**Joyce Janca-Aji**

Foreign Languages, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA 52402, USA; jjanca@coe.edu

Received: 22 November 2019; Accepted: 19 December 2019; Published: 30 December 2019

**Abstract:** This study engages some aspects of the conversations, implicit and explicit, between American(ized) Buddhism in non-heritage/convert communities and religious nationalism in the U.S. Specifically, how does a Buddhist understanding of emptiness and interdependence call into question some of the fundamental assumptions behind conflations of divine and political order, as expressed through ideologies of "God and Country", or ideas about American providence or exceptionalism? What does belonging to a nation or transnational community mean when all individual and collective formations of identity are understood to be nonessential, contingent and impermanent? Finally, how can some of the discourses within American Buddhism contribute to a more inclusive national identity and a reconfigured understanding of the intersection of spiritual and national belonging? The focus here will be on exploring how an understanding of identity and lineage in Buddhist contexts o ffers a counter-narrative to the way national and spiritual belonging is expressed through tribalist formations of family genealogy, nationalism and transnational religious a ffiliation in the dominant Judeo-Christian context, and how this understanding has been, and is being, expressed in non-heritage American(ized) Buddhist communities.

**Keywords:** religious nationalism; American Buddhism; God and Country; minority religion in the U.S.; Engaged Buddhism

It is another chilly morning at 5:45 a.m. I am lingering over the thimbleful cup of tea that has become part of morning practice and fighting the urge to sleep. Candles and incense are lit. The "Heart Sutra" is chanted in English, then the "Great Dharani" is chanted in Korean. As we sit in silence in the temple overlooking the mountains in Eastern Kentucky, the sky lightens and the fog begins to lift from the forests below. All too soon the bell will ring, the retreat will end, and we will return to our homes, our jobs, our children—and all of the pressing social, political, climactic and environmental issues that face us as Americans and as citizens of the world. But Zen practice does not begin and end with sitting on a cushion, and seeing the world through a Buddhist perspective is not limited to the personal and the spiritual. How does this impact a sense of belonging to the larger American culture and nationhood that is largely, and historically, constructed around a Protestant Christian identity?

This study engages some aspects of the conversations, implicit and explicit, between American(ized) Buddhism in non-heritage/convert communities and religious nationalism in the U.S. Specifically, how does a Buddhist understanding of emptiness and interdependence call into question some of the fundamental assumptions behind conflations of divine and political order, as expressed through ideologies of "God and Country", or ideas about American providence or exceptionalism? What does belonging to a nation or transnational community mean when all individual and collective formations of identity are understood to be nonessential, contingent and impermanent? Finally, how can some of the discourses within American Buddhism contribute to a more inclusive national identity and a reconfigured understanding of the intersection of spiritual and national belonging? The focus here will be on exploring how an understanding of identity and lineage

in Buddhist contexts o ffers a counter-narrative to the way national and spiritual belonging is expressed through tribalist formations of family genealogy, nationalism and transnational religious a ffiliation in the dominant Judeo-Christian context, and how this understanding has been, and is, being expressed in non-heritage American(ized) Buddhist communities.

### **1. For God and Country?**

To the question, "Why do most American churchgoers proudly display prominent US flags at the front of their sanctuaries and find little or no conflict between devotion to the American state and loyalty to Christ [ ... ]?" J. Christopher Soper and Joel S. Fetzer (2018) find no easy answers (Soper and Fetzer 2018, p. xv). In their introduction to *Religion and Nationalism in Global Perspective*, they note that while religious and national a ffiliations have been, and continue to be, foundational and potent sources of identity and meaning, fostering a sense of belonging "across space and time" (ibid., p. 1), they argue that there is neither a "simple or straightforward pattern" with regard to how religion and nationalism intersect, nor a "continuing nexus between civic and spiritual identities within states". (ibid., p. 2). This is particularly complicated in the context of secularized/secularizing modernities, globalized/globalizing transnationalism, and ways in which religious traditions and cultures have had to adapt. However, they do find that "Americans almost naturally link their nationalistic ideology with their religious point of view. It would seem that it has always been this way; that the relative power of religious traditions wax and wane, new groups emerge and old ones decline, ye<sup>t</sup> the connecting thread between religion of virtually any stripe and the American nation remains strong" (ibid., p. 71).

