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Americans have always created public myths about our identity as a people. These myths locate us in the world and in history. In election years they provide resources for political rhetoric and they guide us in choosing our candidates.

Robert Bellah has written that America legitimates itself with a dynamic of sacred and secular myths. On the one hand, our civil religion links us to the biblical tradition; on the other hand, the moral and political philosophies of the Enlightenment instill in us a deeply utilitarian orientation. Civil religion portrays a divine order of things, giving us a sense of worth and direction in relation to ultimate purposes. Utilitarianism provides us with proper governmental procedure, legitimates our economic system and underwrites the importance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Together, these cultural traditions have promoted great national crusades. They have joined forces against the worst excesses of raw political expediency, exposing our short-term policies in the harsh light of more enduring values. The two have also contended with one another for political supremacy.

A decade ago social scientists predicted the demise of civil religion at the hands of the seemingly more aggressive individualistic and materialistic orientations supported by utilitarianism. The "Me Decade," a wave of narcissism and the rise of yuppie-style hedonism seemed to signal the ultimate triumph of secular materialism.

But this was only part of the story. For all our secularism we have remained a deeply religious people. And civil religion continues to play a prominent role in our culture. In recent election campaigns political candidates have often stumbled over one another in their haste to demonstrate loyalty to some branch of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Political speeches, now as in the past, pay ritual obeisance to the divine judge. Prayers at all major political functions invoke God's presence and blessing. Despite constitutional restrictions much mixing of religious and political practice continues. We are, our civil religion assures us, a God-fearing people, the champions of religious liberty, and in many ways a nation that God has chosen to carry out a special mission in the world.

The civil religion to which we so blithely pay homage has, however, become deeply divided. Like the fractured communities found in our churches, our civil religion no longer unites us around common ideals. Instead of giving voice to a clear image of who we should be, it has become a confusion of tongues. It speaks from competing traditions and offers partial visions of America's future. Religious conservatives offer one version of our divine calling; religious liberals articulate one that is radically different.

On the conservative side, religious leaders argue that America's vitality rests on a distinct, historic relation to God. According to this interpretation, our form of government enjoys lasting legitimacy because it was created by Founding Fathers who were deeply influenced by Judeo-Christian values. Although in their personal convictions they may have strayed occasionally from this standard, Washington, Franklin, Witherspoon and Adams knew the human heart from a biblical perspective and thus understood what kind of government would function best. As the late Francis A. Schaeffer, a popular evangelical author, asserted in A Christian Manifesto:

This view has deep roots in conservative thinking. In the 19th century a close relation between America and God was often heralded in millennialist language. America not only was called of God, but existed as a chosen people, brought into being for the final fulfillment of God's purposes on earth. Herman Melville's much-read novel White-Jacket, for example, described Americans as "the Israel of our time" and the nation as a "political Messiah" sent as an advance guard to "bear the ark of the liberties of the world. " Walt Whitman's epic poem "Passage to India" drew an even more direct connection between the nation's wonders and God's purposes.

In the 20th century, war and economic depressions dampened much of this millennial enthusiasm. Yet as America increasingly found itself in the forefront of world military and economic affairs, some of the traditional zeal continued to be voiced.

A favorite theme was the slogan "One Nation Under God," which signaled not only that America was a unified nation but also an "only," "best," "leading" or "special" nation under God. Norman Vincent Peale, in a book with this slogan as its title, argued that America, at the beginning of its history, had received a unique calling from God which continued to be expressed in a special zeal and spiritual quality of its people. In another book by the same title, evangelical writer Rus Walton arrived at the conclusion that even the U.S. Constitution had been "divinely inspired."

During the 1960s and '70s, as the nation's military involvement in Vietnam inspired a mood of questioning and cynicism, defenders of U.S. policy seemed to become even more explicit in their efforts to find divine legitimacy in American history. Edward Elson, writing in Decision magazine, asserted that America could not be understood except as a "spiritual movement" with God as its source and the Holy Spirit guiding its development. Christian businessman George Otis, echoing the same theme, wrote: "God's hand was in the founding of this country and the fiber of Christ is in the very fabric of America" (The Solution to Crisis-America [Revell, 1972], p. 53). With similar conviction, entertainer Dale Evans Rogers contended that America "was in the mind of God before it became earthly reality" and that it was still "a part of His purpose for mankind" (Let Freedom Ring [Revell, 1975], pp. 19-20).

These arguments remain an important feature of contemporary political rhetoric. A recent fund-raising letter from the "Robertson in 88" campaign, for example, asserts that the Ten Commandments are the "bedrock of America. " Then, step-by-step it links each commandment with a political theme (for instance, as Moses received the first commandment, God also "inspired our Founding Fathers to say that all men are CREATED equal"). The letter also asserts that the essential truth on which Pat Robertson's campaign was based is the conviction that "we must never forget -- and always remind those who will forget -- that we are ONE NATION UNDER GOD."

In emphasizing the close historical connection between America and God, evangelicals and fundamentalists assert the importance of religious values which they themselves still uphold. Their version of American history points to a time when such values were evidently taken quite seriously.

