336 Fred Kniss
reforming individuals. Religious communalists such as liberation theologians are more
likely to talk about “social justice” than about individual “salvation.” But communalism
is not uniquely characteristic of leftist theologians. Hart (1992), for example, provides
an insightful account of how this paradigm operates among mainstream Protestants
and Catholics in the United States.
MAPPING U.S. RELIGIOUS GROUPS
So far, I have presented the dominant paradigms as a fairly strict typology with mutu-
ally exclusive categories. Empirically, however, these categories occur together in vari-
ous configurations and interact dynamically. Any group’s ideology will need to take a
position on both the question of moral authority and the question of the moral project.
In American religion, both mainstream and peripheral groups make use of a wide spec-
trum of ideas and symbols. Some of these ideas and symbols fall neatly into the given
categories while others are highly ambiguous. Ideas are never simply given and are
rarely stable, but are constantly contested, refined, and adapted, leading to dynamic
relationships within and between paradigms.
In thinking about plausible configurations of the paradigms discussed above, one
might intuitively expect the individualistic paradigms of modernism and libertarian-
ism to occur together and be opposed to an alliance between the collective paradigms
of traditionalism and communalism. In fact, American ideology has been counterintu-
itive in this respect. Although they may have used different terms, various writers have
noted the paradoxical combination of traditionalism and libertarianism in conservative
or right-wing American ideology (e.g., Nash 1976; Lipset and Raab 1978; Himmelstein
1983; Platt and Williams 1988). Although many scholars view this paradox as primarily
a characteristic of post-1945 American conservatism, de Tocqueville (1831/1969), as far
back as the 1830s, noted inDemocracy in Americathat traditional religion in the United
States had combined with unrestrained self-interest to promote the general welfare.
In contrast, the American left has combined modernism with communalism, support-
ing both the moral autonomy of the individual and the regulation of economic and
political activity in defense of the public good. These are, of course, ideal-typical char-
acterizations. They represent two poles on the American ideological spectrum. Clearly,
there is a large ambiguous middle position; but there is, nevertheless, a clear contrast
between the right and left in its “pure” forms. Recognizing the contrasts between and
paradoxes within mainstream American ideological positions is important for under-
standing specific cases of ideological change or conflict. One can speculate about the
reasons for these paradoxical configurations. Perhaps there is a “need” for a balance
between individual and collective values. Himmelstein (1983) suggests that, on the
right, neither traditionalism nor libertarianism carries much appeal on its own, but
each provides a corrective to the unappealing aspects of the other. More recently, writ-
ers promoting “communalism” as a school of social thought have made normative
arguments about the necessity of balancing individual and collective concerns (e.g.,
Taylor 1991; Etzioni 1996; Putnam 2000).
Figure 23.1 is a graphic representation of what I call “American mainstream ideolog-
ical discourse.” Here the dimensions defining the paradigms are represented as spectra
rather than categories. The x-axis represents the locus of moral authority and the y-axis
represents the moral project. Idea systems may theoretically be located at any position