The conflation of divine and social/political order, with a subtext of supremacy or dominion, seems to permeate the idea of American-ness. *Pro Deo et Patria*, (For God and Country), the motto of the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps, founded in 1775, explicitly links the work of the military and the faith community as though they are serving a common cause. The motto chosen in 1782 by the founders, *E pluribus unum* ("Out of many, one"), was o fficially replaced in 1956 with "In God We Trust", which echoes the added statement to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1952 that we are one nation "under God." While the expression of the U.S. as a pluralistic whole did not disappear—*E pluribus unum* still appears on most U.S. currency and the Great Seal—it was clearly relegated to a secondary position. In its stead is a vision of a (primarily Protestant) Christian nation, whose fate lies not in the hands of a unified and inclusive collective, but in the providential hands of God, and whose favor depends on the faithfulness of its citizens in carrying out the divine charge of American's unique role in history. Herman Melville seems to sum this up succinctly: "We Americans are the peculiar chosen people, the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world" (in Guelzo 2019).

This belief is not an artifact of a more religiously homogenous past. A fairly recent article in *Christianity Today* cites research that confirms the continued adherence to the doctrine of American exceptionalism, and by extension the role of religious nationalism in public discourse and identity: "And though the U.S. Constitution makes no mention of God, 53 percent of Americans say they believe God and the nation have a special relationship, a concept stretching back to Pilgrim days. Even a third of atheists, agnostics, and those with no religious preference believe America has a special relationship with God" (Stetzer 2015). Stephen H. Webb (2004) argues that "Americans have never been able to think about their role in the world without relying on some form of the doctrine of providence," (p. 43) and that "Americans tell themselves that they are joined together not by the past but by the future, and not by blood and soil but by a transcendent moral purpose" (p. 45). Furthermore, the fact that "Both ends of the political spectrum—from President Obama to the Republican Party platform—have touted American exceptionalism" further reinforces the paternalist ideology that to be American is, at least in part, an act of faith, as much as it is an o fficial identity on a passport (Green 2015).

The construction of a conjoined religious and national identity has historically been the norm, and normative to the degree in that it is invisible and perceived as part of the natural order of things. However, both religion and nation are, to use Benedict Anderson's term, 'imagined communities,' in that the a ffinity of members towards each other is based upon an idea or mental image rather

than actual contact or connection. While these imagined communities do function as established social realities to contend with, it is important to remember that they are forged through narrative, transmitted and granted legitimacy and continuity through collective storytelling and ritual, grounded in physical reality through the marking of textual, historical, and architectural sites, and ultimately legislated through the organization of time and social spaces. They function as both metaphorically tribal and genealogical, while at the same time a ffirming truth value through universalist claims and aspirations, which obscures their status as ideological constructs subject to challenge and change. Examining them from a distance, however, can be much more revealing, as in the following examples from the nascent nationalism in early medieval Europe, whose echoes can still be heard in the present:

In a seventh-century Frankish oath occurs the phrase, "Christ so loved the Frank. ... " This might seem an odd idea. Christ's message had been addressed to all human beings, and not pre-eminently the Franks, a people of whom it is not probable that Christ had ever seen a representative. Yet the Franks had clearly convinced themselves that Christ viewed them with peculiar favor, not accorded to other people. The medieval Church taught that Christendom collectively is the legitimate successor of ancient Israel. But it was already clear, within medieval society, that new claimants to that succession were emerging among particular Christian nations; new chosen peoples, not just in some abstract theological sense but existentially, as peoples actively loved and favored by God in the here and now, above all other peoples. (Panov 2010)

Later, in The Song of Roland, which recounts the Battle of Roncevaux in 778, the Frankish soldiers under Charlemagne (whose flowing white beard suggested an iconic reflection of God) did not merely engage in a battle for territory, but instead fought against Muslim Saracens—designated as treacherous, idolatrous, and infidel—who were to be defeated and slaughtered to save *la douce France* for the civilized Christians, loyal to God and king.

