Twilight of the WASPS, Slippery Slopes

Re no WASPS on Sup Ct: true, but I just had an e-mail exchange with a friend who maintained that Breyer is socially/culturally more WASP than Jewish. Fwiw.

Btw, Ben Alpers at the USIH blog beat you to this whole no-WASP thing. Plus his post had a Thomas Nast cartoon, which you don’t.

“Writing as a Roman Catholic, Anscombe offers a penetrating moral analysis of marriage and sexuality that will benefit any reader who rejects the secularist reduction of marriage as merely a union that sanctions sexual activity between partners.”
Um, I’m a secularist and I don’t think of marriage as “merely a union that sanctions sexual activity between partners.” In fact, I’m pretty sure virtually no one things that.

“People won’t even notice”? I’ll bet the white supremacists have taken acute notice of the waning hegemony of the WASPs.

Yes, because we secularists believe that you can only have sex if you’re married.

The proof, offered in passing: anything else and you’ll end up having to tolerate Mormonism.

Does Stephens just mean, by this, something like “the Americans do it the way Mill suggests and look where they got?”

What Mill explicitly defends in ‘On Liberty’ is the legalization of Mormon polygamy. For now, that still seems to be ‘a reductio’.

John:
Should there be a negative inserted into that sentence somewhere?

I guess to be tactful we should assume Stephen knew the Mormons weren’t actually being tolerated in the US at the time (and that I did–which I didn’t remember, actually). But whether or not he did seems like an interesting question that might repay research; I wonder if he didn’t, if the fact that they existed wouldn’t have been quite bad enough. It sounds like he wouldn’t have thought much about, say, the Second Great Awakening, either (and might have presumed it also arose from some prominent failing that England had presumably so far avoided).

I think that to understand Stephens, you need to think more than most philosophers do about the context of the time. Think of Matthew Arnold, and how he thought that one of the most serious things holding back Great Brittan was the mass of “dissenters” who refused to be folded into the mainstream culture, and that this in turn made the UK culturally backwards, philistine, etc. Both Stephens and Arnold were “liberals” of the time of a sort, and this involved thinking that the “dissenters” were keeping the country backwards. (If you want an analogy, imagine modern liberals who think that Louisiana really ought not be able to run its schools according to whatever the local born-again church thinks. Given that there wasn’t really universal state education at the time in the UK, and given that education was done by the local churches in most cases, you can see how this worried people like Arnold and Stephens.) (It’s also not completely clear that Mill thought that Mormons should be tolerated- he at least had very significant worries.)

As for finding Anscombe “fun”, just imagine her spending time protesting outside abortion clinics (which she did quite a bit) while reading her, and the “fun” goes right away.

As a secular, atheist nihilist, I could only read up through part two of Ansecombe’s tract before needing to convince a nun, bugger a Baptist and the rub one off in the closet.*

I follow the point, of course, but to whom is she actually speaking?

*man, I wish my life were as exciting as anti-contraception crusaders’ apparently are.

there will be no WASPS whatsoever at the absolute top of the political system, and people won’t even notice.

That depends on how you define the political system, and I don’t say that with tinfoil draped around my noggin. Haven’t the upper echelons of the remaining WASP establishment decided that they won’t dirty their hands with the messy business of elected (or appointed) office, but will hire people to do it for them?

Right, I think the normal intra-christian divide is into catholic, orthodox and protestant christians. On that basis, Mormons are protestant. Getting more into it is too weird for a basically secular society like the USA, I think.
There are similar debates in India as to whether say Jains and Sikhs are Hindu. The Indian constitution says they are. Probably makes sense because Hiinduism is very broad and includes even indian-born atheistic threads.

So “race” and money are more important determinants of identity than religion. It’s important what Romney is not. Yes, he’s not a mainstream Christian but he made clear what he really is not when he spoke to the NAACP and turned down Rubio for the VP position.

Getting more into it is too weird for a basically secular society like the USA, I think.

That’s very much an outsider’s perspective. I’ll refer you to Emo Phillips.

One can also discuss, genealogically, how American Methodists, with their Great Awakening revivalist heritage, are somewhat different from English Methodists with their traditions of coffee mornings and tombolas. American Christianity is very much its own evolutionary branch, and what ‘indian’ in #25 would probably consider ‘protestant’ only encompasses the mainline and perhaps the evangelical, leaving aside the fundamentalists and particularly the nontrinitarians (LDS, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists).

While nontrinitarian congregations in America predate independence, and New England’s Unitarians could probably be considered culturally WASP, it’s a stretch to classify the nontrinitarian groups of 19th century origin as Protestant, and not one either they or self-described Protestants accept.

I’ll also note that when Nikki Haley, the daughter of Sikhs and a convert to Methodism, was nominated against Vincent Sheheen, a Roman Catholic, in the South Carolina governor’s election in 2010, a major newspaper in the state ran a little piece for its Bible Belt readers explaining both Sikhism and Roman Catholicism.

We don’t for example hear about whether Silician American test scores are lower or higher than Irish American test scores.

