Revisiting John Dewey's God
David Nioseposted October 20, 2009
John Dewey, the iconic philosopher born on this day 150 years ago, was what we would call today a humanist activist. He was one of the original thirty-four signers of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933 and an honorary member of the Humanist Press Association, which was the predecessor to the American Humanist Association. With a wide range of works that were not only highly respected in academia but also influential in shaping American public policy and dialogue, Dewey is arguably the single most important public intellectual in the history of modern American humanism.
Dewey died in 1952, but his views shaped the character of organized humanism both in his lifetime and for the rest of the twentieth century, and they continue to have great influence today.
Despite being a naturalist, Dewey very much embraced religious language. In his 1934 book, A Common Faith, Dewey laid out his view that terms such as religion, God, and faith need not be rejected by nontheistic modern intellectuals, but instead could be reformulated and used in working towards a progressive society. Commenting on the concept of God, for example, he writes:
The idea of God, or, to avoid misleading conceptions, the idea of the divine is, one of ideal possibilities unified through imaginative realization and projection.
Thus, while not yet referring to his own personal view of God, Dewey is characterizing the notion of God generally as an ideal. Dewey then explains that his own naturalistic concept of God is consistent with this notion:
For there are forces in nature and society that generate and support the ideals. They are further unified by the action that gives them coherence and solidity. It is this active relation between ideal and actual to which I would give the name “God.”
Though he specifically states that one need not use the name God for such a concept of the ideal or for the relation between the ideal and the actual, Dewey nevertheless makes it clear that he utilizes such usage and enthusiastically supports it. He also has some unflattering words for atheistic language. When speaking of atheism in A Common Faith, the word is repeatedly preceded by a negative adjective. Hence he says “aggressive atheism seems to me to have something in common with traditional supernaturalism,” and he continues by arguing that “aggressive atheism” is too negative, fails to give a positive direction to thought, and is preoccupied with “man in isolation.” He also refers to “militant atheism,” saying that it lacks “natural piety.”
The nuances of Dewey’s analyses, though certainly relevant to any thorough consideration of his religious views, are less important here than the general tone set by his portrayal of open atheism as almost undignified. Though he was careful to reserve his criticism for “aggressive atheism” and “militant atheism,” thereby implying that there might have been some kind of atheism that he would find acceptable, clearly his preference was to embrace religious language and therefore bypass the unpleasantness of having attention drawn to his nonbelief.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can now assess the evolution of the American religious landscape in the twentieth century, as well as the role of organized humanism within it. Doing so, it’s not difficult to argue that Dewey’s approach, despite its rational basis, may have been counterproductive.
By consistently retaining religious rhetoric and shunning terms such as atheism that might be seen as unpleasant by the general public, humanists of Dewey’s generation clearly played into the hand of religious conservatives. By enthusiastically using terms such as God and religion and faith, humanists helped create an atmosphere that discouraged restraint with respect to use of such terms. Though the Cold War was no doubt the primary driver of campaigns to insert God into public life in the 1950s (when “In God We Trust” became the national motto and “under God” was inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance), surely the fact that even respectable humanists were using such religious language helped to create an atmosphere of unanimity on the issue.
Humanists may have used their religious rhetoric with a wink and a nod, knowing amongst themselves that they weren’t talking about anything supernatural like the rest of the public, but one can see how this approach may do little to advance the notion of naturalism itself. In fact, while Dewey’s intellectual honesty is beyond reproach, one could argue that saying “God” but not meaning anything remotely similar to the common definition of the word is a bit disingenuous, at least to the extent that the esoteric definition is unknown to common folk.
But forthrightness isn’t the issue here, because the real problem with Dewey’s zealous usage of religious language is not the underlying intent but the effect. If even atheists were shunning atheistic language and labels in favor of traditional religious dressing, then clearly the real winner was traditional religion. Dewey, as spokesman for naturalistic humanists, established the norm that still stands today in the United States—religious language is condoned and viewed favorably, whereas atheistic language and identity are shunned.
In Dewey’s defense, none of this should be interpreted as suggesting that the effects of his approach should have been foreseeable to him, and in fact there were good reasons in Dewey’s time to believe that religious progress was leading society in the direction of naturalism. If so, humanists simply needed to wait patiently, focusing attention perhaps on timely social and political issues but letting the religious landscape progress on its own. Given the rich intellectual atmosphere and remarkable scientific advances of the times, Dewey and his contemporaries understandably saw little need to publicize atheism or tend to its public image. A more subtle naturalism complemented them, while also serving as what appeared to be a proper incubator for the religious views that they expected would eventually grow more prominent.
But as all humanists today know, a massive trend towards humanism did not occur by the end of the twentieth century. Just three decades after Dewey’s death, the Moral Majority had emerged as a powerful political force, born-again Christianity was flexing its political muscle, and organized humanism was unable to mount any serious resistance. We soon saw the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and of course the election (if we use the term loosely) of George W. Bush, the darling of the religious right. Religious conservatism has thrived in modern America, enjoying enormous wealth, great numbers of followers, and significant stature as a political demographic.
Perhaps more significant than the emergence of religious conservatism in the latter decades of the twentieth century is the relative absence of organized humanism as a political force during those same years. In fact, even today the word “humanism” is rarely used in public discourse and few Americans can define it. Moreover, though atheism has captured some public attention in recent years, the general image of atheists has remained very poor. Hence, while the religious right was resurrecting itself, humanism and atheism were making little progress.
To attribute these disastrous events solely to the overuse of religious rhetoric by early twentieth-century humanists would be to oversimplify phenomena that are in fact quite complex, but surely today’s organized humanists must reconsider all aspects of the strategies use by prior generations. Whatever those strategies were, they obviously didn’t work. As such, any fair analysis would question the wisdom of validating religious rhetoric while simultaneously shunning atheistic rhetoric in public discourse.
Clearly, those who embrace a naturalistic lifestance should be able to declare as such without fear of being ostracized, vilified, or scorned. To the extent that American culture still frowns upon such openness, a cultural shift is needed. Nonbelievers should be part of the landscape, capable of being open about their views without suffering repercussions or limitations. Open nonbelievers should be viable candidates for public office, respected in public ceremonies, and seen for what they are—valuable contributors to society. The Dewey approach, while no doubt helping to promote liberalism generally, didn’t achieve this.
This doesn’t mean that many of us won’t sometimes use religious language. (See Neil deGrasse Tyson’s defense of the term Godspeed in his article in the September/October Humanist.) The semantic possibilities with humanism are innumerable, just as the semantic debates are so tiring to most of us, but the one point that most humanists should concur with is the importance of encouraging openness about atheist/humanist identity and beliefs. Many humanists adamantly insist that they are in fact religious, and that is indeed their right, but all should stand behind those who openly declare that they simply aren’t religious. Surely even those who identify as “religious humanists” (and many naturalists do) would enjoy seeing a candidate for public office openly declare, “I’m not very religious.” And even those who follow the Dewey standard by using the term “God” in a naturalistic sense would surely smile at seeing an open atheist elected to office.
The biggest fear of the religious right is not abortion on demand or the end of faith-based initiatives, but the emergence of openly nontheistic Americans as a respectable demographic recognized as such by the public, the media, and public office holders. This can only happen if secular Americans unite—whether they be humanists, atheists, agnostics, or some other classification—as decent citizens who embrace a naturalistic worldview. Being a man of empiricism who valued learning from experience, John Dewey would no doubt approve.
David Niose, a lawyer in Massachusetts, is the president of the American Humanist Association.