To be sure, the distinction between personal convictions and the religious story of the nation remains sufficiently sharp in evangelical teachings that militant religious nationalism is the exception rather than the rule. Priorities generally focus on personal salvation, spiritual growth, biblical knowledge and the affairs of local religious communities instead of God's providence in American history. Even Jerry Falwell alludes only occasionally in his books and sermons to America's collective relation to God. He also asserts flatly that "America is not the kingdom of God" (The Fundamentalist Phenomenon [Doubleday, 1981], p. 212).

Yet conservative civil religion does grant America a special place in the divine order. Falwell goes on to say, for example, that "the United States is not a perfect nation, but it is without doubt the greatest and most influential nation in the world. We have the people and the resources to evangelize the world in our generation." Writer-evangelist, Tim LaHaye, head of the American Coalition for Traditional Values, makes the same point negatively: were it not for America, he asserts, "our contemporary world would have completely lost the battle for the mind and would doubtless live in a totalitarian, one-world, humanistic state" (The Battle for the World [Revell, 1980], p. 35).

America evangelizing the world is, of course, a much-emphasized theme in conservative civil religion. God wants America to use its advantaged position to preach Christianity to all nations-a task which in some evangelical eschatologies represents the final work that will hasten Christ's second coming. America's wealth and power are regarded both as the divinely given resources for carrying out this important task and the token of God's good faith to those willing to shoulder the task. This view is particularly prominent among conservative Christians who have a strong missionary emphasis.

Conservative civil religion also voices strong arguments about the propriety of the American economic system. These arguments grant capitalism absolute legitimacy by drawing certain parallels between capitalist principles and biblical teachings. Economist George Gilder, who identifies himself as an evangelical Christian, has argued, "'Give and you'll be given unto' is the fundamental practical principle of the Christian life, and when there's no private property you can't give it because you don't own it.... Socialism is inherently hostile to Christianity and capitalism is simply the essential mode of human life that corresponds to religious truth" (reported in Rodney Clapp, "Where Capitalism and Christianity Meet," Christianity Today [February 4, 1983]). Elsewhere he remarks, drawing a calculated reference to the Apostle Paul's teaching on love, "the deepest truths of capitalism are faith, hope, and love" ("Moral Sources of Capitalism," Society, September/October 1981).

Falwell has also been an outspoken apologist for American capitalism. "I believe in capitalism and the free enterprise system and private property ownership. . . . people should have the right to own property, to work hard, to achieve, to earn, and to win." For Falwell, this is not simply an assertion of personal opinion, but a position that has divine sanction: "God is in favor of freedom, property ownership, competition, diligence, work, and acquisition. All of this is taught in the Word of God in both the Old and New Testaments" (Wisdom for Living [Victor, 1984], pp. 131, 102).

Other spokespersons for conservative civil religion also connect Christian doctrines to American capitalism. Ronald H. Nash, arguing against liberation theology, for instance, suggests that capitalism is the preferred system because it is impossible to have "spiritual freedom" without "economic freedom" ("The Christian Choice Between Capitalism and Socialism," in Liberation Theology, edited by Ronald H. Nash [Mott Media, 1984]). Pat Robertson draws directly on Gilder's work to arrive at the conclusion that "free enterprise is the economic system most nearly meeting humanity's Godgiven need for freedom" (The Secret Kingdom: A Promise of Hope and Freedom in a World of Turmoil [Thomas Nelson, 1982], p. 151).

The liberal version of American civil religion draws on a different set of religious values and portrays the nation in a very different light. Few spokespersons for the liberal version make explicit reference to the religious views of the founding fathers or suggest that America is God's chosen nation. Indeed, the idea of one nation under God is often rejected because of its particularistic connotations and, more generally, because of the way it has been interpreted by conservatives.

A recent letter from Clergy and Laity Concerned, for instance, argues that "this is no longer 'one nation under God.' " Instead, the letter proclaims, there are now two very different views of America: "One based on arrogance and a false sense of superiority. The other based on ethical, biblical principles."

References to America's wealth or power as God's means of evangelizing the world are also rare among Liberals, and religious apologetics for capitalism are virtually taboo.

The liberal view of America focuses less on the nation as such, and more on humanity in general. In this view, America has a vital role to play in world affairs not because it is the home of a chosen people but because it has vast resources, has caused many of the problems currently facing the world, and simply as part of the community of nations has a responsibility to help alleviate the world's problems. Rather than drawing attention to the distinctiveness of the Judeo-Christian tradition, liberal civil religion is much more likely to include arguments about basic human rights and common human problems. Issues like nuclear disarmament, human rights, world hunger, peace and justice receive special emphasis.

The importance attached to these issues is generally not legitimated with reference to any particular sacred mandate, but simply on the assumption that these are matters of life and death. Nevertheless, religious faith often plays a prominent part in the discussion, differentiating liberal civil religion from purely secular or humanist beliefs.

Faith provides a motivating element, supplying strength to keep going against what often appear to be insuperable odds. The biblical prophets, who spoke out for peace and justice, are often cited as sources of strength and hope. And universal appeals are couched in explicitly religious language. As the Clergy and Laity Concerned letter explains, its goal is "to establish social and economic justice for all of God's children."

Because of its awesome destructive potential, the problem of nuclear arms occupies an especially prominent place in liberal civil religion. Liberal clergy have so often taken the lead in seeking solutions to the arms race that the peace movement has come to be identified in many circles as a religious issue. In a survey of Presbyterian laity, for example, two-thirds agreed strongly with the statement that "peacemaking is not simply 'another political issue' but is a basic aspect of the Christian faith" (Research Division of the Support Agency, Presbyterian Panel, January, 1982).