Andrew Hacker made this point in his response to The Bell Curve. There are very large gaps in “achievement” between different white ethnic groups, but these are never discussed, while the supposed deficiencies of African-Americans get endless scrutiny.

Jamie @ 19: “needing to convince a nun”

Some people have the most rarefied sexual pleasures.

It’s still a bit weird that Obama isn’t a WASP, despite being a protestant and being raised by his white anglo saxon mother and family.

On the whole a perfectly logical and self-reflective view.

I had the same overall reaction except that I think this sentence: “The action is not left by you as the kind of act by which life is transmitted, but is purposely rendered infertile, and so changed to another sort of act altogether.” doesn’t qualify as logical. That’s assuming the conclusion, given that the whole point Anscombe is arguing is whether “purposely render[ing]” the sex act “infertile” makes it the “sort of act” one shouldn’t do. And it’s the bit where I can’t follow even after spotting her all the other necessary assumptions along the way.

WASP has not been an important category in the US for decades. For my entire adult life the US elite has included very large numbers of people of Jewish and Catholic background. Indeed if one looks at numbers in the general population versus numbers in the elite I think WASPs have been underrepresented. Whereas a number of non WASP groups such as Jews have been over represented. Talking about a WASP elite is an anachronism.

When he talks about Mormonism, it’s in the same breath as “St. Simonianism” and “experiments in living”. I think what Stephens is really on about here is stomping the hippies and only distantly about tolerating customs and beliefs.

I think that’s the point – Stephen (with one ‘s’) is arguing that if you make religious tolerance an absolute principle you’ll have to tolerate roving bands of hippies saying “thou” and “thee” a few times and calling themselves a religion. Which would be anarchy, obv.

Sadly, I am too dumb to contribute much to this blog, but after a brief skim I haven’t seen it noted that Mormonism may not be considered “Protestant” because it doesn’t trace its origin to the Protestant Reformation or its aftermath. In particular, most other Protestant sects claim that they are recognizing the true meaning of the Church that was established by Jesus and his apostles and disciples in opposition to false doctrines that have been propagated since then. The LDS movement claims a subsequent revelation and a more recent prophet, and it arguably worships a non-trinitarian supreme being. It’s been forever since my religion classes in parochial high school though so I don’t know how that would compare to other recent Christian movements like Seventh-Day Adventists or the Church of Christ Scientist.
It does seem that there’s increasing acceptance in the religious right for those faiths that exhibit the appropriate forms of social and cultural and stylistic conservatism, whatever their theological beliefs: I wouldn’t be surprised to find the Mormon Romney, perhaps through his mouthpiece VP or his SuperPAC money, insinuating that just as Harry Reid isn’t a true Mormon people like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi aren’t true Catholics, while of course Obama was born a Muslim and will not just be suspect forever but must either appear as a heretic and apostate to the Islamic world or must be a secret practicer of taqiyya who lies to us Merkins.

Mormons don’t consider themselves to be Protestant. They have a doctrine of authority that is, to them, as important and as logical as Apostolic Succession, and they consider it rather a big deal that Protestants don’t have that. Also.

I’m not clear on the final para. Mill distinguished clearly between his support for freedom of religion (fundamental to liberalism) and for free markets (based on the best available economic analysis, but subject to revision if that analysis proved fallible). His famous conversion to (a very abstract kind of socialism) illustrates the point.

I’d say that industrial policy is a paradigm example of something where the modern (US-style) liberal view ought to be agnostic – if it looks like working well in a particular case, give it a go, but there is no general reason to be either for or against, unlike both free speech and egalitarian income policy.

ISTM that this mostly reflects that anti-Catholicism ain’t what it used to be. Once more Christians realized that there were ACTUAL NON-CHRISTIANS in this country, God forbid, they circled the wagons and decided any Christian was good enough, even a Mormon.

Except the “ACTUAL NON-CHRISTIANS in this country” perception was there back in the 19th and early 20th Century. The revived (“second”) KKK of the 1920s was dead-set against the immigration of both Catholics and Jews.

One Jew ran for a top office and lost. I wouldn’t exactly say that the corridors of power are open to them.

Roughly 6% of the House is Jewish (including the current Majority Leader), and 13% of the Senate. Given that only 2% of the US population is Jewish, that’s pretty good.

There are similar debates in India as to whether say Jains and Sikhs are Hindu. The Indian constitution says they are. Probably makes sense because Hiinduism is very broad and includes even indian-born atheistic threads.

Well, the Indian constitution also says (in the same sentence) that Buddhists are to be counted as Hindus, which is something I don’t think most Buddhists would agree with.

John, if I’m not mistaken, you’re a musician. French horn, no?

So, if you were commissioned to compose a WASPerdämmerung, how would that go? Theme and Variations on Yankee Doodle followed by Fantasia on Old Hundredth? And then what? What’s characteristically WASP music? (And I don’t mean the band, W.A.S.P., of which I know nothing. But Google does.)

You have a point that Anscombe at least knows what’s going to happen next.

