My political psychology professor always talks about the lack of conservatives to compose an externally valid sample set among Harvard students. And my conservative grandmother did not want me to apply to Ivy League schools in fear that they would transform me into Cornel West. Harvard, in other words, is a laboratory for wide-eyed utopians with grand ideas but little understanding of the real world problems that face the conservative everyman.

Little of this is inaccurate. Most Harvard students do self-identify as liberal—one needs simply to look at President Obama’s approval rating among undergraduates or the sizes of the Harvard Democrats versus the Harvard Republicans to grasp the dearth of True Blue Republicans on campus. In fact, the conservative coalition is so fragile that a so-called “Conservative Reception” relies on sponsorship from the campus’s True Love Revolution, an extracurricular organization devoted entirely to abstinence on campus. It is distinct from the pro-life group and has very little ostensible connection to Republican politics, yet, as a tangentially culturally conservative organization, it is considered politically conservative by default.

While a Harvard Libertarian Forum apparently does exist on campus, this normal manifestation of young conservatism in college environments is minimal at best. Unlike elsewhere in the student world, supporting Ron Paul usually elicits a snicker as opposed to a passionate cry of support.

Thus the perception is true, Republicans are a rare species at Harvard. Yet, such a simple reading into the culture wars here is misplaced. While there may be a strong affiliation between the student body and the Democratic Party, this does not make residents of the Yard members of young adult liberalism. On the contrary, a cultural conservatism prevails. Long gone are the days of storming university buildings to protest the Vietnam War or apartheid in South Africa. This year’s attempt to reclaim that legacy amounted to the Occupy Harvard movement, a protest largely propagated by graduate students.

The Occupy movement was met with widespread disdain and animosity by most undergraduates, a sector of society more concerned with getting to class—and, subsequently, the library—than revolutionizing class structure. While there is support for Elizabeth Warren, who claims to have founded the intellectual foundation for the Occupy movement, there was little support for the Occupy movement itself. Students were too preoccupied with defiling or scorning tents in the Yard and grumbling about the security precautions to determine how Warren’s academic work was reflected in the encampments. While students like the idea of the Harvard professor’s regulation of the financial industry, this appreciation does not preclude the aggressive recruitment process and search for Wall Street jobs.

This is the paradox of liberalism at Harvard. Students are not inherently liberal but, rather, academic. They enjoy exploring advancements in social science that might counter conservative norms, but this search is more due to intellectual curiosity than an intrinsic desire for social upheaval. Individuals may be interested in liberal fodder like promoting diversity and, by extension, affirmative action, but this is not a result of social status sacrifice. Harvard is a hierarchy-enhancing institution that contains many future leaders with high social dominance orientations.

This school largely revolves around being the best in all regards, be they academic, extracurricular, or career-based (socioeconomic). These aspects are usually considered part of cultural conservatism, a culture that many conflate with making money and pursuing high rewards.

Harvard students like to think, and modern media portrayal has removed this quality from most characterizations of the Republican Party. The recent prominence of party figures such as Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann lend credibility to Republican anti-intellectualism. Harvard undergraduates pride themselves on their mental faculties and avoid threats to that intellectualism. But, this does not make them the backbone of the Democratic Party.

Students here are just as likely to be the next Mitt Romney as the next Barack Obama. One’s freshman roommate could either grow up to be Grover Norquist or Barney Frank. There are intellectuals and anti-intellectuals in the ranks of both main political parties. The dissatisfaction of the Harvard populace with conservatism stems from the recent framing of Republican policies as cultural obduracy.

Conservatives at Harvard should not be discouraged. While it may be difficult to find a large percentage of peers with whom to work in Romney headquarters, it will not be too hard to find many classmates who share common political beliefs. This is the classical dichotomy here. Harvard is nominally liberal—very liberal, at that. But in real terms, Harvard is pretty conservative. Students like money and they like success. They place a great deal of focus on hard work and business connections. They understand the importance of preexisting institutions and do not attempt to alter that. Students here work within the current system; that is what conservatism means.

The Tar Sands are controversial not only because of their potentially disastrous environmental impact, but also because of how they have fueled tensions between the government and the First Peoples of Canada.

What’s wrong with Canada these days? I remember the good old days, when Canadians championed human rights reforms, pushed for the protection of freshwater, and engaged in all those pleasant international good deeds. In light of this history, Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol is startling. Since the Conservatives took power in 2006, they have made it explicitly clear that they planned to use their legal right to withdraw, but it wasn’t until their formal notice on December 13^ththat the reality set in.