Other crusades in the liberal version of American civil religion include civil rights, international justice and ecology. Liberal religious periodicals have kept these issues in the forefront of readers' attention. For example, a count of headlines in this journal during one six-month period revealed a total of 136 articles on topics such as nuclear weapons, social issues, economic issues and peace, compared with only 22 articles on the Bible, nine on evangelism and nine on prayer.

A survey of Presbyterian clergy further illustrates the priority given such causes. When asked to rate various goals for the nation, respondents gave top priority to having America serve as an example of liberty and justice to all nations. Also ranked near the top were conserving the world's scarce resources and reducing disparities between poor and wealthy nations. Spreading American capitalism ranked at the bottom of the list. The survey also showed that eight of every ten pastors saw national pride as a hindrance to the work of the Christian church in the world, while fewer than a third thought America was currently a blessing to humankind throughout the world (Dean R. Hoge, "Theological Views of America Among Protestants," Sociological Analysis, Summer 1976).

The rhetoric of liberal religious leaders, unlike that of their conservative counterparts, has often questioned the value of America's distinctive cultural traditions. Father John Langan of the Woodstock Theological Center, for example, suggests that we make a "clear delineation of the moral claims of the solidarity that binds us together as human beings sharing a common destiny under God. " A delineation of this kind, he argues, "necessarilly involves a critique of individualism and self-reliance in our national culture" ("The Bishops and the Bottom Line," Commonweal, November 2-16, 1984).

A critique of this sort was a prominent feature of the Catholic bishops' "Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy." Calling both Catholics and non-Catholics to a greater commitment to alleviating the suffering of the poor, the bishops were openly critical of America's practices in relation to their understanding of the Christian tradition. "We live in one of the most affluent cultures in history where many of the values of an increasingly materialistic society stand in direct conflict with the gospel vision," they charged. "Our contemporary prosperity exists alongside the poverty of many both at home and abroad, and the image of disciples who 'left all' to follow Jesus is difficult to reconcile with a contemporary ethos that encourages amassing as much as possible. "

The liberal version of American civil religion, it should be noted, taps into a relatively deep reservoir of sentiment in the popular culture about the desirability of peace and justice. Recent public opinion polls, for instance, have shown that more than 90 per cent of Americans would like to see "a sharp decline in the number of people who suffer from hunger," "a decline in terrorism and violence," "a real easing of tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, " "a decline in racial and religious prejudice," and "an end to the production, storage, and testing of nuclear weapons by all countries on earth" (The Harris Survey [December 22, 1983], No. 104).

Surveys also indicate, however, that most Americans have little confidence in these goals being realized in the foreseeable future. "The problem," concluded the authors of the study cited above, "is not so much a lack of motivation by the people of this country, but the inability of those vested with power, and responsibility to fulfill the hopes and aspirations of the people."

In the face of such difficulties, liberal religious leaders have often presented themselves as a small prophetic remnant, despite the public's support for their causes. This rhetorical stance, critics suggest, may be useful for building solidarity among the faithful, but it can also lead to an isolated mentality in which rituals of solidarity replace more effective appeals.

Both the liberal and the conservative wings of American religion have a vision of where the U.S. should be heading. But the two visions are fundamentally at odds. The conservative vision seems to embody what Max Weber termed the "priestly" function of religion, while the liberal vision expresses religion's "prophetic" function. The conservative vision offers divine sanction to America, legitimates its form of government and economy, explains its privileged place in the world and justifies a uniquely American standard of luxury and morality. The liberal vision raises questions about the American way of life, scrutinizes its political and economic policies in light of transcendent concerns and challenges Americans to act on behalf of all humanity rather than their own interests alone. Each side inevitably sees itself as the champion of higher principles and the critic of current conditions.

The two versions of American civil religion appear to have divided along a fracture line long apparent in discussions of civil religion. That line is the inherent tension between symbols that express the unique identity of a nation and those that associate the nation with a broader vision of humanity. As Bellah noted in his initial essay on the subject, civil religion in America seems to function best when it apprehends "transcendent religious reality . . . as revealed through the experience of the American people"; yet the growing interdependence of America with the world order appears to "necessitate the incorporation of vital international symbolism into our civil religion" (Beyond Belief [Harper & Row, 1970], pp. 179, 186).

The two civil religions correspond in a general way with the ambivalent character of the state in American society. On the one hand, the long period during which the nation enjoyed virtual isolation from the rest of the world resulted in a state oriented toward nationalistic concerns. On the other hand, America's rise to global power in this century has forced the state to act not only on behalf of narrow U.S. interests but also as a potential contributor to the common good in global terms.

These dual functions have sometimes been sufficiently different that particular agencies have identified with one or the other. More commonly, policy proposals have vacillated between the two orientations. Under these circumstances, both versions of American civil religion have found proponents within the state who have been willing to exploit them for purely political purposes.

In consequence, the two visions of America have been the subject of disagreement and polarization more than of consensus and mutual understanding. A few leaders have borrowed ideals from both sides, but that is the exception rather than the rule. It is more common for the two camps to take up openly hostile positions.

Given this hostility, neither side can claim to speak for consensual values. Each side only represents a constituency. Since any claim one side makes is likely to be disputed by the other, the public is left to doubt the credibility of both.

