Customer Reviews

The American Religion: The Emergence of The Post-Christian Nation

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Bloom's argument, that virtually all Americans, from Southern Baptist to New Ager, are "gnostics," no matter what their denominational label, is right on the mark -- even if the tag "gnostic" offends some. What is his definition of a gnostic? 1) there is no higher religious authority than the private individual 2) every individual has the "soul sufficiency" to reach religious truth by themselves 3) external objective expressions of religion like churches, worship, or creeds are at best unnecessary but mostly a block to true spirituality 4) true religion does not need any external forms 5) so, no one can tell me what to believe, and anyone who does is potential threat to religious freedom. THE PROBLEM with Bloom is that this profound analysis of the essential American religious attitude was already made in the 1840s by the great Calvinist theologian John Williamson Nevin in his books "Anxious Bench" and "Antichrist" (available, published by Wiph and Stock). Both Bloom and Nevin are right, American-style Christianity is not Christian at all because it denies the objective presence of Christ in the World through Church, Sacrament, and Creed. In short, it makes the Incarnation irrelevent. What's left is a subjective worship of the self in place of God. We are all popes (but only for ourselves).

Bloom, nominally Jewish, has created a most imaginative assessment of indigenous American faiths. Mormons, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovahs Witnesses, Pentacostals, New Agers, Southern Baptists, and Afro-American religion are each addressed.

Unlike cult critiques by evangelical authors, Bloom spends almost no time comparing the beliefs of these groups to a measure of orthodoxy. The genius of Bloom's thesis is that these groups represent different shades of a single American religion - one distinct from the Jewish roots of the Jesus movement and from the European roots of historical Christianity.

He identifies, in a rather rambling and unsystematic way, three fundamental principles of this American religion. (1) The best part of us is uncreated, that is, existing before creation and remains in some sense perfect and divine. (2) That which frees us is knowledge, not belief founded on assent. (3) Freedom exists only in solitude. "What holds these principles together is the American persuasion, however muted or obscure, that we are mortal gods, destined to find ourselves again in worlds as yet undiscovered." (p. 103).

I was frequently frustrated by Bloom's ability to dance around his main point. His historical interpretations are excellent. His thesis incredibly controversial. It is unfortunate, in my opinion, that he was unable to reduce his arguments to precise formulations. Personal fascination with the eccentricities of these faiths made it impossible for him to resist digressions.

I can recommend this book for those who enjoy dabbling in theological contemplation, despite Bloom's political digression in the closing chapter. There is much to fuel a weekend's thought in these pages. If you are so inclined - enjoy!

For years historical studies of the LDS church were locked into stalemate, with apologists for the church and its antagonists determined to prove or disprove the truth claims made by the founder, Joseph Smith. Bloom, the well-known literary critic, broke the stalemate in the long section on Mormonism in this book by setting aside questions of advocacy and looking at the Mormon gospel as a cultural artifact. There he found some amazing things. Somehow Smith had revived ancient doctrines of Jewish mysticism and Christian hermeticism that had been lost for years. Bloom also explains how Mormonism comes as close as possible to a religious distillation of the American ethos: *the* American religion, as Tolstoy once said. Bloom described Smith as "a religious genius." This is quite a compliment from a self-described Jewish atheist, of course. Bloom helped open a whole new interest in Mormons by the larger culture, as indicated by such things as Tony Kushner's play, "Angels in America."

In this book, Bloom claims that he has invented a new discipline by applying the tools of literary analysis/criticism to religion. His argument is that, because religions are the creation of human imagination, the types of critical tools that analyze and criticize other types of human imaginative output should produce value when used on religions as well.

Obviously, if one does not agree that religions are human imaginative creations, one will reject Bloom's entire effort. I myself believe that spiritual reality exists separate from our imaginations, but agree with Bloom that formalized religions are human imaginative creations. I therefore find Bloom's approach fruitful. (Truth in advertising: I hold a PhD in literature and am therefore comfortable with Bloom's tools and approaches in the first place.)

I know a fair amount about three of the church groups that Bloom discusses, and remain a member of one of them. My friends and academic colleagues in each of the three denominations (Southern Baptist, Seventh-day Adventist, and Latter-day Saints) are quick to point out many factual errors or sub-cultural misunderstandings in *The American Religion.* They miss the point. Blooms makes an excellent case for a basic imaginitive structure which in-forms those Christian groups which were "born" in the United States, and to understand the structure he describes is a great help in understanding American religious life. (For example, Bloom's book helped me understand much of what happened in the religious dynamics of the recent Bush-Kerry campaign.)

I have found the understanding I received from this book invaluable, both for my own personal introspection and for serious discussion with other academics interested in religion and American life. I therefore highly recommend this book to all those interested in thinking seriously about American Christianity--if, that is, they are willing to at least try out Bloom's approach.

