Faith in Faith is America's Problem, not America's "Saving Grace"

You have nothing to faith but faith itself, and you will like it

 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. - The Apostle Paul, I Corinthians 13:13, NIV

I hate to admit that the apostle Paul, the original manipulative Christian missionary who was wrong about almost everything, might have been right about anything. But he was in fact right to value love above faith. He still valued faith far too much though, and so do—not coincidentally, I think—Americans. Thanks, Paul!

The Koine Greek word for love in the verse I’ve chosen as an epigraph for this essay, which comes at the end of a chapter that is read at Christian weddings with grating frequency, is “agape” (ἀγάπη). (Thankfully, I’m in the I hardly ever get invited to weddings stage of life, so there’s some small comfort in that.)

The King James version of the Bible renders the word “charity,” and agape is a term for love that carries connotations of selflessness and sacrifice. Christians frequently represent it as the “unconditional” love that “God” has for humanity, but, to invoke my favorite Joe Biden quote, “Come on, man.” The Christian god is a narcissist of the highest order whose “love” is anything but unconditional.

To be, erm, charitable, yes, of course it’s possible to interpret this deity differently, and liberationist Christians do so admirably. But to me, he will only ever be a giant negging pick-up artist in the sky. And I do mean “he.” Growing up, the pronouns we used for god were emphatically and invariably masculine, and I was also taught to capitalize god’s he/him/his pronouns in Christian elementary school. These days, I often grant myself the editorial liberty not to capitalize “god,” let alone his pronouns, as a sort of belated act of rebellion. But I digress.

You Have Nothing to Faith but Faith Itself (And You Will Like It)

I would really like to live in a society where I’m not constantly bombarded with injunctions to “just believe” or to “have faith!” When I think about what that society could be, I don’t remotely think of one devoid of whimsy. I do think of one where conspiracy theories and scams are much less common, and where democracy flourishes thanks to a higher level of social trust.

Faith in faith, which I contend sums up America’s de facto civil religion, doesn’t help us get to that society. In fact it’s helped bring us to a lower-trust, more authoritarian, deeply unhealthy society riddled with scammers and conspiracy theorists, some of whom are about to run the federal government.

If I were currently in a classroom with, say, ten students, and I set them all the task of writing down as many positive pop culture references to faith or belief as they could in two minutes, I bet they’d come up with dozens of results.

I attempted to carry out this exercise myself, but my phone screen got locked somehow and the timer failed to go off, and I’m too lazy to do it again. That being said, here are just a few examples.

Faith in faith helped bring us to a lower-trust, more authoritarian, deeply unhealthy society riddled with scammers and conspiracy theories, some of whom are about to run the federal government.

In probably well over 90% of all Christmas productions, from “A Christmas Carol” (and its precisely 87 gazillion modern adaptations) to “It’s a Wonderful Life” to “The Santa Clause” and “Jingle Jangle,” belief in Santa or “Christmas magic” or angels and spirits is central to the plot, and often somehow salvific.

Country music should probably just get a whole category by itself, but there are plenty of faith references in pop and rock as well. So many that I’m not going to try to list them.

“Peter Pan” taught us that fairies require our belief to survive and do magic.

Entire TV shows like “Seventh Heaven,” “Touched by an Angel,” and the more recent (admittedly grittier yet completely absurd) “Manifest”* that ran from 2018-2023 feed audiences plenty of shlock about “keeping the faith” (also the title of a 1983 Billy Joel song about the youth of “manly” men of his generation).

“Fun” fact: Actor Stephen Collins, who played the central role of Eric Camden, a pastor and family patriarch, in “Seventh Heaven,” turned out to be a child sex abuser. Which is, sadly, on brand.

Continuing with faith and pop culture, I believe we can put Oprah in a category all her own. Not only is she extremely “faithy,” or, as some would put it, “spiritual.” But during the long run (1986-2011) of her extremely popular talk show she frequently promoted the “power of prayer” and a lot of, let’s say, *problematic* people and books. These include AIDS-denier and toxic New Age nut Marianne Williamson, the pernicious book The Secret about the supposed “law of attraction,” and confidence man and quack Dr. Oz, who was recently nominated by the president-elect and the world’s most repulsive individual, Donald Trump, to head Medicare and Medicaid Services for the U.S. federal government.

In short, here in America we are constantly bombarded with messages about the importance of a vaguely defined “faith”—often, if not necessarily always, in a “higher power” of some sort, which reminds me that AA is another example of faith in pop culture. Believe in yourself, believe in your team, believe in your god, believe in Christmas magic, believe, believe, believe! Our legacy media outlets are full of empathy and, dare I say, envy from journalists toward those they see as the “truest” believers, i.e., the traditionalists, fundamentalists, evangelicals. The sense that these folks truly “believe” in things, and that the ability to do that is admirable (and so therefore we shouldn’t be too hard on them for their COVID denialism), drips from the pages (virtual or otherwise) of far too many pieces in The New York Times and The Atlantic.

I think that some of this goes back to early Cold War efforts by business, government, and civil society actors to sacralize American society as a means of giving Americans the kind of “big idea” that could compete with the seductive power of “godless Communism.” But American faith in faith is also an older impulse, and one that is part of a broader western tradition, as the examples of “A Christmas Carol” and “Peter Pan” noted above illustrate. But “In God We Trust” as the national motto and “under god” in the pledge of allegiance (which is a bad practice with or without “under god,” frankly) are things we got stuck with in the early Cold War.

Picture by Peggy Sue Zinn, via Unsplash.

In the American context in particular, Christianity, “spirituality,” and “faith” often go hand-in-hand with an emphasis on “positive thinking” of a sort that I can only call toxic, and I think this is part of the reason I’m currently so allergic to faith talk. A “good vibes only” ethos doesn’t help anyone—except the very rich and powerful who can solve their problems with money and influence.

The wealthy’s insistence on positivity helps them not to have to think about our much more pressing and intractable problems—the problems of the rest of us—some of which could be solved with money that isn’t available to us, or prevented with a more equitable distribution of wealth. And the really sad thing is that many struggling Americans buy into the faith and positivity and spirituality rhetoric too, in ways that reinforce existing social hierarchies.

One of the problems with faith language is that its invocation is often a claim to moral authority, and as a result it lays the groundwork for coercion, cover-ups, ugly power struggles, and misdirected blame.

The Dark Sides of Faith

If he’d been born to Christian parents instead of Muslim parents, Mehmet Oz would have made a perfect televangelist. In any case, he reaches the exact same audience.