Religion, therefore, becomes (as it has often been characterized in the press) a sectarian concern rather than a basis of unity. And in a society that is not only deeply religious but decidedly secular, other values and assumptions stand as ready alternatives to the civil religion. Faced with conflicting interpretations based on religious premises, national leaders can readily turn to other arguments on which there is greater consensus.

As the conflict between religious liberals and conservatives has intensified, the different versions of American civil religion have continued to energize specific policies and programs. But in the eyes of many middle-of-the-roaders, both sets of arguments have lost plausibility by virtue of being too much disputed. Much room has been left for secular ideologies -- not the least of which are the creeds of material success, radical individual freedom, and an amoral pragmatism.

A vintage silver Porsche sits on blocks in the driveway across the street as its owner tinkers with the engine. Next door a man with thinning gray hair applies paint to the trim around his living room window. But at 23 Springdale something quite different is happening. About two dozen people are kneeling in prayer, heads bowed, elbows resting on folding

chairs in front of them. After this they will sing, then pray again, then discuss the Bible. They are young and old, men and women, black and white. A teenage girl remarks after the meeting that she comes every week because the people are so warm and friendly. "They’re not geeks; they just make me feel at home."

At the largest gothic structure in town several people slip hastily through the darkness and enter a small door toward the rear of the building. Inside there is a large circle of folding chairs. On the wall a felt banner reads "Alleluia Alleluia" (the two A’s are in red). Before long all the chairs are filled and an attractive woman in her late 30s calls the group to order: "Hi, my name is Joan, and I'm an alcoholic." "Hi, Joan," the group responds. After a few announcements, Betty, a young woman just out of college, tells her story. Alcohol nearly killed her. Then, close to death in a halfway house, she found God: "I thought God hated me. But now I know there is a higher power I can talk to and know."

These are but two examples of a phenomenon that has spread like wildfire in recent years. The activities are so ordinary that it is easy to miss their significance. Most of us are probably vaguely aware of small groups that meet in our neighborhoods or at local churches and synagogues. We may have a co-worker who attends Alcoholics Anonymous or a neighbor who participates in a Bible study group. We may have scanned lists of support groups in the local newspaper, noting that anything from having an underweight child to having an oversexed spouse can provide a reason to meet. But we may not have guessed that these groups now play a major role in our society.

Groups such as these seldom make the headlines or become the focus of public controversy. They are not the stuff that reporters care very much about. Few people are involved in small groups because they are trying to launch a political campaign or attract the attention of public officials. With the exception of a few lobbying groups, they are not trying to initiate public policy. Nor are they soliciting funds, selling stock, distributing products or earning a profit. They are simply the private, largely invisible ways in which individuals choose to spend a portion of their free time. In an era in which television networks and national newspapers increasingly define what is important, it is easy to dismiss the small group phenomenon entirely.

To do so, however, would be a serious mistake. The small-group movement has been effecting a quiet revolution. It has done so largely by steering clear of politics, business and the national news media. Its success has astounded even many of its leaders. Few of them were trying to unleash a revolution at all. They were simply responding to some need in their own life or in the lives of people they knew. They started a group, let people talk about their problems or interests, and perhaps supplied them with reading material. The results were barely perceptible. It was, like most profound reorientations in life, so gradual that those involved saw it less as a revolution than as a journey. It was concerned with daily life, emotions, and understandings of one's identity. It was personal rather than public, moral rather than political.

The small-group movement is beginning to alter American society because it is changing our understandings of community and redefining spirituality.

Community is what people say they are seeking when they join small groups. Yet the kind of community small groups create is quite different from the communities in which people have lived in the past. They are more fluid and more concerned with the individual's emotional state. The vast majority of small-group members also say their sense of the sacred has been profoundly influenced by their participation. But small groups are not simply drawing people back to the God of their fathers and mothers. They are dramatically changing the way God is understood. God is now less of an external authority and more of an internal presence. The sacred becomes more personal, but in the process also more manageable, more serviceable in meeting individual needs, and more a feature of group processes themselves. Support groups are thus effecting changes that have both salutary and worrisome consequences. They supply community and revitalize the sacred. But for some of their members at least, community becomes more readily manipulated for personal ends, and the sacred is reduced to a magical formula for alleviating anxiety.

At present, four out of every ten Americans belong to a small group that meets regularly and provides caring and support for its members. These are not simply informal gatherings of neighbors and friends, but organized groups: Sunday school classes, Bible study groups, Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step groups, youth groups and singles groups, book discussion clubs, sports and hobby groups, and political or civic groups. Those who have joined these groups testify that their lives have been deeply enriched by the experience. They have found friends, received warm emotional support and grown in their spirituality. They have learned how to forgive others and become more accepting of themselves. Some have overcome life-threatening addictions. Many say their very identity has been changed as a result of extended involvement in their group. In fact, the majority have been attending their groups over an extended period of time, often for as long as five years, and nearly all attend faithfully, usually at least once a week.

But the small-group movement has not grown simply by meeting the needs of its individual members. Its very existence depends on the changing structure of the American family and the community.

The dramatic growth of the small-group movement can be explained only by considering the social context in which it has arisen. Ours is a highly fluid society. Many of us lead anonymous lives. We no longer live in the same neighborhoods all our lives or retain close ties with our kin. The small-group movement has arisen out of the breakdown of these traditional support structures and from our continuing desire for community. We want others with whom we can share our journeys. The phenomenon extends even beyond this desire, tapping into our quest for the sacred itself.