AIUI the LDS position is that they are the Church of Jesus Christ, reconstituted pretty much ex nihilo following the revelation to Joseph Smith. (Also, they have their own scriptures, which is a bit of a defining feature.) Some Protestant groups – particularly post-Awakening groups like the Plymouth Brethren – take a similar “they think they are but they’re not really” attitude to other Christian churches (and the Catholic Church in particular), but it’s quite unusual.

John@42: I see your point, but I didn’t quite read it the way you intended. The status Mormons aspired to was to be the social equals of, say, the Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Episcopalians, or Baptists. Protestant was not a category of religious faith for most people until, roughly, Weber. Lutherans were Protestants, and adopted that label loudly. Calvinists saw themselves as non-Catholic and non-Protestant until the 18th century or so. Anabaptists did until the 20th century, and some of them still do. Anglicans are still ambiguous about it, although American Episcopalians are not so much.

Protestant was a broad category that didn’t amount to much in America more than “socially acceptable non-Catholics”, until Catholics started appearing in meaningful numbers. That was definitely what Mormons aspired to. The only difference now is that maybe it’s just “socially acceptable”, since “non-Catholic” has lost most of its importance.

#46: There hasn’t been a woman in a statewide national office since the 1960s, OTOH.

I don’t understand, what about Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Or is the operative word statewide and “national” as sobriquet, so Gov Palin. I respect the performance under unusually difficult circumstances of Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, which is a sort of national office, and then there’s Sec. Clinton.

To firm my previous musings at #36, church is an institution which does not yet have a full secular replacement. It is essential for certain functions like mating and localized social connection. What the US has done is privatize this function, which however respectable the freedom aspect is to liberals (and despite being constantly condemned by religious right–even though they owe their very existence to the oft denounced “separation”) it tends to lead to a race-to-the-bottom toward irrationality and intolerance in religion. The lack of a national church also means the USA is not a “nation” as many conservatives like to say, but a “country.” That means a society which is too fragmented to control its plutocracy and militaristic oligarchy.

Having grown up with a religion that, for many centuries, carried a death penalty if you were caught belonging to it

Wait, which?

There hasn’t been a woman in a statewide national office since the 1960s, OTOH.

Bianca was referring specifically to Massachusetts, so Clinton, Palin, etc. aren’t counterexamples. But the claim is still obviously wrong, given that the current Attorney General is Martha Coakley, three of the past five Lieutenant Governors have been women (one of whom served as acting Governor for two years), etc. In fact you would have to go back quite a few years to find a time when Massachusetts did *not* have a woman in statewide office.

JW@61: Anabaptist. (a.k.a., Mennonites)

I know it was a death penalty offense in Switzerland after 1526 – a decade before that little incident in Münster that we don’t like to talk about – but I’ve never been able to find when it was formally repealed. I suspect it was still on the books in places when Napoleon did away with the old regimes in central Europe. I know the death penalty was still in force for Anabaptists in parts of the Holy Roman Empire after the Peace of Westphalia – the Martelaersspiegel tells the story of martyrs killed for their faith as late as 1660 – but I don’t think it was still enforced very much after 1700 or so. Dissenting churches just weren’t that weird by then, although there was still plenty of animosity towards a church that strongly emphasized rejection of secular government, non-violence, and a general unwillingness to pay taxes.

But yeah, it means I sympathize with the Mormon struggle. Not the Mormon faith, just the Mormon struggle.

Mason 31: “There are very large gaps in “achievement” between different white ethnic groups, but these are never discussed, while the supposed deficiencies of African-Americans get endless scrutiny.”

They are not “never discussed”. They used to be discussed a lot – in fact the whole IQ test movement started with the desire to find a rationale for limiting Eastern and Southern European and Jewish immigration. Gould’s Mismeasure of Man is worth rereading. The notorious Richard Lynn also wrote quite a bit, and quite recently, about the “low” IQ of the Irish compared to the English. These “intra-white” (for lack of a better word) racisms may not have much traction any more in the US (perhaps in part because census doesn’t track them any more) but they used to be quite significant. That supports of course the observation that traditional WASPism has been supplanted by a more generic white/christian identification. Most significant seems to me the fact that evangelicals and Catholics are nowadays so closely allied, which a few decades ago was unthinkable.

The Mormons are literally a white flight movement. Go to a Mormon temple and see the statues of perfect white children with a dog. The older child will be a boy with a perfect crew cut with his little ribboned sister beholding him and the faithful dog at their feet.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2012/03/mormon_church_and_racism_a_new_controversy_about_old_teachings_.html

And then Romney admits that he went for “boos” at the NAACP.

JW Mason: I probably meant “US Congressional office,” but I wasn’t sure where I’d seen the stat. Most likely it was Wikipedia’s list of congressional reps going back to pre-revolutionary times. IIRC there was a woman elected (i.e. not a widow) as a Republican in the 1960s and nobody since about the Goldwater era.

AFAICT GEM Anscombe would have little patience with anything like civil religion, and at best might class it with Protestant attempts to use Catholic institutions without paying full price (possibly even going full Godwin), which for obvious reasons isn’t a classification that Western-hemisphere freedom-of-religion arguments can make much good use of, even in the best case.