The Canadian government cited several reasons for their environmental cop-out: First, that the sheer cost of keeping up with Kyoto made their involvement impractical. At a whopping $13.6 billion, perhaps the Canadians have a point. Second, they argue that since the United States and China (the world’s two largest emitters of greenhouse gas) are not members of Kyoto, participation in the Protocol becomes futile and frustrating. Finally, however, what I have contention with is the Environment Minister, Peter Kent’s statement, “’Kyoto is not the path forward for a global solution for climate change.” Then what is the path forward for Canada? The Oil Sands in Alberta? A 50% increase in greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario?

I lived in Toronto for three years, sorted my garbage into all the right bins, and watched my high school adopt an Environmental Sustainability Action Plan and work towards LEED Silver certification. It’s difficult for me to believe that such an environmentally conscious society has so few qualms about the Kyoto dropout. Perhaps it’s the apathy generated by the political switch from the loudly green Liberals to the conservative Harper government. Maybe Canadians just don’t know – after all, most articles in the Globe and Mail or The National Post extol only the benefits that the Alberta Oil Sands hold in store. The Kyoto Protocol is, of course, an ambitious document; but regardless, Canada’s decision to withdraw shouldn’t be viewed as some sort of regrettable reality, it’s just a cop-out of convenience.

Read the full article at the Crimson. ]]> http://hpronline.org/harvard-talks-politics/dhruv-singhal-on-the-betrayal-of-the-president/feed/ 0 http://hpronline.org/harvard-talks-politics/max-novendstern-on-the-problems-with-political-rallies/ http://hpronline.org/harvard-talks-politics/max-novendstern-on-the-problems-with-political-rallies/#comments Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:53:12 +0000 Harvard Talks Politics http://hpronline.org/?p=9291 In a recent blog post for the Harvard Political Review, Max Novendstern writes that the popular choice to rally for political change isn’t really changing anything at all. Often it is merely self-serving, and “our obsession with rallying as a community is indicative of our larger failure to imagine viable alternatives.”

Read the full article at The Harvard Political Review.

I thought I’d catalog all of the sins of this disastrous piece of “journalism.”

1. Liberals apparently are “taunting” President Obama.

2. “At best” their “rage” is a “principled last gasp on behalf of liberal ideals.” Wow, how generous. Last gasp?

3. “At worst, they’re whining, kicking and screaming their way to the margins.”

4. Liberals are in a “state of denial.”

5. Quote from Dan Boren, conservative Democratic rep., saying his colleagues “are not listening” to voters.

6. The only paragraph of sympathy: “In the blink of an eye, [liberals] went from advancing the most progressive agenda since the Great Society to defending against a tax-cut bill that they say provides a windfall for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else.” Note the critical “they say.” Of course Politico will never tell you if this bill, which does provide a windfall for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else (since that money might have been spent productively), actually does that.

7. Liberals are “blaming everybody but themselves.” I’m sorry, but what does that even mean?

8. “Moderates could do little but groan and roll their eyes at the display” of liberals who protested the tax deal by shouting “No we can’t!” at a caucus meeting. So who’s more immature here: the people shouting in protest, or the people rolling their eyes?

9. Quote from Jesse Jackson Jr.: “If we recklessly cut taxes for the wealthiest 2 percent, then Obamanomics will look an awful lot like Reaganomics.” Immediately, Allen says, “But as they throw a tantrum…” … Excuse me?! At what point did the representative from Illinois scream, cry, and demand his bottle?

10. Quote from Brian Higgins, Democratic rep., saying that liberals should not “whine about” the tax deal.

11. Paraphrase of senior Democratic aide saying that “liberal complaining” won’t be productive.

12. Quote from Peter DeFazio saying that liberals are finally standing up to Obama, followed by immediate assertion from Allen that this consists of “histrionics” which are “potentially devastating politically.”

13. The evidence for that assertion is a quote from Artur Davis, the conservative Democratic representative, saying that letting taxes rise would be a huge political mistake.

14. Quote from Lindsey Graham saying that liberal “whining” has gotten to the president.

15. Conclusion: Barack Obama is the new Bill Clinton, a triangulating political genius, and the House Democrats better get used to their marginalization.