It is clear, though, that identification or a ffiliation is not necessarily a neutral force, and tends to remain unchanged even when overt religious doctrine is rejected to be absorbed as "values" in a secular state. The narratives constructed from religious nationalism which engender imagined communities can be unifying and inspiring, promote and defend important values, forge positive social change, and create contexts where people move beyond individual needs and interests in service to the collective. However, these narratives also have a long shadow. The belief that "God is on our side" has often served as a prelude and a justification for engagemen<sup>t</sup> with violence or exclusion, a shift from a patriotic love of country to a nationalistic strategy reliant on identifying, separating from, and overcoming that which is defined as "Other". Such assertions of identity and a ffirmations of being "on the right side" of God or history are often so tightly woven into truth claims that questioning them is equated with betrayal. There is ample evidence that weaponization of conflated religious and national loyalties has been deployed across the globe, resulting in discrimination, oppression, incarceration, expulsion, and genocide, even in and at times in conjunction with the contexts of materialist, rationalist, and secularizing discourses of modernity. Furthermore, as documented by Barbara Rie ffer (2003), "The stronger the religious influence on the national movement, the greater the likelihood that discrimination and human rights violations will occur" (p. 215). This makes it all the more important to not only examine how power is forged by and funneled through imagined communities, but also to take measures to limit or mitigate possible negative e ffects, particularly when the discourses of dominate traditions mu ffle or silence minority ones.

In the U.S., conversations around religion and nationalism have primarily centered on the role of Protestant Christianity, which, despite the o fficial separation of church and state in the Constitution, has been foundational not only to the establishment of the country, but also its development through the 20th century. The inclusion of other religious identities, such as Jewish, Catholic, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Muslim, has not been without conflict, and has often depended on the degree to which adherents could prove that their religious allegiance did not preclude their national one. (This is particularly true for immigrants, who must also sublimate their belonging to other heritages or countries of origin.) These religious identities, however, share some of the same fundamental tenets: monotheism, the notion of a chosen people, God working divine will through history, and secular law as a reflection (to varying degrees) of divine law, the nation and the traditional patriarchal family as a reflection of God's rule of "His" kingdom. Considerably less attention has been given to how traditions outside of monotheistic contexts contribute to the conversations around religious and national identity. Furthermore, although Protestant Christianity may still be perceived as the dominant religious tradition in the U.S., and although its values and concerns continue to be played out in the media and public discourse, the reality is that it is no longer the undisputed majority. The October 2019 article, "In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace", from the Pew Research Center cites that:

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously una ffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular", now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. (Pew Research Center 2019)

Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23% in 2009. Meanwhile, all subsets of the religiously una ffiliated population—a group also known as religious "nones"—have seen their numbers swell. [ ... ] 17% of Americans now describe their religion as "nothing in particular", up from 12% in 2009. Members of non-Christian religions also have grown modestly as a share of the adult population. [ ... ] Meanwhile, the share of U.S. adults who identify with non-Christian faiths has ticked up slightly, from 5% in 2009 to 7% today. This includes a steady 2% of Americans who are Jewish, along with 1% who are Muslim, 1% who are Buddhist, 1% who are Hindu, and 3% who identify with other faiths [ ... ].

Similarly, on the issue of American exceptionalism, again according to Pew Research: "Americans believe that their country is great, but a majority would not say it is truly exceptional. A majority of the public (53%) says the United States 'is one of the greatest countries in the world, along with some others. Fewer (38%) say that the U.S. "stands above all other countries in the world' (Heimlich 2011). This loss of faith is only likely to increase, given how many challenges the U.S. is facing both domestically and abroad, politically and economically, and its decreasing status as world power and moral arbitrator.