Providing people with a stronger sense of community has been a key aim of the small-group movement from its inception. There is a widespread assumption that community is sputtering to an undignified halt, leaving many people stranded and alone. Families are breaking down. Neighbors have become churlish or indifferent. The solution is thus to start intentional groups of like-minded individuals who can regain a sense of community. Small groups are actually doing a better job than many of their critics would like to think. The communities they create are seldom frail. People feel cared for. They help one another. They share their intimate problems. They identify with their groups and participate regularly over extended periods of time.

But there is another sense in which small groups may not be fostering community as effectively as many of their proponents would like. Some small groups merely provide occasions for individuals to focus on themselves in the presence of others. The social contract binding them together asserts only the weakest of obligations. Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone's opinion. Never criticize. Leave quietly if you become dissatisfied. Families would never survive were these the operating norms. Close-knit communities in the past did not operate this way. My argument, then, is that small groups are both providing community and changing our understanding of what community is. In view of all the accounts that have depicted Americans as lonely, self-interested individualists suffering from isolation, disrupted families, a lack of friends, a difficulty in establishing intimate relationships, and the demeaning anonymity of large-scale institutions, the small-group movement presents a rather different picture. The large number of people who are involved in small groups, the depth of their involvement, the extent of their caring for each other, and even the degree to which they reach out to others in the wider community all suggest that the social fabric has not unraveled nearly to the extent that many critics have suggested.

In short, small groups are a significant feature of what holds our society together. And their prevalence means the society does indeed have mechanisms to hold it together. Small groups draw individuals out of themselves, pull them out of their isolated personal lives, and put them in the presence of others where they can share their needs and concerns, make friends and become linked to wider social networks. Small groups provide a way of transcending our most self-centered interests, tempering our individualism and our culturally induced desire to be totally independent of one another. The attachments that develop among the members of small groups demonstrate clearly that we are not a society of rugged individualists who wish to go it entirely alone, but are a communal people who, even amid the dislocating tendencies of our society, are capable of banding together in bonds of mutual support.

Nevertheless, we must also understand that the kind of community generated by small groups is clearly different from that which has characterized families, neighborhoods, ethnic groups, and tribes throughout most of human history. Small groups differ from families in several basic ways. The members of small groups are seldom related to each other biologically. They thus do not share the imagined heritage, destiny or physical traits and personality characteristics that unite individuals who are related by blood. Most families are also economic units that bear legal responsibilities for their members’ shelter, clothing, education and medical support, and these economic responsibilities generally extend over long periods of time, usually for at least several generations. Small groups clearly do not function as families in this respect. Their members seldom incur any financial obligations on behalf of other members or the group as a whole.

Neighborhoods, ethnic groups, and tribes differ from small groups in other important ways. The community provided in these settings generally has an important physical dimension. People live in the same area, see each other informally in the course of their everyday lives, and identify themselves by way of certain buildings, streets, parks, culinary customs or distinctive clothing. The social unit is primary in the sense that an individual can live in only one neighborhood or be a member of only one tribe.

There is also a sense of inevitability about such identities. Adults may have chosen their neighborhoods, but throughout much of history they have lived in the community of their birth, and their ethnic or tribal identity was ascribed to them, rather than being chosen at all. Small groups are by comparison far less associated with physical proximity and decidedly more purposive, intentional and voluntaristic.

So when people say they are finding community in a small group, and even when they describe their group as a family, they mean something quite different from the connotations that words like "community" and "family" have had in the past. Whether they recognize it or not, their sense of community now means something over which they themselves have a great deal of control. They have chosen to join one particular group, rather than any of the dozens they might have been exposed to, and they may be involved in more than one—certainly if their involvement over a lifetime is considered. Moreover, their dependence on the group is far more likely to involve emotional care than physical or economic support, and this care may be given quite sporadically. The encouragement received in a group certainly can be powerful. But it is still limited to an evening a week. Compare that to the continuous byplay that takes place among families who share the same dwelling.

"Imagine a Great City" was the slogan of Federico Peña's campaign to become mayor of Denver. He retained the slogan for several months into his first term, pasting it on bumper stickers and billboards across town. But later the motto slipped from use, its grandiose claim mocked by rising crime rates, a hostile civil service, Colorado's failing economy and the city maintenance department's inability to clear snow from the streets.

Having learned the value of humility for those charged with governing, Peña, who is now secretary of transportation in the Clinton administration, today might choose different words to rally the electorate. He might now have the insight to ask Denverites to imagine not a great but a good city. The word "great" refers foremost to size; "good," on the other hand, is a moral term. If we are to reverse the decay of American cities, we must realize that at root their problems are moral. No social program or economic boom alone is enough. Without a moral vision to guide such programs and financial advances, they will accomplish little.