16. Quote from liberal Gary Ackerman: “We got screwed.” Immediate retort from Allen: “Such injuries are self-inflicted and promise to pile up if House liberals don’t soften their stance.”

Okay, so here’s a piece of “journalism” with three quotes from liberals, Jackson, DeFazio, and Ackerman, each one of which is smacked down on the spot by the author.

Whereas it has six quotes (Boren, Higgins, senior Democratic aide, Davis twice, and Graham) from those we might call anti-liberals: Republicans and Democrats who think liberals need to grow up. But the worst sins are those committed by Allen himself, who apparently couldn’t get enough actual politicians to call their colleagues crybabies, so he did the work for them.

On some level, I get this story. I get that Politico thinks Obama has done a savvy thing, and I think I agree with them. But unless Politico is re-conceiving itself as a more insidery Pajamas Media, the sort of liberal-bashing that this piece engages in is completely out of line. If Allen wants to argue that liberals should fall into line with Obama whether for political or policy reasons, that’s fine, but that argument should, first, be made in a clearly marked opinion section and not be given the status of objective journalism, and second, it should not be made by comparing their behavior to that of screaming infants.

There is a right and a wrong way to make that argument, and Politico has definitively chosen to go with the wrong way.

Now I expected you to find fault with Rand Paul’s lukewarm remarks on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as I did. But why stretch your case, and your credibility with readers, by asserting that he is a racist? I think the charge of racism reflects an extreme and ultimately untenable view of what constitutes racism, and what separates racism from legitimate political disagreement based on underlying principles. This part of your post, in which you criticize “conservatives” and “over-polite liberals,” is especially puzzling to me:

But if we can’t say it’s racist to oppose the de-institutionalization of racism, then we’re pretty much saying that you’re only racist if you wear a white hood,” this is what I meant. If racism is a “stain on the soul,” then almost nobody can be accused of being a racist, because we can’t reliably look into people’s souls.

If racism is solely or even mainly defined as an action, then the Oxford English Dictionary must be written by “conservatives” and “a fair number of over-polite liberals,” because it primarily defines ”racism” as a belief. (For that matter, Wikipedia too.) Here are both OED definitions for racism:

  • noun 1 the belief that there are characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to each race. 2 discrimination against or antagonism towards other races.

Those Brits do always strike me as a tad over-polite. But regardless of the primary definition, do you at least acknowledge that there are principles at stake in government efforts to curb racial discrimination? That it is possible to oppose a policy intended to reduce racial discrimination without being racist? Can’t you oppose racial discrimination, and support racial equality of opportunity, but still have legitimate qualms about State coercion of voluntary associations, individuals, and businesses? Suppose the government could reduce racial discrimination by instituting some kind of mandatory racial sensitivity training. Clearly it is not racist to find fault with such a policy.

And surely you do not agree with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs when he says that a discussion of the principles underlying an act of Congress has “no place in our political dialogue.” 

If I had to speculate, I’d say that Rand Paul probably has a deep commitment to libertarian principles, if not a deeply nuanced understanding of how something like the Civil Rights Act might be consistent with Nozickian theory or the writings of Julian Sanchez, and felt that he might risk infidelity to some of these principles by endorsing every provision of the Civil Rights Act without any hesitation. It’s  not as juicy a story, but I think you really need to have near-zero confidence in Rand Paul as a man of some principle, or a warped understanding of racism, to conclude that his remarks or his libertarian views are racis.

Finally, for what it’s worth, you say in your original post that he is “against the Civil Rights Act,” which is not really accurate; his statements then and now indicate the rather different conclusion that he is not unequivocally for every provision of the Civil Rights Act. His official position is that he supports the Act, and would have supported it at the time. This might be nitpicking, but since you phrased the title that way specifically to prompt a response like this, I couldn’t help but take the bait.

It seems really weird to give Goldwater all this credit for not being personally racist while championing a cause supported by racists, and say this is the same thing as Kennedy and Johnson being racist but supporting legislation that advanced the cause of black rights. This is part and parcel of thinking of racism in quasi-religious terms, a stain on the soul rather than a matter of actual behavior, and it’s part of why the American conversation on race remains so counterproductive.

