now honored guests at interfaith gatherings across America.
So much for the "clash of civilizations" prophesied by Harvard's Samuel Huntington and so fervently desired by Osama bin Laden, who in the videotape released yesterday praises Allah for the success of the Sept. 11 "martyrdom operation."
Rather than taking al Qaeda's bait and lashing out at Islam, the Bush administration has attacked only terrorism. When it comes to Islam, love bombing seems to be the U.S. government's strategy.
One result of this public display of affection is a historic reconfiguration of American religion. The U.S. has always been a religious paradox. Here the disestablishment of religion precipitated not the demise of Christianity but its expansion. Yet it also produced a country where Buddhists and Hindus worship alongside Baptists and Methodists.
Over the centuries, Americans have gradually widened the religious mainstream. Though the country is de jure secular, its population was from the beginning de facto Protestant. In the wake of two great immigration waves of Catholics and Jews from Europe, however, 20th-century Americans reconceived of their country as a "Judeo-Christian" nation in which Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism were three branches of a common faith.
Many people believe the "Judeo-Christian" tradition is as old as Jesus or Moses, but it is actually a product of the 1930s--when Nazism and fascism marched across Europe, and in the U.S. Father James Coughlin's Christian Front employed the term "Christian" in the service of anti-Semitism. Jewish writers such as Sholem Asch responded by arguing that only a united front of Christians and Jews could defeat "the Antichrist trinity of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini." They called that phalanx "Judeo-Christianity."
During the Cold War, "Judeo-Christianity" entered American politics. When Congress added "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, that God was the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and to worship him was to stand fast against godless communism.
In 2001, Judeo-Christianity has given way to a broader concept, which sees Judaism, Christianity and Islam as the three branches in America's patriotic piety. Now bin Laden's efforts to enlist Islam in his jihad against the West have prompted Americans to adopt the Muslim faith into the family of American religions.
It is too early to tell how the Judeo-Christian-Islamic concept will fare. The fastest growing religion in the U.S., Islam may soon pass Judaism as the country's second-largest. Moreover, as National Geographic notes in its cover story on "Abraham: Father of Three Faiths," Muslims do share with Christians and Jews a belief in one God who is both Lawgiver and Judge.
Nonetheless, Abrahamic America is already starting to stress at the seams. The Rev. Franklin Graham (Billy's son) recently joined other critics in protesting President Bush's cheery interpretation of Islam. Islam's God, he argued, is "not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion."
Other critics, however, see the Abrahamic canopy as too narrow, not too wide. If the U.S. is one nation under one Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, they ask, are Hindus (who in many cases affirm more than one god) and Buddhists (who typically affirm none) somehow un-American? University of Florida Prof. Vasudha Narayanan, a scholar of Hinduism who lost a family member in the World Trade Center attacks, was dismayed to see Hindu leaders excluded from the interfaith service at Washington's National Cathedral. "There is more to America than the 'Abrahamic' religions," she insists, "and people do go to places other than a church, synagogue, or mosque to pray."
Where this all goes is anyone's guess. Videotape images of Muslims gloating over civilians killed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon can't do much for the cause. But if the "Judeo-Christian-Islamic" tradition begins to take on the authority of antiquity, remember it got its start not with Moses or Jesus or Muhammad but with Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush.
Mr. Prothero, who teaches at Boston University, is the author of "Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America."