In 1963 Lawrence Haworth published a philosophy of the city called The Good City. Haworth tells us that a good city has two essential ingredients: opportunity and community. Unfortunately, the design and function of modern cities are not equally hospitable to both; they overwhelmingly tend to favor opportunity, often at the expense of community. Indeed, cities became the predominant form of American life in order to exploit the opportunities for economic advancement offered by industrialization. The city was far more qualified than the country or the small town to take advantage of specialization, the key to industrial success. Says Haworth:

How can this be done? People craving community are not likely to find Haworth's answer immediately satisfying. In a large, fragmented, opportunity-rich American city, the way to restore community is by attending to the city's institutions—from schools to businesses, from shopping centers to entertainment centers. According to Haworth, "If the quality of life and mind in the city leave something to be desired—if men are submerged, if there is excessive conformity and a failure of sensitivity and feeling, if each is preoccupied with personal gain and personal comfort, if there is an absence of communication and community—then it is to the institutional structure that we must look for a solution."

In order to understand Haworth, we must realize that an institution is something more than just the phone company or the Department of Motor Vehicles. In its sociological definition, an institution is a pattern of expected actions. Our response to an outstretched hand—a handshake, for example—is an institution. Hospitals, churches, police departments, the flow of automobile traffic, businesses and taxation are also institutions. All these enterprises are expected to act in certain ways. Institutions, in short, are those structures that make life possible, especially in a crowded, busy urban area. As Haworth puts it, "Institutions channel life; they bank its flow." Institutions ground the multitude of opportunities in a city, providing a structure that enables the inhabitant to live a meaningful life in community.

If the recipe for a good city calls for opportunity balanced by community that is made possible by institutions, then our cities today are not measuring up. They are places of institutional collapse. Residents' daily activities are inhibited by fear of crime and violence, their peace of mind is shattered by mistrust, and their souls are made weary by exploitation. Our cities do not embody either opportunity or community.

Opportunity, one of the highest goods a free society can offer, continues to beckon people to cities. Many who come are able to find it: a good job, a rich culture, education, parks, excitement of some sort or another. But for many more, opportunity is more of a pipe dream than a reality. Those who come looking for cultural enrichment are likely to find the museums or libraries closed, cut back or priced out of reach. Those wishing to live in a safe neighborhood (if they can find one) discover that rent and housing prices are exorbitant. Those who seek education find schools in disarray. And for those in search of that most revered form of opportunity—economic—the news is even worse: wages are falling, unemployment is rising, and there is an increasing likelihood that people lucky enough to have jobs will be underemployed.

Even though opportunity is in short supply, we continue to believe that more of it will solve our problems. This tempts us to accept the half-truth that our central task, not just in our cities but in the entire country and the rest of the world, is to increase economic growth. We hope to solve our problems by passing NAFTA, making a faster computer chip or devising a better pricing mechanism for corporations to purchase credits to pollute the environment. What is missing is a moral context for opportunity. For that we need community.

When America began its transformation from an agrarian to an urban nation in the late 19th Century, cities seemed to offer a more fulfilling life. Beckoned by the prospect of relatively high-paying jobs, farmers and small-town dwellers left the countryside in droves. But in the city they found the antithesis of the order and decency they had left behind; they entered a life dominated by factories, slums and ward bosses. The inability of the old moral order to encompass these new social developments set the terms of a cultural debate in which we are still engaged. Where, many wondered, could new limits and directions for individual initiative be found beyond the broken bounds of local self-governing communities?

Our failure to answer this question is at the heart of almost all of today's urban problems. It has also given rise to a strong pattern in American life: wishing to live one way but in fact living another. Some 90 percent of Americans tell pollsters that they would prefer to live in a town of 10,000 people or less. Not only is this longing impractical, it is dangerous. It allows our desire for community to be dissipated in daydreams of moving to Vermont or Montana. It is the kind of nostalgia that Christopher Lasch called a psychological placebo that allows people to accept regretfully but uncritically whatever is being served up in the name of progress.

Progress has met our wish for community by providing bucolic yet empty suburbs, each sporting ubiquitous "Towne Centres," always with ample parking. The attempts by suburbs to be communities almost always fail. The results of their efforts could more accurately be called "lifestyle enclaves." To city dwellers suffering from a lack of community, the ones flocking to psychotherapists in search of meaning, lifestyle enclaves mimic what they desire. Members are homogeneous, expressing their identity through shared appearance, consumption and leisure activities. These are the kinds of places that allow marketers to figure out people's cereal preferences by their zip codes.

In the popular understanding, community usually means either a group or a place. We speak of the Japanese-American community, the business community, the gay community and so on. At other times "community" may refer to a neighborhood or a retirement village. The word is used as a neutral description. These "communities" may only coincidentally provide the social structures that balance opportunity and make a good city. Wendell Berry says that the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas fiasco was not about sexual harassment, racism or political cowardice; but about the lack of community. Berry is referring to community as a way to adjudicate disputes appropriately, or better yet, as an ethos that would not tolerate sexual harassment, racism or political cowardice in the first place.

In a recent speech Richard Rodriguez said that there is no word harder for Americans to understand than community; and yet it is precisely in this concept that he finds hope. These sentiments were echoed by a Brazilian diplomat living in this country. To him the lack of community in our nation's cities is obvious. He marvels, however, at our consciousness of its lack and our often foundering efforts to create it. In one of the more moving moments of the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton tapped the power behind the American wish to live in community when he told his audience at the University of Notre Dame, "Most of all we are in a crisis of community, a spiritual crisis that calls upon each of us to remember and to act upon our obligations to one another. The purpose of community, the purpose of our government, the purpose of our leaders should be to call us to pursue common values and common good, not simply in the moment of extreme crisis but every day in our lives, starting right now, today."

