The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism (review)

In these three essays, Marty reflects on two themes that have long occupied his attention—Protestantism and pluralism in America. He offers an overview of Protestantism in America since 1607 that begins "when Protestants ran the show" and ends with a recognition that "pluralism realized" trumps such power. What appears from one view to be a neatly delineated process from centralized to shattered authority, however, proceeds from the recognition that Protestantism is not monolithic. As Marty writes, "Protestantism is hard to define, not easy to locate, and almost impossible to relate to in a coherent way" (14). How could such a disunified group ever "run" a nation?

By drawing on the work of Ortega y Gasset, Marty identifies the broad bases of agreement that permitted American Protestants to dominate public life for most of the last four centuries.¹ Ortega's creencias become for Marty "not the beliefs people hold but those by which they are held" (22). Creencias, for both Ortega and Marty, establish the common ground on which diverse people may live in relative peace and on which overarching ways of being and thinking can forge a broad consensus otherwise denied on the grounds of theology or religious praxis. The eight creencias that Marty identifies served as binding agents in a national project even if specific ideas may have clashed with some denomination's official theology. Protestants ran the show in that they sought civil leaders who supported the broad principles underlying national righteousness, purpose, and exceptionalism.

Following Ortega, Marty shows how Protestant creencias were acted upon as vigencias—binding, but unspoken, customs. Together, vigencias and creencias constitute the core of American public culture thanks to the white men (largely) who held office, wrote laws, emerged as leaders in the professions, and, in essence, established the terms of national discussion. By invoking Ortega's terms, Marty distinguishes his work from that which views hegemony as a product of social as well as cultural power.

The process by which pluralism ended Protestant domination of American public culture is less well served by this model. Whereas the first two essays focus on the ideas that allowed diverse Protestants to "run the show," the last essay proceeds from the assertion, "After the mid-twentieth century . . . long quiescent and quiet, often suppressed voices gained a hearing" (52). Various postwar liberation/civil rights movements offered public platforms from which formerly marginalized groups could speak. But what Marty does not explain is why ideas that had worked so well and had secured power for so long would be modified or abandoned. Marty points to key Supreme Court rulings and changes in immigration law that created conditions for pluralism, but what remains unclear is why those in power came to be held by a different set of creencias.

Much, however, must be forgiven in a slim volume by a scholar of Marty's stature. He succeeds in offering an excellent overview of cultural unity that emerged from groups theologically at odds, showing when that consensus came apart, and advising Protestants "not [to] aspire to run the show but to serve where they managed, to partner where they controlled, to cooperate where they directed" (80).