When I said a few days ago, “But if we can’t say it’s racist to oppose the de-institutionalization of racism, then we’re pretty much saying that you’re only racist if you wear a white hood,” this is what I meant. If racism is a “stain on the soul,” then almost nobody can be accused of being a racist, because we can’t reliably look into people’s souls. But a racist is as a racist does, and someone who thinks that outlawing racism is not within the powers of a government that enabled and encouraged racism for 400 years does not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Second, sane libertarians realize how ridiculous Rand Paul’s views are. Julian Sanchez writes:

Rules for utopia can deal with individual crimes—the mugger and the killer and the vandal—but they stumble in the face of societywide injustice. They tell us the state shouldn’t sanction the brutal enslavement or humiliating legal subordination of a people; they have less to say about what to do once we have. They tell us to respect the sanctity of the property rights that would arise as free people tamed the wilderness in John Locke’s state of nature. They have less to say about the sanctity of property built on generations of slave sweat and blood.

Libertarians need to think harder about how our principles should degrade elegantly, how they can guide us through a fallen world where the live political options seldom afford a full escape from injustice.

Very well said. This reminded me that Robert Nozick, who, next to Ayn Rand, is probably the most influential libertarian philosopher, also acknowledged the problem of historical injustice. On page 153 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in a footnote, he grants that the “principle of rectification” of past injustices might allow for “the sort of considerations about distributive justice and equality that I argue against.” In other words, because society has never been perfectly libertarian, because wealth and power were gained through oppression and theft even by Nozick’s lights, it might be appropriate for the state to go outside the bounds of libertarian theory in order to mitigate the resulting inequalities. Nozick devotes precious little time and attention to the implications of this concession, operating instead in the world of ideal theory. But the caveat is there nevertheless, and the case of the Civil Rights Act is probably exactly what Nozick had in mind.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Nighttime. Baghdad. March 19, 2003. The city bursts into light as “Shock and Awe” sweeps across the desert. Director Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) begins his latest release, Green Zone, with a black screen as the sounds of air-raid warnings and the crescendo of American bombs slowly fills the theater. After a riveting skyline view of Iraq’s capitol city under siege in the opening hours of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the viewer is thrown into the terrifying perspective of an Iraqi awoken in the night to the sounds of war.

The scene cuts, and now the viewer is in the company of Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (a stoic Matt Damon), as he frantically searches a Baghdad facility for weapons of mass destruction. Greengrass’s characteristic slingshot camerawork and skilled pacing masterfully convey a sense of immediacy. In the first two scenes alone, Green Zone creates a world that more closely resembles the maelstrom of Iraq than any film yet.

Unfortunately, the film’s bracingly realistic style is soon put into the service of a caricature-laden plot and a thinly veiled leftist politics. This turn for the worse is disappointing but not all that surprising. Green Zone continues a long line of recent Hollywood films that fail to engage politics and war in all their grim and tragic complexity—resorting to one-dimensional characters, clichéd monologues, and a conspiracy theory-based plot.

Where are the Weapons?

Roy Miller and his squad keep coming up empty-handed at every potential WMD site they visit. Suspicious and frustrated, Miller teams up with Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), a veteran CIA officer, and the two begin a rogue mission to determine the reason for the intelligence failures. Their efforts place them in opposition to Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), a top official in the Department of Defense, and a composite figure clearly drawn from L. Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, and Douglas Feith. Poundstone is a quintessentially Machiavellian bureaucrat. His every move seems choreographed to provoke the viewer’s disdain.

Miller’s investigation also leads him to a close encounter with General Al Rawi, Saddam Hussein’s top general. Al Rawi becomes the missing link in Miller’s investigation. As he slowly puts the pieces together with the help of Lawrie Dayne (Amy Ryan), a Wall Street Journal reporter who was Poundstone’s mouthpiece in the run-up to the war, he begins to realize that Poundstone is hiding something about the missing WMDs. Predictably, to get to the bottom of things, Miller has to defy orders and take matters into his own hands—for a moment, one almost expects Poundstone to shout “Bourne’s gone rogue!” into a satellite phone.

Greengrass returns to form with a brilliant chase scene at the end of the film. As Miller and one of Poundstone’s cronies from Special Forces (Jason Isaacs) chase General Al Rawi through the streets of Baghdad, an American helicopter follows them from above as they weave and wind through the city’s tight neighborhoods amid a barrage of bullets. The editing in this scene is amazing, as the viewer switches between the three parties at a nearly inconceivable pace. When the dust has cleared, Baghdad is ablaze and the descent towards sectarian violence has begun. The sequence will remind fans of Greengrass’s admirable work in the last two Jason Bourne movies.