Clinton understands, at least on a rhetorical level, that community has a moral dimension, that it demands the recognition of interdependence. It is not just free-floating groups banded together for narrow political gain, but an intelligent form of life requiring the constant engagement of its members in discussion and decision-making, in defining and redefining its goals and purposes. It is a context in which argument—even conflict—can occur, especially about how shared values will be actualized in everyday life, but within the bounds of a commitment to the common good.

According to Haworth, "By restoring community to our settlements we incorporate into the order of affairs an inducement to the moral life." If this is true, then the lack of genuine community in our cities is a matter as urgent as drugs or street crime or depleted coffers; in fact, at a deeper level, it is the very same problem. Our social ills are traceable to our deficit of community; if we want to solve them, we must build a moral framework.

The prospects for change are dubious, however. We simply do not know what community would look like in a modern city because our deepest cultural experience with it comes from the 19th century, in the small-town, face-to-face relationships of an agrarian economy. We cannot continue to hope that somehow, someday, something will happen to turn the city into a present-day version of Mayberry. Even if that were possible, it would probably not be desirable. The small town was often oppressive and stifling. It is no accident that many of our greatest artists felt trapped in it and could not work until they landed in the anonymity of the city. The task is to give cities an appropriate moral framework, as small towns once had, while retaining urban opportunities. To do this we must undertake the collective task of learning how a city can be a community.

In a speech at the Progressive Policy-Institute, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros made a remarkable statement about what community means for "a modern, big American city and its relationship with a big Washington bureaucracy." His definition started with the negative: it is not broken-down public housing; not neighborhoods where children and 73-year-olds are on their own; not decision-making in which planners, city officials or federal bureaucrats—everyone but the people call the tune. Rather, community is "neighborhood organizing, strong institutions, local institutions, experts in partnerships with community persons." The redundancy of the word "institutions" is not sloppy speech, but an affirmation by an insightful public servant that institutions are the way community is expressed in cities.

Unfortunately, Americans hate institutions. They fear that strong institutions will impinge on their freedom. The liberal ideology that shaped this nation called for institutions that would be, as far as possible, neutral mechanisms designed for individual use. Small wonder, then, that attacking institutions is the surest way for a politician to win the hearts of the electorate. A recent Gallup poll found that out of 15 institutions, only three—the military, organized religion and the police—garnered confidence ratings of either a "great deal" or "quite a lot" higher than 50 percent. The poor showing of institutions such as the Supreme Court, big business, Congress and organized labor evinces the skepticism and distrust Americans have for the very enterprises that make interdependence and therefore community possible in a modem city.

Fortunately, however, not all the news is negative. In academia there is a renaissance of interest in institutions, what some are calling the "new institutionalism." For example, a Harvard research team led by Robert D. Putnam recently completed a 20-year study of regional governments in Italy (Making Democracy Work). It found that the relatively prosperous and well-governed regions were those parts of the country with a long tradition of civic culture. Where there was institutional trust, cities seemed to generate more trust and stronger institutions. Where civic institutions were weak, improving economic and political functions was a much slower process. Putnam and his colleagues drew heavily on the work of Douglass C. North of Washington University, co-winner of this year's Nobel Prize in economics, recognized for his research on the importance of institutions for economic growth.

The hopeful signs are not limited to the academy. In San Francisco an innovative effort to raise $30 million for the public library has met with great success. Realizing that the library is one of the only public institutions that occupies a position of trust and respect among all the different groups of the city, the staff of the Library Foundation made a risky decision. Instead of taking traditional fund-raising approaches, it decided to ask "affinity groups" to take responsibility both for achieving a financial goal and for planning a specific feature or room in the library. African-Americans, Chinese, Latinos Filipinos, gays/lesbians and a Japanese business group all responded.

In the beginning of the process, critics viewed it as a balkanizing of the fund-raising effort. They did not expect much from what they perceived as self-serving groups with limited resources. But the effort to raise funds for a new library, and the way it was done, actually created community out of these "affinity groups." Martin Paley, the director of the Library Foundation, said, "If we had any doubt about the values inherent in this approach they have all but disappeared. A leader of the Latino Community Campaign took me aside at a fund-raising event and said, 'Thank you for giving us our dignity.' An African-American physician noted that this was the first time his community had been asked to come in at the beginning of an important civic project and play a significant role." According to Paley, this experience has permanently changed philanthropy in San Francisco.

In some instances, whole cities have been improved by the innovative use of institutions. Wallace Katz, a longtime student of American urban areas, suggests in a recent Commonweal article that resources are available for institutional renewal. Referring to such places as Pittsburgh and Cleveland as "cities on the mend," he writes:

No attempt to solve urban problems can ignore the key role played by institutions. Conservatives who dismiss the urban poor by claiming that they are inadequately motivated to take advantage of opportunity do not understand that this opportunity is available only through the very institutions the conservatives are eager to dismantle. Liberals who understand institutions only in their capacity to provide opportunity do not see that opportunity requires personal responsibility, and that personal responsibility requires community.

Just before landing in the New World in 1630, John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, delivered a sermon describing what he and his fellow Puritans intended to found: "a city upon a hill." He enjoined his shipmates to "delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our ... community ... as members of the same body." The acquisition of material wealth was certainly on the agenda too, but the primary purpose was to create a community that would support an ethical and spiritual life.