I didn’t know Christian Scientists were non-Trinitarian, I thought of them as just another kind of Protestant of 7th Day Adventist category weirdness.

Seventh-Day Adventism started out as anti-trinitarian, but gradually accepted it as doctrine over the first half of the 20th century, as part of a wider outreach to more mainstream Protestantism. While trinitarianism isn’t a foolproof way to divvy up the denominational boom of 19th century America, it’s a decent start.

This is somewhat on topic (re state and church):

The state of Hamburg has negotiated a formal contract with Islamic communities that won’t give them equal status with the churches but apparently will organize the religious education for Muslim children. Apparently, the Islamic communities will arrange with the Lutheran church for joint religious education – in state schools. This must be totally bizarre to Americans (and probably to most others) but Hamburg’s Lutheran church had already assumed the religious education of the city’s few Catholics. This is what you get when a religiously homogenous society turns secular.

http://www.ndr.de/regional/hamburg/staatsvertrag131.html
http://www.kirche-hamburg.de/nachrichten/one.news/index.html?entry=page.newshh.201207.3
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religionsunterricht_in_Deutschland

I’m not disputing the awful, awful history at all (google the phrase “white and delightsome” if you want to make yourself physically ill), but I’m pretty sure you did not see that statue at a Temple. Those are fairly uncommon, and the statuary is fairly standardized. Perhaps you were at some other type of Mormon church building, but access to actual Temples is rigidly controlled.

Bad Mormon Art is very bad, and tends to be paintings rather than statues. The next time you ponder the anti-gay stance on the Mormon Church, remember that they keep The Stripling Warriors proudly displayed in the SLC Visitor Center, without any hint of irony.

If people get the split between Protestants, Catholics, and other Christians mixed up, just imagine the confusion once you throw in evangelicals and pentecostals.

Out of curiosity: which, if any, of the regular contributors to CT would classify themselves as WASPs?

And if, as I suspect, it’s rather few, does that say anything significant about CT?

are = our

It seems like state supported churches in Europe have led to athiesm, and I think that would have been wonderful in itself, and it would make it less possible to use irrationality in politics. Open religious competition combined with lack of taxation on churches has led to insane irrationality, rejection of science, proxy imperialism, etc., all in the greater service of a rapacious plutocracy.

I’ve heard the argument about “state-supported churches lead to atheism”; it requires ignoring the fact that religiosity in Poland, Greece, Croatia, Malta, Italy, and Portugal is, in at least some senses, higher than in the US (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Importance_of_religion_by_country)

There’s also the problem with explaining why Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which don’t really have state-supported churches, aren’t as religious, etc., as the US, and why other countries with state-supported religions (e.g., many Muslim and some Buddhist countries) aren’t bastions of atheism.

(Given that state-supported churches in Europe date back to the 4th Century, the “state-supported churches –> atheism & rational politics” transition seems to require an awfully long time…)

Dunno. I think the previous posters were mostly talking about Northern Europe style state churches – Church of England/Sweden/Denmark/Evangelical Church in Germany etc. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand aren’t good counter examples, they obviously had state support for Anglicanism for most their history, Poland and Croatia had a government actively hostile to religion let alone supporting it for most the post-war period, and Portugal has church/state separation.

@73: Tim Wilkinson: “More generally I’d suggest comparing the reality of religious toleration in the UK and USA from at least, say, c. 1830 onwards.”

1832 saw Catholic emancipation in Britain, and the House of Commons also voted for Jewish emancipation in 1833. But it took until 1867 (and much political effort) for the House of Lords to agree to give (male) Jewish Britons the right to vote. All those 34 years, Jewish men had the right to vote in the USA.

And, it wasn’t until this century – 2001! – that former Catholic priests were legally permitted to sit in the House of Commons. I don’t think Britain’s record on religious toleration is something to boast about.

Malaclypse @ 79:

Those “stripling” warriors all look like they’re on steroids. Probably got hold of some when the Lost Tribes invaded Muscle Beach.

Something like Pat Boone or Perry Como maybe.

“But there will be no WASPS whatsoever at the absolute top of the political system, and people won’t even notice. Get over it.”

Charles Murray seems to have noticed. Neither the Catholics nor the Jews want to call attention to it for opposite reasons. Catholics because they always assumed they would be the eventual majority and the Jews due to not wanting to call attention to their over-representation in the elite.

What is interesting about Catholics, Jews and Mormons is that they all have a more international identification than the local protestant churches. Mormons feel they inherited the mantle of Manifest Destiny from the USA which sold its birthright for the good life, just as they inherited the restored church from ancient prophets due to the apostasy and laxity of the catholic church.

peter – No, I wouldn’t boast about Britain’s record of religious toleration post c.1790, because: (a) it is nothing to write home about, as you note; (b) it has really very little to do with me.

But since you mention those 34 years, here are some highlights of the reality (I generally put words into a sentence in order to contribute to its meaning) of religious toleration in the US during that period. It alone might seem to cast into doubt any suggestion that the US, lacking an established religion, was more tolerant of minority religions.

