This evening at my church a missionary preparing to go to Cambodia noted the distinction between Cambodia’s official religion, Buddhism, and the daily faith of Cambodians, animism. Animists believe in multitudinous spirits and demons which have the power to bless those who respect them and curse those who do not. Animists make sacrifices to appease the spirits’ wrath and request their protection. Buddhism may shape the religious rhetoric used by Cambodian animists, but by and large it is a veneer covering a deep rooted folk tradition.
It is easy to think of syncretic relationships between folk religion and established religions in the developing world (e.g. Santa Muerte (“Saint Death“) in Mexico and Vodou in Haiti). But can we locate folk religion in American religious history? The question is complicated by the nature of animism, which appears to be defined in contrast with an established religion (à la Cambodian Buddhism and Mexican Catholicism). Can syncretistic folk religion exist in a country without a legal religious establishment?
Historians have found plenty of evidence of animistic practices from a time and place when America did have an established church: Puritan New England. Richard Godbeer’s The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England examines the practice of folk magic in New England and the role it may have played in the Salem witchcraft trials. (Keith Thomas did the same for Old England in Religion and the Decline of Magic.)
It seems clear that religious historians studying colonial America need to develop an understanding of folk religion, magic, and animism. But should folk religion change the way that scholars of religion in the United States perceive lived religion? Can we find evidence of folk religion and animism in nineteenth and twentieth century American Protestantism and Catholicism?
Great thoughts, Paul. It seems to me that Robert Bellah and Martin Marty have already identified a folk religion (of sorts) in contemporary U.S. religious history: civil religion. If we take our cue from Don Yoder’s definition of folk religion (“the totality of all those views and practices of religion that exist among the people apart from and alongside the strictly theological and liturgical forms of the official religion”), we can see how the national self-worship that Bellah/Marty identified as the core of American civil religion constitutes a folk religion of sorts.
I’m curious about how we perceive this folk religion in U.S. Protestantism as problematic. Certainly within one of the fields I study (Anabaptism), scholars and theologians find the contemporary conflation of Christianity and American nationalism troubling. But should those within non-Anabaptist traditions (i.e., those traditions without a clearly defined two-kingdom theology) find such confluence similarly troubling? And without a doubt Anabaptists have their own problematic folk religions/civil religions (for more on this, see Goshen College professor Steve Miller’s essay at Religion in American History – http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2010/03/goshen-college-gets-civil-religion.html) that need to be addressed.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post!
I’d recommend the monster tome D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (1998)
Devin, thanks for pointing me toward Don Yoder. I was not familiar with his work.
I’m not sure though if civil religion fits the definition of animism as the belief that all of nature is inhabited by spirits that have influence over human affairs. I would quickly agree with you that civil religion is a powerful force in American society. I’m not sure how civil religion would fits exactly. Is it a folk religion, outside the “forms of the official religion”? Or is it the official religion itself (in a cultural sense)?
Food for thought. Thanks for the contribution!
Paul: Sorry for the confusion — I wasn’t suggesting that civil religion fits the definition of animism; alternatively, I was attempting to answer the question you posed (“Can syncretistic folk religion exist in a country without a legal religious establishment?”) in relation to my areas of interest (20th century American religious history, Anabaptism, etc.). As I was attempting to demonstrate, I believe civil religion functions that way in the context of the United States.
But in answer to the question you pose in your comment: I see the point you’re trying to make; certainly scholars have been debating the function of civil religion for decades. I would say that, in my assessment, civil religion does operate “outside the ‘forms of the official religion,’” especially in many fundamentalist and evangelical communities. For instance, in Bellah’s assessment of civil religion as “the official religion itself (in a cultural sense),” he argues that the term “God” functions not necessarily in describing the Judeo-Christian deity (Jehovah) but as a sort of generic term for a higher power. Yet as civil religion functions (in its Christian nationalism sense, within the “official religion” of Christian evangelical Protestantism), the term “God” certain has a more concrete and specific meaning. So even has “He” (God) blesses the nation, “He” also blesses specifically those who confess being “born again.” In this sense, civil religion functions within the “official religion,” rather than outside of it.
Of course, all this depends upon how we qualify Christian nationalist tendencies within American evangelicalism, so my point is certainly up for debate.
I agree with you completely that civil religion and Protestantism in America have a deep syncretic relationship. Furthermore, civil religion is outside official religion-dom.
But I’m still unsure of to what degree that civil religion can be considered folk religion. If official religions are the veneer foisted upon a resistant, superstitious lower sort who hold onto magic, rituals, and traditions, then folk religion is a grassroots sort of movement emanating from the lowly rather than the elites. American civil religion seems much the opposite, being a construction of political parties during the early Republic who turned the Founding Fathers into secular saints and the American people into a new chosen people.
This in no way undercuts your broader point that civil religion and evangelicalism are syncretic. I could not agree with you more.
Another source for folk religion in the seventeenth century is Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (1992).
Finding folk religion or animism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries does seem more difficult. Might there be a connection between the healing practices of folk religions and faith healing? That’s just a guess, but that’s where I would start looking.