Religion and the Making of Community in America

Abstract

URING this year of America's bicentennial, one of my interests has been observing the manner in which American history has been reinterpreted in order to explain the relation of our founding fathers and our historical development to present day events as well as the changes thought to be required in the years ahead. If my impressions are accurate, ethnicity was one of the motifs that received great attention, greater attention than one might have expected and thought that its prominence in American life requires. The origin of this stress on ethnicity is complex and is not to be explained as a response of some Jews and Middle Americans to the attempt of some black Americans to legitimate their culture as a parallel culture rather than an underculture. This explanation, usually advanced by some Jewish and Middle American ethnic apologists, is too self-serving to be accepted without rigorous scrutiny. The overwhelming interest in ethnic politics on the part of the advocates of these views should make one desirous of examining the latent and subconscious factors probably included in its advancement. I do not want to set forth here the case against this explanation, but I do want to indicate that I have found that the facts do not support this reading of events. Ethnicity, or group formation based upon primary ties of race, nationality, culture, or religion, is important today, I would urge, because it is the process by which assimilation has been carried on in America and because one senses now the