(1832, Jackson County, Missouri. A mob tars and feathers two leading Mormons and destroys some Mormon homes and the Mormon press. This does not make the cut though.)

1834, Charlestown, Massachusetts. Ursuline Convent Riots: a mob burns down a Roman Catholic convent.

1838, NW Missouri. The Missouri Mormon War: 20 Mormon adults and children and 2 non-Mormons killed. Other Mormons die as a result of expulsion from their homes and of Governor Lilburn Boggs Extermination Order.

1844, Carthage, Illinois: Mob kills jailed Mormons Joseph and Hyrum Smith with impunity.

1844, Philadelphia. Bible Riots: at least 20 are killed, numerous houses burnt and two churches destroyed.

Tim, the Church of England coeexisted with dissenting churches since the Glorious Revolution. However, Unitarians could not take posts at some Oxbridge colleges due to needing to take a Trinitarian oath, among other disabilities. Also, Mormons were abolitionists in a slaveowning state: Congregationalists would have met with a similar welcome.

This is actually one of my areas of expertise. No, Baptists aren’t WASPs. The Church of England (Anglicanism) is identical in America to Episcopalianism, that most WASPy of faiths, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is sort of in charge of the Episcopalian Church, except no one really has to do what he says or anything. WASPs don’t really care about music, so we have classical music and, yes Perry Como type music. Frank Sinatra is a gangster and an Italian and we’re not sure about him. WASPs’ main sacrament is cocktails.

Belle: You are onto something about how WASP’s dress. My dear shanty-Irish father once remarked that “you have to be rich to dress that poorly.”

And I can’t believe no one has made any hay here about Romney and the phrase “Anglo-Saxon,” or the phrase “Anglo-Saxon” in general, as if 1066 never happened, either linguistically or otherwise.

*****

Protestant to many just means not-Jewish and not-Catholic. Mormons might not want to be considered Protestant but they want to be treated socially as if they are.

On the other hand, we Worshipers of the Elder Gods, have no desire to be folded into the Protestant ranks. Probably explains why so few of us hold elective office.

Anecdotally, in response to this and many other comments about what a “Protestant” is —

When I was being raised (Italian) (-American) Catholic in the 50s and 60s, “Protestant” definitely meant not-Catholic, but it also definitely meant Christian. So if anyone had ever heard of any worshipers of the Elder Gods, which of course we hadn’t, because they died out with the pagan Romans or something, they would definitely not have been considered “Protestant,” because they wouldn’t have been Christian. (At least, that’s presuming I’m interpreting “Elder Gods” correctly.)

Despite having had a Baptist mother, who nevertheless, if she went to church at all when we were kids, went to Mass with us and my dad, I’m hazy to this day on the differences amongst the Protestant denominations. They were just all those *other* people — who were going to hell along with the pagans and the Jews etc., because they didn’t belong to the one true church. Imagine my confusion when I learned that my mother’s tradition thought it was the one true church, and not only that, they had sins that we didn’t have (touching a deck of cards, drinking alcoholic beverages, dancing…..).

I would say that “one true church” thing is an old story, but sadly, it’s as fresh as it ever was, even if the axes of “the other” have been reshuffled since I was a kid.

I just want to observe that “penetrating moral” can´t be both.

@36 and @80: The purpose of the separation of church and state for most of the framers of the US Constitution was not to create a secular society. Most would have regarded the continuing thriving of Protestantism in the US as a feature, not a bug. The place of religion in American life today may not be a good thing, but it is much more an intended outcome of our constitutional system than an ironic unintended consequence.

Ben@110: No. The founders were not men of ostentatious public religion. True, they were creatures of their time, and although I can’t quote any in particular, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that most of them thought of Catholics, Jews and Muslims as basically barbaric, unenlightened people compared to “free-thinking” Protestants. But the recent history that motivated their political thinking included over two centuries of devastating religious warfare touching almost every nation in Europe, over issues that, when you step back and view them from the standpoint of an enlightened 18th century intellectual, look pretty stupid.

Their faiths were internalized and private if they existed at all, in contradiction to the public adherence and private dissent encouraged by European state churches. Only Jefferson was really public and open about his beliefs, and his beliefs amounted to near-atheist heresy. I think they would look at religion in America today – mass public adherence to the least charitable and most unsupportable aspects of Christianity and near-universal private behaviour that directly contradicts their public beliefs – and be anything but disgusted.

The Church of England (Anglicanism) is identical in America to Episcopalianism, that most WASPy of faiths

The Church of England is many things, but it’s not Protestant. Or rather, it’s many things including Protestant, but it’s not a Protestant church.

Scott@115 and Charles@116: I tried to choose my words carefully. I most certainly did not claim that the framers would have been happy with the state of American religion in 2012. What I said was that (unlike, e.g., some in the French Revolution), their goal was absolutely not to rid their society of religion. And most countenanced a more robust role for religion in the public sphere than Jefferson did. See David Sehat’s recent book for a good sense of this.

