If this were fifteen years ago, one might bemoan the trees
that had died to publish the multitude of opinions on the Colin Kaepernick affair. Fortunately this is the age of the Internet,
and though I’m sure the electricity that has powered the debates has some
non-zero effect on global warming, the habitat loss and deforestation is at
least mitigated by the fact that those debates are mostly taking place in the
virtual world. For those who have been
living under a rock, the short version is this: on August 26th, prior
to a pre-season game, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused
to stand for the Star-Spangled Banner.
Response was immediate and, as you might predict, ran from outrage to praise. Kaepernick’s explanation,
that he sat because he had no wish to “stand up and show pride in a flag for a
country that oppresses black people and people of color,” has struck all the
nerves you would expect in a polarized political environment where the simple
statement that Black Lives Matter has to be followed up with All Lives Matter,
Blue Lives Matter and, in the newly-ascendant alt-right, White Lives Matter.
Though most ordinary people seem to think he should have stood
up, some have used the opportunity to point
out the racist lines in the third stanza of the song (did you KNOW there
was one?), which lends a little scholarly gravitas to Kaepernick’s argument,
though there is as yet no indication whether he knew this when he made his
gesture.
I’m not about to opine on this situation, any more than to
say that I personally find most rituals a bit silly. Who cares if Colin Kaepernick doesn’t want to
stand for (or Gabby
Douglas forgets to put her hand over her heart during) the national anthem?
Plenty of people it turns out.
Kaepernick (we will mostly leave Douglas out, as she has claimed
her actions were accidental and there is no reason not to believe her) has
performed a social sin of the highest order—he has declined to participate in a
key ritual of our civil religion. American
Civil Religion, as I
have written earlier concerning a controversy over the Pledge of Allegiance,
is a set of references and symbols, often referring to a non-specific God, that
are intended to recall us to a higher purpose for the nation. Routine references to the Almighty in the
Pledge, in the motto “In God We Trust,” in the invocation of “God bless America”
in every political speech are related to this.
Indeed, the American Civil Religion is so prevalent, that I
have come to suspect it
is the chief sect of most Americans,
superseding the cult many participate in on various Sabbaths.
There are many rituals in the American Civil Religion, and
one of the most common is the complex of rites surrounding the display of the American
flag before public spectacles, especially sporting events. Having the flag brought in by color guards,
the march to the center of the field, the singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner”
are acts of worship (unkindly, we might call them idolatry). Through them, spectators are momentarily
bound—the word “religion” probably originates in the Latin religare, “to bind”—to one another, members of one family.
When Colin Kaepernick declines to stand for the national
anthem, he is declining to participate in the American Civil Religion.
Of course in America this shouldn’t be a problem. The First Amendment to the Constitution
secures for us all the right to participate (or not) in religious services, to
speak (or not) as we choose. But the
real challenge Kaepernick presents is not one that is always amenable to
logic. Even in a relatively secular country
like the United States religiosity, signaling religious belief, carries a great
deal of importance.
For reasons stretching
deep into prehistory, religious
display has evolved as a proxy marker for trustworthiness. Religious people, speaking generally, trust
other religious people, a
phenomenon that it has been suggested is responsible for widespread distrust of
atheists. Since religiosity is a way
of signaling, “Hey, you don’t know me, but you can trust me,” people who do not
show religiosity are unconsciously signaling that they are not to be trusted.
This distrust is exactly why the responses to Kaepernick unfold
as they do. A small number of people,
who have eschewed much display of faith in the American Civil Religion, don’t
see the problem. For larger numbers of
people, who consider themselves patriots, who love the flag and all that they
think it stands for, Kaepernick’s refusal to stand is nothing more than a
wholesale rejection of their faith. That’s
why even a potentially accidental transgression like Douglas’ garners so much
attention. Because, even though religion
is a proxy marker for trustworthiness, reminders
of secular authority can mitigate the distrust of the non-religious. Secular authority subsumes sectarian identity
in the public sphere.
And the American Civil Religion is one of those “secular”
authorities, one that is supposed to be the same for all Americans (though it, too, sometimes fails the
non-religious). What happens when
Americans decline to participate in it?
Watch
the fallout from Colin Kaepernick’s actions to find out.