The Lessons of War

Nearly seven years have passed since the futile search for WMDs portrayed in Green Zone. With almost 4,400 American soldiers and countless Iraqi civilians dead, the country has witnessed the tragic and bitter consequences of war. Yet for some, the war provides the opportunity to promote a simplistic agenda. Green Zone’s paranoid plot does little to dispel the perception that Hollywood liberals can’t think of anything more sophisticated to say about Iraq than “Bush lied, people died.”

There is no doubt that a huge intelligence failure occurred in the run-up to the Iraq War. However, Greengrass turns the intelligence community into a locus of preposterous corruption, purposely constructed to justify American imperialism. Greengrass’s Iraq war is a game in which powerful officials push misinformation in order to lead innocent soldiers into a vicious, deadly quagmire. Reasonable critics and supporters of the war might enjoy the film, but they need not accept its maddeningly simplistic political message.

Jeffrey Lerman ‘13 is a Contributing Writer.

Photo Credit: The U.S. Army

Taming the gods: religion and democracy on three continents, by Ian Buruma, Princeton University Press, 2010. $19.95, 132 pp.

In his new book Taming the Gods, British-Dutch writer Ian Buruma recalls the outrage and death threats that greeted the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. The incident united British intellectuals, Buruma writes, leading “many multiculturalists, anti-racists, and pro-Third Worldists to join conservatives in their stand against Islam.” Since the 9/11 attacks, however, debates about Islam in Europe have been vigorous,  and accusations of appeasement and xenophobia have flown back and forth.

Taming the Gods seeks to offer a reasoned discussion of the proper relationship between religion and politics. Buruma approaches this perennially vexing problem with a unique blend of political theory and history, spanning Europe, Asia, and North America. While the novelty of his approach yields fresh historical perspective and some insight on European Islam, it does not offer a truly unique contribution to the larger church-state debate. Instead, Buruma advances the standard liberal line that the passions of religion must be “tamed” and all citizens must follow the rules of democracy, without offering concrete solutions for applying this framework.

The Western Front

Buruma begins with a crash course on the Western problem of church-state relations. While his summary of classical thinkers like Hume, Spinoza, and Rousseau occasionally becomes textbook-like, he offers fascinating connections between those writers and the historical development of democracy. For example, he says that Tocqueville’s idea that “unbelievers attacked the Church more as a political rather than religious enemy” explains both the persecution of Catholics in revolutionary France and their marginalization in 19^th century America.

Buruma argues counter-intuitively that modern-day Europe and America are not as different as American critics of godless Europe and European detractors of American zealotry hold. He finds that every European country has a distinctive way of balancing religion and secular government, and that the United States is a variation on, not a departure from, this theme. The religious-fundamentalist elements in America, he points out, historically have supported democracy more strongly than similar factions have in France or Germany.

Eastern Promises

Buruma then turns to the East and examines China and Japan, disputing “the notion that only monotheistic religions pose problems for secular politics.” Confucian thought, though it contains the oldest formulation of the right of rebellion against unjust authority, has strong themes of obedience that have been manipulated by leaders like Mao to thwart democratic movements.

In Japan, State Shinto suppressed secularizing trends in the 19^th century. The divine authority of the emperor ruled out the possibility of democracy until after World War II. While Buruma shows that the issue of political and religious authority is not a uniquely Western problem, the lesson he draws is not particularly earth-shattering: government and religion often make a dangerous combination.

Liberal Eurabia?

Buruma’s central argument is clearest when he criticizes those frequent warnings about how Islam is a threat to European society. He lines up with other liberals in that he condemns Islamophobia and argues that the emergence of a democratic European Islam is possible. But he also warns of the great danger posed by the refusal of Islamic fundamentalists to recognize the legitimacy of the secular European states in which they live. This problem creates the necessity of “taming the gods,” or reigning in religious extremism.

Distancing himself from conservatives, Buruma points out that this cause will be hindered, not helped, by xenophobic and exclusionary reactions against Muslims. He argues that liberal tolerance must extend even to illiberal doctrines and practices, as long as they are pursued peacefully. Liberalism for Buruma is not a way of life but a mediator between different ways of life, not all of which need to be perfectly liberal or modern.