Re: Croatia. My understanding is that Tito did not actively repress religion, but both discouraged it in favor of his own cult of personality and worked through a nationalized clergy to spread the good word of his own philosophy. Last I knew, priests in Croatia were still paid by the government and this was portrayed to me as a holdover from the old regime (and one reason why they wouldn’t join the EU too soon). I’m afraid this is tangential to the all-important defining of the term WASP, but goes to support the idea that specific state religion policies are not really all that relevant to the religiosity of a population.

I struggled with the question of whether to include Charles Ives and John Adams, but “WASP” tends to connote a social sphere more than an ethnicity. No Ives in those Ralph Lauren-esque parties, Copland as much because he’s more accessible than Ives as because he used traditional folk tunes. It isn’t to deny that much of high culture in the US has been created by WASPs, even if the majority of WASPs don’t care about high modernism and would be as happy as not if their kids don’t either (just like anybody else).

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/08/14/american_atheists_1_in_20_americans_say_they_are_atheists_.html

According to Wikipedia, Christian Scientists follow a kind of trinitarianism. But their trinity is one unique to them rather than Father-Son-Holy Something.

The founders lived over two centuries ago. Things have changed radically, the past is another country. They would likely be perplexed by things today in ways that wouldn’t occur to us. And I imagine the same thing will happen if any of us get cryogenically frozen and woken up centuries later.
But I actually don’t think Jefferson would be that shocked by the Book of Mormon (he wasn’t by Mohammedans or Hindoos), which mostly seems weird relative to other religions because it was written recently enough that its bogosity is more glaring.

I have not read more than about thirty comments, but anyone who thinks that Mormons are Protestants should read Leonard Arrington’s memoirs on the background to the revelation to the Mormon President (I think it was Mr. Kimball at the time) on the admission of blacks to the priesthood. It may have a superficial similarity to some of the things popes have historically done, but it’s as far from the sola scriptura or faith – reason – tradition bases of Protestantism as can be.

Well informed Mormons from polygamous backgrounds (and that means grandparents in polygamous marriages before 1890) have told me, and the historical record seems to bear it out, that polygamy was generally unpopular, particularly with men due to the financial burden and with pretty much everything because of the interpersonal tensions and stress that could be involved. (Before I’m accused of sexism, I should say that the appeal to some women seems to have been (a) limitation of childbearing, which tended to be pretty unrestrained in the American West, (b) a built in social network, which could be very valuable if you were living in Mesquite Nevada and could stand the other women who slept with your husband, and (c) financial security and, like 19th century Western Catholic marriages, a cultural demand that women be better treated and less easily discarded.)

Anscombe’s essay on contraception is silly and self-indulgent (and should give second thoughts to those who use her concept of consequentialism) but I very much liked some of her other Catholic stuff such as on the real presence.

On Rachel Maddow’s show the other night she got quite tripped up when Dan Rather said there were no WASPs on either ticket. It was obvious that her difficulty concerned Romney, and probably not out of ignorance of comparative religion. I suspect that the idea that Romney is an outsider with respect to anything of any real significance seems less much less intuitively credible, let alone socially significant, to anyone who’s not a white male. (Probably helped along by the evangelical base’s self-imposed, little remarked-upon stifling of the “Mormons aren’t Christian” meme for Romney’s sake.)

Will the press investigate whether Romney has been attending services led by lunatics like Randy Bott? Would it be surprising if he has been, or is for the matter, under the pastoral care of a Bott-like character? Who’s Romney’s Jeremiah Wright? I smell an October surprise.

Oops strike that. Seems that Mitt lied about that.

I don’t think anyone who refuses even to criticize himself for remaining in a self-consciously racist faith into his 30s should be considered for the Presidency of this country. It’s as if Barack Obama proclaimed his pride in remaining a Black Panther well after being editor of the HLR. The Black Panthers did some good things in regards to community health just as there is probably a well or two more in the third world due to Mormon missionary activity.

“The Church of England is many things, but it’s not Protestant. Or rather, it’s many things including Protestant, but it’s not a Protestant church.”

The Apostles’ Creed – “I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church..”
(Incidentally this Creed is on the wall of a Lutheran church in London. )

One 0f those C of E creeds (Nicene is it?) has ‘one catholic and apostolic church’. I don’t know what the significance of ‘apostolic’ is nor whether it has anything much to do with ‘apostolic’ as mentioned by Maggie @126.

The C of E does have a peculiar intermediate status between (or straddling) Catholic and Protestant, though, apparently. I don’t know exactly what this amounts to; high churches’ incense, crucifers, servers and genuflection all seem pretty cosmetic – having a Lady chapel is maybe a bit more substantive, if it means people are praying to her, or petitioning or whatever they would be doing. But I don’t think even the highest CofE churches do individual confessions, for example, and they are not into transsubstantiation. Perhaps more to do with authority and mediation – the prayer books and the Synod or something?

Is the social isolation of evangelicals the cause of their views?

