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AESSAY
Is
There
American
Common
Culture?,
Robert N. Bellah
* This
on November
asa plenaryaddressattheAARmeetingin SanFrancisco
22,
essaywasdelivered
1997.
613
614
writing a most interestingdissertation,which, among other things comparesthe fate of multiculturalismin Franceand the U.S.Benson describes
a nascent French multiculturalismof the late 1970s and early 1980s as
ultimately being rejectedby virtually the entire ideological spectrum in
favorof a universalisticrepublicanismin the late 1980s,just when multiculturalismin the U.S.was taking off. Why Americanculturehas been so
singularlyreceptiveto multiculturalismas an ideology is a point to which
I will return.
But, first, a sociological point about why there not only is but has to
be a common culturein America:culturedoes not float free from institutions. A powerful institutional orderwill carrya powerful common culture. An exampleof just how importantthis relationbetween cultureand
institutions is comes from the recentreunificationof Germany.In the last
daysof the GermanDemocraticRepublicthe protesterschanted"Wirsind
ein Volk,"and the chant stirred euphoria among West Germansas well.
But the painful and unexpected experience of living together, as made
vivid to me by an outstandingHarvarddoctoraldissertationfiled earlier
this yearby AndreasGlaeser,using the integrationof East and West German police officers into a unified police force in Berlin as a microcosm,
showedthat they werenot, afterall "ein Volk,"but indeed "zwei'"It wasn't
just that the "Ossies"and the "Wessies"("Easterners"and "Westerners")
had differentviews on common problems,they had differentand to some
degree mutually unintelligible ways of thinking about the world altogether.Forty-fiveyearsof radicallydifferentinstitutionalordershad created two cultureswhich to this day arevery far from united, althoughthe
experienceof a unified institutional order will, almost certainly,though
not without time and pain, ultimatelyreunitethem.
The United States,surely,has an exceptionallypowerfulinstitutional
order.The state in America,even though it is multi-leveledand, to a degree,decentralized,has an enormousimpacton all our lives. Forexample,
the shift in marriagelaw in the late sixties and earlyseventiestoward"nofault divorce"was a response to but also an impetus for the emergence
of "divorceculture" in America as a serious competitor to "marriage
culture."The state is even responsibleto a degree for the construction of
multiculturalismthroughthe little boxes that must be checkedon a myriad of forms. Haven'tyou everbeen tempted to check them all or to leave
them all empty?If the state intrudes in our lives in a thousand ways, the
market is even more intrusive. There is very little that Americans need
that we can produce for ourselves any more. We are dependent on the
market not only for goods but for many kinds of service. Our cultural
understandingof the world is shaped every time we enter a supermarket
or a mall. I taught a senior seminarof about twenty students this spring,
615
616
617
618
619
620
ofthe
ofworship,
theendowment
tion,eventotheformsandceremonies
of theclergy...
andthesupport
church,
to all-to theJeworGenItisthedutyof thisgovernment
to affirm
of ourbenigandadvantages
tile,Pagan,orChristian-theprotection
nantinstitutions
on Sunday,
aswellas everydayof theweek.(Lipset
1963:164-165)
621
1 WilliamFinneganin a fascinating
article(1997)describesthe hungerforidentitybut theshalforit in AntelopeValley,
a recentlydeveloped
suburbof LosAngeles.For
lownessof culturalresources
to
example,hementionsa girlnamedMindywhobecamea Mormonbutbeforethatshehad"wanted
becomeJewish.Butthathadturnedout to be too muchwork.Becominga Mormonwasrelatively
andbecamea Nazi,in the
easy.AllthiswasbeforeMindygotaddictedto crystalmethamphetamine
a sociologistatAntelopeValley
"Martha
ninthgrade"(62-63).Finnegan's
articleconcludes:
Wengert,
arenotyetcommunities.
Kidsareleft
College,said,'Thisareahasgrownso fastthatneighborhoods
withthisintenselongingforidentification.'
andallmannerof 'beliefs'arise
Gangs,racenationalism,
forthe
fromthislonging.I thoughtof DebbieTurner's
Mindy'senthusiasm
inabilityto comprehend
Dr.Wengert
likesof CharlesMansonandAdolfHitler.'TheKidsreachoutto thesehistorical
figures,'
Thereareno booksat
said.'Butit'sthroughTV,throughcomicbooks,throughword-of-mouth.
Theseidentitiesthatlackanyculturaldeptharenonethehome,no ideas,no senseof history'"(78).
lesspowerfulenoughto be literallymattersof lifeanddeathfortheyoungpeopleinvolved.
622
If the problem is disrespect for the dignity of the person, then the
solution is to go back to that deepest core of our tradition,the sacredness
of the conscienceand person of everyindividual.And that is what a great
deal of the ideology of multiculturalismis reallysaying:We are all different; we are all unique. Respectthat.
But there is another problem, a very big problem, and its solution is
hardto envision. Justwhen we are moving to an evergreatervalidationof
the sacrednessof the individualperson, our capacityto imagine a social
fabric that would hold individuals together is vanishing. This is in part
because of the fact that the religious individualismthat I have been describingis linked to an economic individualismwhich, ironically,knows
nothing of the sacrednessof the individual. Its only standardis money,
and the only thing more sacredthan money is more money. What economic individualismdestroys,and what our kind of religiousindividualism cannot restore, is solidarity,a sense of being members of the same
body. In most other North Atlanticsocieties a tradition of an established
church, however secularized,provides some notion that we are in this
thing together, that we need each other, that our precious and unique
selves aren'tgoing to make it all alone. That is a traditionsingularlyweak
in our country,though Catholicsand some high church Protestantshave
tried to provide it. The trouble is, as Chestertonput it, in Americaeven
the Catholics are Protestants.And we also lack a tradition of Social Democracy such as most Europeannations possess, not unrelated to the
establishedchurch tradition, in which there is some notion of a government that bearsresponsibilityfor its people. But here it was not Washington and Hamilton who won but Jeffersonand Madison, with their rabid
hatredof the state,who carriedthe day.
RogerWilliamswas a moral geniusbut he was a sociologicalcatastrophe. After he founded the FirstBaptistchurch,he left it for a smallerand
purer one. That, too, he found inadequate,so he founded a church that
consisted only of himself, his wife, and one other person. One wonders
how he stood even those two. Since Williams ignored secular society,
money took overin RhodeIslandin a way thatwould not be true in Massachusetts or Connecticut for a long time. Rhode Island under Williams
gives us an earlyand local exampleof what happenswhen the sacredness
of the individualis not balancedby any sense of the whole or concern for
the common good. In Habits of the Heart we spoke of the second languages that must complement our language of individualism if we are
not to slip into total incoherence. I was not very optimistic then; I am
even less so today.Almost the only time this society has ever gotten itself
togetherhas been in time of war,and I am sure that my understandingof
America is deeply formed by experiencingthe depression as a child and
the SecondWorldWaras an adolescent.It is not easyto hearthose second
623
624
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