In light of these trends and changing demographics that continue to favor a more diverse population in terms of race and ethnicity, and somewhat by extension religion and ideology, challenging the myths and myth-making around American religious nationalism seems particularly timely and relevant. Although many of our communities are "imagined," the stories we construct around individual and collective identities and their functions have direct, and sometimes dire, consequences. Since the identities we claim typically determine our motives, methods, and actions in the world, it is all the more important to widen the conversation to include identities and voices that are often considered marginal, but that may have important insights to share.

### **2. Positioning (Post)modern American(ized) Buddhism**

Why focus on Buddhism in America? Although people who specifically identify as Buddhists comprise only about 1% of the population and Buddhism is often perceived to be a form of Eastern spirituality (among many others) and a relatively recent addition to the religious mix in the U.S., the reality is that Buddhism is not marginal, "other," nor "foreign," to Western cultural traditions in general, and America in particular. As a global religion, its origins and development in India and East Asia do not define it, in the same way that Christianity, or any other tradition, cannot be

completely defined by and limited to its points of origin and/or development. Furthermore, Buddhism has been integral to the formation and the evolution of Western culture from its inception. In *Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought* (1997), J. J. Clarke calls attention to the long and often suppressed history of influence: trade routes from the Indus Valley to the Mediterranean, the Indian gymnosophes in Rome, Renaissance travels to the exotic East, Jesuits in China and the influence of their writing on Enlightenment philosophers and deism, the Romantic infatuation with India, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's appropriation of Buddhist ideas, links between Buddhism and positivism, the *japonisme* of the 19th century, and the indebtedness of some of Europe's major writers to Buddhism, including Hugo, Goethe, Baudelaire, Yeats, Tolstoy, the existentialists and the absurdists (Clarke 1997). Less directly obvious influences include phenomenological, existentialist, deconstructionist, and postmodern philosophy, developments in psychotherapy, and accords with neurosciences and physics. Even more to the point, Buddhist influences, in various forms, have been an integral part of the discourses of American-ness, American values, or American cultural and spiritual experience. Alongside the cultural heritage and influences from Europe, Buddhism's history can be traced in the U.S. through Chinese immigrants in the mid-19th century, the writings of the transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, the poetry of Whitman, and Theosophy. Buddhism was formally introduced in 1893, at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, through Buddhist teachers such as Japanese Zen Master Shaku Soen and Anagarika Dharmapala from Sri Lanka. The 1950s and 1960s—following the influential translations and writings of D.T. Suzuki and the postwar wave of Japanese, Korean, and later Tibetan teachers to the U.S.—witnessed Buddhist influences on Beat Poetry, the emergence of counter-culture movements and deep ecology. Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg, among others, have been instrumental in translating Theravadan meditation practices taught by Burmese and Thai teachers into Vipassana (insight meditation), which has in turn deeply informed the currently ubiquitous applications of mindfulness to everyday life.

In the last twenty-five years, a significant body of scholarship has documented how "Buddhist" forms and ideas have always been, and continue to be, an evolving part of "American" culture. Some examples include: *How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America* (1992) by Rick Fields, *The Awakening of the West: The Encounter of Buddhism and Western Culture*, by Stephen Batchelor (1994), *The American Encounter with Buddhism, 1844–1912* (2000) by Thomas A. Tweed, *The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition* (2001) by J. Coleman, *Buddhism in America* (2002 and 2012) by Richard Hughes Seager, *Mindful America: The Mutual Transformation of Buddhist Meditation and American Culture* (2014) by Je ff Wilson, *Buddhism Beyond Borders: New Perspectives on Buddhism in the United States* (2015) by Scott A. Mitchell and Natalie E.F. Quli, and *Buddhism in America: Global Religion, Local Contexts* (2016) by Scott A. Mitchell.

