Faith

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Faith

In the United States, "faith" generally connotes two things: (1) a religious tradition, such as the "Christian faith" or the "Jewish faith," and (2) belief in or devotion to a particular religion, tradition, or ideology.

According to the first sense, there is no single American faith. In contemporary America, it is more appropriate to speak of "faiths" rather than of "faith." All major world religions—Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism—can claim significant numbers of adherents in the United States. In addition to these classical traditions of both East and West, American religion includes a wide variety of new religions and homegrown faiths, from the tribal religions of Native Americans to Mormonism to the Nation of Islam. The 1993 edition of The Encyclopedia of American Religions lists 1,730 different religious organizations grouped into 19 families; 10 are Christian, 9 are not. While the United States has always been a religiously diverse nation, the scope of that diversity has broadened since the end of World War II. Faith in contemporary America may take a remarkable number of forms.

In the second sense, adherents of various religions are understood to "have faith" in the distinct doctrines, beliefs, and practices of their tradition. Faith is a quality of commitment or belief. Thus Jews have faith in the Hebrew God as expressed through Jewish tradition, kinship, and righteous living. Buddhists, who may or may not believe in a God or gods, have faith in a body of wisdom and practices that provide spiritual well-being and compassion. Muslims have faith in God as revealed in the Qur'an through the Prophet Muhammad. In the United States this definition of faith is nearly universal and malleable. Even those who hold no organizational affiliation may consider themselves people of faith. Outside of religious traditions, some might profess "faith in humanity," "faith in nature," or "faith in America." Indeed, having faith has sometimes been identified with the American character. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower was said to have commented, "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith—and I don't care what it is." Because of such diversity and its porous nature, faith may be expressed in terms of family or ethnic tradition, personal conversion, intellectual assent, institutional membership, existential experience, social service, worship, ritual, or sacramental practice.

For all its generality in contemporary culture, however, Protestant theology and ideology still color the word "faith." In spite of national religious diversity, Americans have been overwhelmingly Protestant. Although the percentage is lower than in the past, roughly two-thirds of all Americans still profess Protestantism. Their theological and cultural understandings of "faith" have shaped much of the nation's religious ethos.

For Christians, faith means believing in a triune God embodied in Jesus Christ and known through biblical revelation. Faith has tended to mean assent to certain doctrines, particularly those beliefs surrounding the person and mission of Jesus. But understandings of faith throughout church history have not been static. The word "faith" has meant many things; most are interpretations of the simple New Testament definition, "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Differing definitions of faith have often led to internal Christian conflict.

Two major arguments about the nature of faith have shaped American religious history. The first argument sparked the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. Late medieval Roman Catholics believed that faith involved human and divine cooperation. God offered the grace of faith to humankind primarily through the vehicle of the church's sacraments. People, in turn, could accept God's gracious gift or reject it. If they cooperated with God's grace in the Mass, baptism, and other sacraments, they would grow in faith and might one day merit a heavenly reward. Those who rejected or fell from the grace offered by the church were faithless and could expect to be damned.

The German reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546) argued that faith was solely and completely God's work. Faith was not a result of any human action. It was a disposition given to sinful humans as a gift from God. A person with faith could recognize that God was his or her savior, God having justified (made right) the sinner to enjoy a holy life and eternal bliss. Early Protestants understood that faith resulted in trust and gratitude—attributes both given by and directed toward God. Luther argued that the Catholic view, that justification followed a faithful life, was incorrect. Rather, he believed that God first justified men and women, and a faithful life of gratitude and Christian service followed. The repercussions of Luther's reformation of faith included a greater emphasis on the laity, the elevation of the Bible over tradition, and the diminishment of priestly authority.

Luther's insights brought into focus much of the religious and social discontent of his day. In the following 150 years, various forms of Protestantism took hold in most of northern Europe, and these early Protestants founded the colonies that would become the United States. Only small numbers of Catholics settled in the eastern seaboard colonies; Protestant pluralism dominated the embryonic nation's religious culture. As in Europe, the issue of the nature of faith divided Protestants and Catholics—along with a host of related concerns about the church and religious authority. In early America, however, historic Protestant ideals—such as the belief that faith should be discerned by the individual rather than mediated through the church—won the day. Elements of this broadly Protestant worldview still influence American culture.

A second argument over the nature of faith also affects contemporary religion. In the eighteenth century, an intra-Protestant debate caused deep divisions within traditional Protestant communions. Many of the early reformers stressed the personal experience of faith. First-generation Protestants often recorded dramatic spiritual transformation along with their intellectual conversion to Protestant doctrine. Such fervor, however, was difficult to maintain. Succeeding generations of Protestants tended to locate faith in the mind. Thus faith was assent to certain dogma such as justification by faith alone and the rejection of papal authority. Serious and sober Protestant piety emphasized catechesis (doctrinal instruction), holy living, and good deeds. By 1700, most Protestants understood faith in scholastic and moralistic terms.

Some radical Protestant groups rejected these views in favor of a more experiential style of faith. This impulse, known variously as Pietism, Puritanism, or evangelicalism, castigated traditional Protestantism as "dead orthodoxy" and sought to "reform the Reformation." Although differing in particulars, these movements shared a concern for "heartfelt religion" and emphasized the human ability to know God through the senses. They envisioned churches full of "lively piety," places where all believers would lead devoted and earnest spiritual lives. The heart, not the head, was the seat of faith.