Buruma’s recommendation for the future is simple, perhaps too simple. Maintaining a liberal society that includes illiberal citizens is more easily said than done. Buruma’s work admirably rejects the reprehensible extremes of theocracy and xenophobia. But his elegant writing hides a dearth of real proposals for some of the thorniest issues, such as how to assimilate Europe’s swelling Muslim population and how to incorporate religious viewpoints into public debate without violating the spirit of secularism. Ultimately, in spite of its vagueness when it comes to practical solutions, the strength of Buruma’s book lies in his call to tame not only religious extremism, but extremist reactions against extremism as well.

Casey Thomson ‘13 is a Staff Writer.

Photo Credit: Flickr (Fabbio)

One might assume that the divide in American Christianity is simply between liberal and conservative theologies. But such a framework would be misleading. As Christians consider social services and sexual purity, universal salvation and individual redemption, they are often forced to straddle theological and political divides. Religious pluralism has led to a general smoothing-over of denominational, theological, and political differences, with most groups converging in a broad middle ground where pragmatic compromises are common.

America’s Religious Roots

While America’s constitutional culture has precluded the formation of a central church, the country has remained overwhelmingly religious. Rev. Peter J. Gomes, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, explained, “Whether we have legitimate religious views or not, we feel we ought to. [Americans] look at everything with a religious point of view.”

Sarah Johnson, a religion professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, concurred, telling the HPR that “there is a religious way which [Americans] want more than they do in Europe.” She cited prayer at the presidential inauguration as proof of Americans’ comparatively deeper religious aspirations; invocations of divine guidance are seen as unnecessary in many other highly developed nations. But that sort of broad-based, ecumenical public Christianity is as American as apple pie.

Liberals and Conservatives

Still, even as Christian denominations have given their stamp to this sort of public religion, there are big theological and political fractures within the American Christian community. John Corrigan, author of Religion in America and a professor at Florida State University, told the HPR that “the strongest division would be between liberal Protestants and those who categorize themselves as conservative Evangelicals.”

Rev. John Page, a chaplain at Harvard, clarified that conservatives put an “emphasis on salvation in a very starkly individual context,” while liberals tend to focus on “universal salvation and the communal bringing-about of the Kingdom of God.”

Page acknowledged that the political labels of “liberal” and “conservative” can roughly be aligned with these two different theologies. Nevertheless, both Corrigan and Page pointed out that theological liberalism and conservatism do not always translate into predictable political positions.

In the recent health care debate, for instance, many religious liberals advocated universal health insurance, while religious conservatives criticized the possibility that it might be used to pay for abortions. This battle raged perhaps most strongly within the Catholic Church, but behind the scenes, the divide was not so clear-cut. The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious called both for an abortion ban and for universal health care, and the NETWORK council of nuns described their support for the bill as “the real pro-life stance.” Thus, even theological allies can differ politically and describe their policy recommendations with reference to the same set of religious convictions. And by the same token, theological enemies (like nuns and liberal Protestants) can find occasional common ground in politics. In the broad center of American public religion, there is plenty of room for compromise and coalition-building.

Stemming the Secular Tide

Although religiosity has remained consistently higher in America than in Europe, the rise of secularism seems to present a challenge to the American way of faith. The proportion of Americans identifying as Christian has dropped from 86 to 70 percent, while the proportion of people identifying with no religion has more than doubled. Yet one should not declare the death of American Christianity too soon.

Gomes told the HPR that religion “moves tidally.” He continued, “There are generations where faith-based stuff is the hottest you can get and then it recedes and then comes back.” Johnson reported that “a lot of the people who are talking about themselves as non-religious or non-affiliating are 20-something, our younger generation.” She wondered, “Will they stay unaffiliated or will they go back to church? We don’t know.”

Page, meanwhile, expects a maturation on both sides of the political and religious divide. He hopes that there will be a diversification and expansion of what it means to be a religiously active American. “The sort of lock-step two-issue conservative right has already been dead—or dying—for ten years,” Page said.

But even as religious differences become less singleminded, certain divisions will probably remain in place. It seems probable that American Christianity will continue to straddle the line between liberal and conservative, between striving for community and seeking individual salvation, for generations to come.

Richard Kelley ’10 and Jordan Monge ‘12 are Contributing Writers.

Photo Credit: Flickr (mulmatsherm and euthman)