Additionally, Buddhism increasingly permeates American cultural discourse and experience. Practice centers for both heritage and non-heritage Buddhists, once rare, are increasingly common. Instead of maybe one Buddhist group in a major city or college town, as was the case in the 1980s, it is now unusual not to find several, and from diverse lineages and traditions. Teachers like Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hahn are revered by many, regardless of religious a ffiliation. Journals like *Tricycle*, *Buddhadharma*, and *Lion's Roar* (formerly *Shambala Sun*) are readily available in bookstores, as are shelves of publications from both Asian and American Buddhist teachers. Books and audiobooks from Tibetan teacher, Pema Chödron, and Vipassana teacher, Tara Brach, are widely popular among self-help resources. Mindfulness, which is traditionally taught as just one part of the Noble Eightfold Path, has become a secularized movement. Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness-based stress reduction (MSBR) program is regularly o ffered in a variety of secular community settings in healthcare, schools, and the workplace. Meditation and mindfulness, much like yoga, has been decontextualized, adapted, mainstreamed, and commodified to the point where its relationship to source traditions is either often obscured or completely e ffaced. Vipassana teacher, Trudy Goodman, refers to this as a kind of Trojan horse or "Stealth Buddhism," where the implicit ethics of mindfulness influence the larger culture (Glieg 2019, p. 72). Stephen Batchelor's complete secularization of Buddhism, and the fact that one

does not have to o fficially or exclusively "become" Buddhist to practice or to be part of a community, makes it easy to incorporate and assimilate Buddhism within other existing religious or ideological structures. It should be no surprise to anyone that Buddhist images and ideas are ubiquitous in popular culture. However, they can also be found in relatively unlikely places, from movies such as "Star Wars", "Groundhog Day", and "The Matrix" to the Netflix series, "The Good Place", or the music of David Bowie, Tina Turner, Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass, or the Beastie Boys.

Moreover, the forms of Buddhism that have taken root in the U.S. are, in some ways, uniquely their own. Just as the Buddhisms of Japan, Thailand, and Tibet are interwoven with their cultural norms and identity, both heritage and non-heritage Buddhist communities in the U.S. reflect the social realities of the process of creating discursive, and physical space where none had been before. Perhaps even more interesting is that so many diverse forms of Buddhism have never been in such immediate direct contact or mutual dialogue with each other. Practitioners are faced with a multiplicity of Buddhisms, each based on the same core teachings, each reflecting the others, and each in the continued process of individuation and innovation in a globalized postmodern context. As David McMahan (2008) explains:

It is, rather, an actual new form of Buddhism that is the result of a process of modernization, westernization, reinterpretation, image-making, revitalization, and reform that has been taking place not only in the West but also in Asian countries for over a century. This new form of Buddhism has been fashioned by modernizing Asian Buddhists and western enthusiasts deeply engaged in creating Buddhist responses to the dominant problems and questions of modernity, such as epistemic uncertainty, religious pluralism, the threat of nihilism, conflicts between science and religion, war, and environmental destruction. (p. 5)

Although Buddhism is both an "insider" religion (since it so well assimilated) as well as an "outsider" religion (not foundational to American culture), it is not linked with any single ethnic group, does not represent any form of national identity or project, and does not compete with other religious traditions. Unlike historical conditions where Buddhism and ruling classes were linked in Asia, or modern nationalist movements in Buddhist countries that arose as a response to colonization and the imposition of Western culture, there is no possibility of a Buddhist nationalist sentiment in the U.S. As such, the pluralistic and hybrid American(ized) forms of Buddhism in the U.S. are uniquely positioned to challenge the more dominant discourses of religion and nationalism and related normative cultural views in the U.S., and, as McMahan (2008, p. 259) notes, could "bring novel conceptual resources to the West and the modern world that might indeed o ffer new perspectives on some of modernity's personal, social, political, and environmental ills."