To me this book is reminiscent of Hannah Arendt's -the Origins of Totalitarianism-. The reader could pick away at each of the meta-syntheses as they occur, but with both books I was left with the feeling from personal experiences that the overall premises pretty much hit the nail on the head. Have wondered why it took Bloom's book so long to come out in paperback. It seemed to me that while Bloom is a confessed gnostic, he has shown some regard for many of traditional Christianity's values when given the alternative of the way American gnosticism is manifesting itself. For anyone who likes to talk about and mull over the topics forbidden to polite company - sex, politics, and religion - this is a great book for ruminating on the kind of religion we seem to be experiencing in America today. Thought his observations about the polygamy coming back into vogue and becoming legal in the not so distant future may be right on target if one reads the newspapers carefully.

Bloom sets out here to write as a "religious critic" and if you can get over the audacity of such an attempt, you can actually get a lot out of this analysis. With a rich knowledge of the history of religion in America, and a tightly focussed argument (that gets nailed into you with the insistence of a good sermon), Bloom makes a good case that religion in America is more similar to itself than to anything it purports to descend from. I was uncomfortable with many of his universal declarations about American spirituality, but the concise historical narrative is very well assembled. I recommend this book to anyone looking for a brief, but insightful, acquaintance with those sects most distinctly American, the Mormon's, Jehovah's Witnesses, Southern Baptists, Seventh Day Adventist's, Assembly of God, and African American spiritualists.

I read this book as one which described Bloom's gnostic heritage, hence interest in the subject, but thought I detected some apprehensions on Bloom's part about the direction of all of this in the American experience. Of particular interest was the notion that men, and an occasional women shall become gods - since man were created before gods how could it be otherwise? - The "sexy" part about this was that he prophesied that within the first quarter of the 21st Century this would be manifested in the re-establishment of harems, i.e. polygamy, in the U.S., so it was of particular interest that there was a newspaper article recently about the Governor of Utah proposing that bigamy be made a misdemeanor.

Prominent American literary critic points his analysis to the American church in what he terms "the post-Christian" time. Probably most striking and true is his conclusion that American religion is more closer to gnosticism than Christianity. Many Amercian strains of former confessional groups have strayed from their roots to evolve into something far removed from their historic predecessors. Many more are now engaged in that struggle. Fascinating analysis.

Mr. Bloom provides a reasonable work regarding the development of religion in the unique milieu of American cultural history. I did take exception to the chapter on "California Orphism" which dealt with new age religious trends. I felt that he was probably not knowledgable enough in this area to make the broad sweeping assumptions and statements that he did. He lumped numerous figures together from a variety of traditions (buddhism, theosophy, new age etc) and put them under the same umbrella. I have not read "The Sacred Path of the Warrior", (a book he thoroughly ridiculed) but being somewhat familiar with Tibetan Buddhism the particular passage he quoted from that work made perfect sense to me. It wouldn't make much sense taken out of context without an understanding of that particular religious perspective. Aside from that gripe, I found it an OK read.

Bloom's interpretation of "the American Religion" as modern Gnosticism was very helpful in making sense of the American religious landscape, whether Mormon, Adventist, Christian Scientist, Baptist, or Pentecostal. The religious American (for Bloom) is one who knows God in solitude. The soul is co-primeval with God. It is uncreated, and only truly knows itself when it "walks alone in the garden with Jesus." The solitude at the heart of American religion has an analog in the solitude of the vast American wilderness. The disappearance of time when "walking with Jesus" has an analog in the historical newness of the United States. (Never mind that there was a lot of Native American history before the white people showed up. Europeans did not know or identify with this history. They thought they were confronting the primeval as they moved westward. America was a lonely space without history, and thus the perfect backdrop for the American religionist's timeless, "gnostic" aloneness with God.)

I couldn't help but to compare Bloom's well-researched analysis of American religion with another assessment I recently read in Sam Harris's very popular _Letter to a Christian Nation_. Next to Bloom (who is not even a historian), Harris's ignorance of religious history is striking. The facile claim Harris makes about fundamentalism being the pure religion and everything "moderate" being a defection from pure Know-Nothingism (to use Bloom's terminology) is profoundly unhistorical. It is an extreme over-application of the relatively recent fundamentalist/moderate debate in the Southern Baptist Convention. Fundamentalism--like the word itself, which was coined in 1920--is a modern invention. In the larger scheme of things, religion has rarely been thoughtless. From the very beginning believers have tried to figure out and represent what they believe, which is the exact opposite of fundamentalism, where everything is already figured out and represented (and damn you if you think differently!). Furthermore, American fundamentalists (as Bloom argues rather persuasively) are NOT biblical literalists (as Harris claims), because they don't really read the Bible. Holy texts are NOT the sources of supreme evil in the world--those who stop putting any effort into understanding them are the real problem. Before the 20th century, as Bloom points out, no one ever treated the Bible like a dumb idol devoid of the problems of language. Harris is simply wrong about this. He is blithely unhistorical.

Harris wants to fix fundamentalism by destroying religion altogether, but this is like fixing a leaky faucet by ripping out the whole kitchen. It betrays a crude (or perhaps just sensationalist and opportunistic) understanding of the situation.

Reading Bloom is delightful. His arguments are littered with with brilliant little insights that produce a sense of astonishment. Not many writers can manage this. Brilliance comes at the cost of idiosyncrasy, but to harp on this point with Bloom would really be to miss the forest for the trees. Sometimes he is a little repetitive, and sometimes he moves too quickly, but none of this compromises the overall effectiveness or pleasure of the book.