Don’t you mean the effect? Their social isolation is something they do voluntarily, not something imposed on them either by circumstance or by the rest of society.

I don’t know what the significance of ‘apostolic’ is nor whether it has anything much to do with ‘apostolic’ as mentioned by Maggie @126.

Very little, almost nothing to do with it. The old creedal churches (Roman, Orthodox, Anglican, Scandinavian state churches, etc.) are “apostolic” in the sense of succession of bishops, the idea being that the apostles were the first bishops, although of course they quarrel among themselves as to the validity and authority of each others’ claims to uphold this connection. Pentecostalists call themselves “apostolic” because they believe their practices restore true Christianity as practiced by the original apostles.

Maggie: “Catholics aren’t the only denomination that use the theological term “catholic,” . . .”

Perhaps, but, apparently, they are the only ones, who use it, and mean it.

I think what was going through Rather’s head is probably just that he’s primed, through long professional habit, to make note of minority milestones – less and less impressive ones as time passes and more impressive ones get done. And – perhaps due to his age – he may not realize that “oh look, this rich white guy goes to a church the other rich white guys don’t like” just isn’t going to seem major to everyone. Like Maddow. Neither one of them is really right or wrong, it’s just an interesting thing.

But what’s really interesting to me is that someone as sharp as Maddow could only make that mistake because the evangelicals et al. are helpfully biting their tongues. I wonder whether this can be sustained through November. Religious conservatives I know seem unenthused; the more Republican ones are dead silent, while the more independent make worried sounds about Ayn Rand. It can’t be long before some conscientious commentator on the right puts together the abortion waste disposal, the shredding of people’s employers, etc. with a revisit to why Mormons have not been considered theological Christians. The religious right is supposed to grin and bear it through anything for the sake of anti-abortion, but will they grin and bear actual abortion? If not, will they also learn skepticism about all the “lesser” sins they’d been accustomed to overlook? Some of them are bound to stay home, but how many? Enough to permanently damage the Christian-capital coalition?

having a Lady chapel is maybe a bit more substantive, if it means people are praying to her, or petitioning or whatever they would be doing. But I don’t think even the highest CofE churches do individual confessions, for example, and they are not into transsubstantiation.

No to confession, no to praying to the BVM or any of the other saints – although the idea isn’t so much that they don’t exist or wouldn’t hear you, more that God will hear you, so why pray to anyone else. Transubstantiation (which is a relatively new idea anyway, circa 1000 AD) is more of a grey area; I know Anglican churches which keep a flame burning to show the presence of the consecrated host, and they surely wouldn’t do that if it was a mere symbol. (The story of the Last Supper has an almost Second Amendment inclusiveness – you can get diametrically opposite understandings of the Eucharist out of it, depending on whether you stress the “this is my body” part or the “do this in remembrance of me”.)

You can see the Church of England as a sixteenth-century creation and trace its roots to Tyndale and Wyclif and ultimately Luther, if you want to. Or you can take the view that the English Church wasn’t founded, it was reformed – and, as I saw it put once, asking “where was the church before it was reformed?” is a bit like asking “where was your face before you washed it?”

Maggie: It’s certainly true that denominational branding is almost gone in America, and that it’s gone so far that you can actually circulate theological arguments and miscellaneous rationalizations to all varieties of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons and doubtless others without difficulty.

Mormons already have a version of the prosperity gospel (like here) but it’s much more of the namby-pamby Weberian variety (good values and strong families lead to prosperity because it’s important to exercise restraint and provide security for your family) than the hardcore Calvinist and Pentecostal stuff (believe and be pious and Jesus will shower you in moolah!). I do wonder how Romney’s career in the finance industry, and his recent remarks about borrowing money to go to school, can be aligned with Joseph Smith’s nearly socialist preachings on the evils of debt. But I suppose if Prince Al Waleed bin Talal can justify owning the largest single share of Citibank, it can’t be too hard to rationalize away a religion’s economic doctrines.

I’m not in contact with Mormons very much, but I’d give long odds someone in the Church has a copy of Gospel Doctrine around, and has read pages 306-308 in light of the mortgage crisis. It’s hard to see Mormonism becoming the church of unfettered finance capitalism because it has a prophet and founder who lived recently enough to preach explicitly against it. Its own roots and mythos draw heavily on the part of American history when bankers and farmers were mortal enemies, and Mormons sided with the farmers.

I could be wrong – hypocrisy abounds in all faiths – but I’d like not to be.

I know it was a death penalty offense in Switzerland after 1526 – a decade before that little incident in Münster that we don’t like to talk about – but I’ve never been able to find when it was formally repealed.

As I understand it the Swiss objection to Menonites and Amish had less to do with theological differences and more to do with pacifism. The Swiss business model was to round up ones young men, train them to use pikes, and rent them out as mercenaries in most of Europes wars (on whichever side will pay more – or both sides, ideally). Having a bunch of anabaptist pacifists running around encouraging people to avoid mercenary service was frowned upon.

They have their own little closed network of power, which isn’t really imbricated in the networks other WASPs are in.