In Europe, traditional Protestant churches often persecuted these minority groups by charging their leaders with heresy, limiting their ability to preach, and jailing the overly zealous. Many advocates of Pietism fled to the colonies. From Puritans and Separatist Baptists to Moravians and Methodists, America proved fertile ground for the new style of purified Protestantism. Throughout American history, traditional, churchly Protestantism clashed with pietistic Protestantism, but rarely with more flair than during the ministry of George Whitefield (1714–1770). In the eighteenth century, Whitefield's dramatic, consumer-oriented revivalism spread the message of heartfelt faith across the colonies and spurred other evangelists to do the same. In midcentury, the conflict between the two styles fueled much religious conflict and caused a number of denominational splits. Partisans of the "Old Light" (the traditionalists) and the "New Light" (the evangelicals) vied for authority and popular support. Although the victory was neither easy nor complete, those on the side of heartfelt faith came to dominate American religion for the next century and a half.

Protestant conflicts over faith have had profound effects on American religious life. Arguments over faith have led to near-continuous denominational schisms and internal questions regarding the appropriate practice of piety. Some denominations, such as the Episcopalians and the Lutherans, struggled with the issue of how much they should adapt to the prevailing pietism. In the case of the nineteenth-century Episcopal Church, two church parties—the High Church and Evangelical parties—created their identities around the question of adaptation. High Church Episcopalians sought to retain Anglican sacramentalism; evangelical Episcopalians saw themselves as dignified revivalists. The first understood faith as tradition and liturgical devotion; the second understood it as conversion and personal piety.

The question of adaptation also affected non-Protestant religions. In the nineteenth century, Roman Catholics borrowed from evangelical Protestant styles and created parish missions intended to kindle personal devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and the saints. Reform Jews adopted ideals of Protestant church organization and social concern. Muslims argued that their faith promoted the greatest social equality and liberty of the individual conscience. Religions that had little or no missionary concern in their native setting became more zealously evangelistic in the United States. American Protestant converts to other religions often—and successfully—used Protestant categories and practices to "Americanize" seemingly "foreign" religions. Thus, for many religious groups, the practice of faith—or even adopting the language or category of faith—took on Protestant overtones. While some of the impulses for reform within these religions were rooted internally, American Protestantism shaped these changes as they became enculturated.

Although American understandings of faith grew from theological conceptions, the term has broader civic connotations as well. Faith often refers to hope for or optimism regarding the future—especially the future of the nation and the potential of the American people. Political institutions carry religious or semi-religious national aspirations. Americans speak of "faith in democracy" or "faith in the president." This broad definition is rooted in generalized, and often romanticized, Protestant culture. For much of American history, faith formed an intrinsic part of the nation's creed and mission as God's new Israel. Protestant Christianity—and eventually a wider range of religions—allowed Americans to place themselves in cosmic history and participate in God's biblical plan. So while individual Americans were expected to have personal faith in God and a particular religion, generalized faith grounded civil piety and nationalism.

However important as a theological and a civic ideal, faith fell out of favor in some circles in the twentieth century. After the Civil War, secular philosophies and the natural and social sciences offered explanations for human history and the nature of the universe that were alternatives to those of traditional biblical accounts. Contrary to previous American expectations, faith and learning were in tension with one another. Some faith traditions, such as liberal Protestantism and Reform Judaism, adapted to the new learning. Others, however, resisted. Faith became equated with dogmatism, fundamentalism, and ignorance. The conflict between biblical traditionalism and secularism led to a diminishment of public expressions of personal faith in certain social classes and elite cultural institutions such as universities. Although most Americans no doubt continued to have faith, particularized faiths—especially pietistic faiths—were perceived as threatening to the common good.

In 1957, Harvard theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965) redefined faith as "ultimate concern." Anything—nationalism, materialism, sexuality—that offered "the fulfillment of one's being" was faith. Tillich pointed out that everyone, even those cultural elites who scorned traditional religion, had faith. Whether faith is rightly placed in the God of justice or misplaced in human selfishness, Tillich believed faith to be the dynamic of human history. Tillich's definition of faith as ultimate concern influenced academics and church leaders. It widened the circle of what counted as faith, giving scholars and believers access to the category once again without the associated dogmatism.

When the twentieth century began, many scholars believed that religion would wither in the face of the secular onslaught. By Tillich's time, however, it had become obvious that this analysis was incorrect. Since World War II, the United States has experienced a dramatic series of religious renewals—from the upsurge of mainline religion in the 1950s and 1960s to the evangelical revivals of the 1970s and 1980s and the spirituality boom of the 1990s. Although not without eliciting some controversy, sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have argued that the United States is more religious now than in the past.

In the instance of contemporary movements, however, most (but certainly not all) believers have been careful not to define faith too narrowly. Mainstream Protestants, Catholics, and Jews tempered dogmatism with liberal learning and social activism. Evangelicals, often wrongly construed as rigid fundamentalists, abandoned many of the moral taboos of earlier generations and engaged broad political and social issues. The language of spirituality and spiritual journey, a kind of neomysticism, has given many people a faith without the baggage of institutional religion or doctrine. Thus, while the number of faiths was multiplying and the United States was becoming more obviously diverse, American citizens were less reluctant than their grandparents to "have faith" in something and to express it in the public arena. From the faith of the Puritans to the millennial pluralism of faiths, redefined by and constantly defining the culture, Americans see faith as part of their national birthright.