But Mitt Romney is actually part of those networks. His father was CEO of a Detroit auto company and governor of Michigan. He went to the non-Mormon schools that one would expect any mainline Protestant or assimilated Catholic boy to attend.

Scott, what’s on pp. 306-308 of Gospel Doctrine? Whatever it may be, my impression of Mormons is that they tend to be highly attuned to the church’s current interpretations and rather unreceptive to arguments inviting them to independently reason from older sources. (Largely, I think, because the sources are such that if you start doing that, polygamy becomes a difficult conclusion to avoid.)

Anglicans actually do do confession (it’s not required, on the other hand).

Anglicans actually do do confession (it’s not required, on the other hand).

Well, there you go. I’ve hung around some pretty High churches, but never heard of this. So there aren’t that many lines in the sand between Catholic and Anglican practice – even priestly celibacy is available as an optional extra, as it were – apart from the authority of the Pope, the long-form Lord’s Prayer and of course the non-distribution of the wine. OTOH, there aren’t that many big differences between Methodist and low-church Anglican practice and belief. It really is a broad church.

Scott 164, do you have a link to the Barna analysis?

Charles Peterson: … church is an institution which does not yet have a full secular replacement. It is essential for certain functions like mating and localized social connection.

So, I take it you’ve never been in a bar? ;)

Phil,
That wasn’t a typo.

re 171, my understanding is that Catholic must be understood to be “Universal”; as in Universal church. It is an Imperialistic claim to be the one true and Universal church. All denominations using it are dissing all the rest as not authentic and hence universal. It is the same as some Marxists rejecting other Marxists as not being really Marxists by not being real inheritors of the Franchise. In the case of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic church it involves the explicit claim that the Bishop of Rome is the literal successor of Saint Peter. It also has the implication that all must one day embrace the true faith, hence it is Universal or Catholic; all of humanity will be absorbed when they see the light like the Borg in Star Trek TNG. As in “my tastes are Catholic”, i.e. I embrace all forms of pleasure. The church embraces and will hold all of mankind within it providing they see the light and accept its dogma.

Nor have Mormons generally pushed back by trying to argue for acceptance as just another Protestant sect. If they had done that, the case for classifying them as Protestants would be stronger.

(1) Anecdotally, at least some of them have pushed back, at least in the portion of the American Southwest where I most regularly encountered them.

(2) Currently, they don’t need to push back, because it’s not merely that fundamentalist trinitarians are biting their tongues over the hell-denying polytheist at the top of the ticket, but that the fundamentalist trinitarian leadership has blithely thrown decades of theological outrage overboard in order to retain political influence. It was back in 2011 that Southern Baptist Convention spokesman Richard Land declared Mormonism to be just another sect of Christianity. Mitt Romney just recently had a confab with various of the American Taliban leadership such as James Dobson and Gary Bauer, and they pronounced him acceptable. I guarantee that Franklin Graham, who used charity resources to fly Sarah Palin around on her book tour, and who thought Donald Trump was a good presidential choice purely because of his embrace of birtherism, will be tongue-bathing Mitt from now until election day. (Billy Graham’s toadying to Nixon was pretty low, but Franklin has long been able to put on a tall silk hat and walk under the lowest of his daddy’s deeds.) So when all these guys say Mormonism is okay now, they are probably de facto declaring them Protestant, since for most of these intellectually vacuous bozos, Protestant means nothing more than “non-Catholic non-cultist.”

So being Episcopalian doesn’t count as a WASP?!? (Souter is Episcopalian.) Weird. I was brought up Episcopalian and living it always felt like the very definition of WASP to me.

Wait a minute! According to Wikipedia :

“The first definition of the term was provided by political scientist Andrew Hacker in 1957, although it was already used as common terminology among sociologists:

“They are ‘WASPs’—in the cocktail party jargon of the sociologists. That is, they are wealthy, they are Anglo-Saxon in origin, and they are Protestants (and disproportionately Episcopalian).”

Search this article for “secular.” I really don’t know.

The Anglo-Catholic end of the Anglican spectrum is broadly theologically catholic with the exception of accepting some of the positions of the Church of Rome regarding the authority of the Bishop of Rome. In particular, it accepts veneration of the saints, transsubstantiation, private / auricular confession; it practices rites such as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and clebrates such feasts as Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception; and some AC parishes follow the Roman Missal. Some Anglo-Catholics would treat the only good idea of the Reformation to be liturgy in the vernacular, and be a bit suspicious of that.

To be fair, the complete list above is now true of a minority of Anglo-Catholics, and was more exact prior to Vatican II. The liturgical reforms of the council had the effect of splintering the uses of the ACs, so that they now range from Tridentine Rite at one extreme through various “Anglican” modifications in the middle, to use of the new Roman Missal at the other.

However, there are also Protestant Anglicans (with the Evangelicals standing to the Low Church much as the Anglo-Catholics do to the High). So there certainly are / have been Anglican/Episcopalian WASPS. However (for example) Rowan Williams, Michael Ramsey, Dom Gregory Dix and T.S. Eliot would not be among them.