The hill that formed the backdrop for Wintbrop's speech now has a city upon it, but it bears little resemblance to his vision. Little or no delight is taken in neighbors here (particularly during rush hour traffic); others' conditions are others' business; and the interest of the community is taken into account only to the degree to which it coincides with ones personal interest. Traffic, crime and pollution make reluctant metropolitans out of most inhabitants, giving rise to a nostalgic wish to turn back the clock, go to a different place and find a communal life more closely resembling Winthrop's vision.

In a time when Los Angelinos witness the foundering efforts of "Rebuild L.A." and New Yorkers numbly wait for the annual murder count to surpass the 2,000 mark, we see in the fates of our cities the consequences of inadequate and neglected institutions and can perhaps read a lesson for all of society. Unless we make our large, complex urban centers into something more than grab bags of opportunities, nothing—not enterprise zones, new housing projects or more police officers—will make them good places to live. Opportunity unbalanced by community becomes, as Shakespeare said about appetite, a "universal wolf" that in the end "eats up itself."

The imperative to build community does not end with cities; it is only there that the need for attention is most obvious. Cities are metaphors for our world as a whole. Within them we can see pockets of, First World affluence, professional competence, institutions that work. But we can also see pockets of Third World poverty, despair and institutional collapse. As with our cities, so with our nation and the world. Our cities, our nation and our world bear little resemblance to Winthrop's "city on a hill." But perhaps if we stopped looking for great cities on the hilltops, we might locate the rudiments of something better—the good city.

Every Knee Will Bow: The Truth and Tragedy of Ruby Ridge and the Randy Weaver Family. By Jess Walter Regan Books, 373 pp., $24. 00.

A Force Upon the Plain: The American Militia Movement and the Politics of Hate. By Kenneth S. Stern. Simon & Schuster, 228 pp., $24. 00.

Why are Americans joining private armies to fight the American government, while defining their actions as patriotism?" Kenneth S. Stern asks. In the wake of Ruby Ridge, Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing, public officials and private citizens have pondered the sudden appearance of the citizen militias. Many wonder whether the rapid growth of militias across the American heartland could have taken place without some significant mainstream appeal. And many, especially in the Jewish community, note and fear the militias' potential for anti-Semitism.

Stern and Jess Walter tell much the same story, but from strikingly different perspectives. Taken together, the two books cast light on the appearance in the American public square of an antigovernment anger that once was the province of the most distant fringes of American politics.

Walter illuminates the cultic milieu in which the family of Randy and Vicky Weaver was first introduced to the esoteric doctrines of Identity Christianity. In this milieu of forgotten and forbidden knowledge, the earnest seeker is presented with a vast array of conspiratorial scenarios and religious visions which unfold against the backdrop of the timeless battle of good against evil. The Weavers gradually absorbed not only the racist religious doctrines of Christian Identity, but became familiar with the world of UFOs and alien intelligences, the supposed machinations of the Bilderbergers and the Illuminati and, most of all, the alleged conspiracies of those who were said to be the literal offspring of Satan, the Jews.

Fortified by their belief in biblical inerrancy and convinced by Identity hermeneutics of the imminence of the Apocalypse, the Weavers retreated to the isolation of a distant mountain cabin at Ruby Ridge in rural Idaho. There, Vicky Weaver could homeschool her children, and the family could to a degree live off the land. But the family found itself engaged in constant disputes with neighbors. Worse, their several visits to Richard Butler's Aryan Nations compound drew the attentions of the federal government.

A government informant struck up a relationship with Randy Weaver, and this eventually resulted in Weaver's selling, at the informant's request, several illegally sawed-off shotguns. Weaver's subsequent arrest on these gun charges was intended less to incarcerate him than to induce him to inform on others in the Identity movement. However, a circus of errors -- first legal mistakes by a local part-time magistrate, and later the incorrect assignment of a court date for Weaver's case -- convinced the family that a Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) plot was afoot,. They retreated to their cabin to await the End.

This prompted a year of low-level surveillance by a local. federal marshal, and then a shoot-out in which a federal marshal, the Weaver's young son Samuel, and the family dog were killed. The FBI's Hostage Rescue Unit then intervened, armed with rules of engagement that read like "shoot to kill" orders. Those orders led directly to the killing of Vicky Weaver as she stood behind the door of the cabin with her baby in her arms.

Vicky Weaver's death generated a rage throughout the radical right which has yet to abate. Then there was the matter of timing. The trial of Randy Weaver and his friend Kevin Harris took place against the backdrop of the events at Waco. Together, Waco and Ruby Ridge spurred the formation of the militia movement as a defense against a federal government that is seen as determined to destroy all vestiges of opposition

The strength of Walter's presentation is his neutrality. The book resonates with compassion for all who were caught up in the events at Ruby Ridge, yet that compassion never overwhelms critical judgment. Randy Weaver, for example, emerges as a stubborn but weak man, who drew strength from his strong-willed wife; After her death, his

oldest daughter, Sarah, assumed the role of the matriarch. Yet Walter does not focus solely on the Weavers. While condemning the bungled operation and the poorly executed cover-up which followed, Walter is able to draw sympathetic portraits of the federal agents involved at the scene and to mourn the loss of federal marshal William Degan no less than the deaths of Vicky and Samuel Weaver.

Stern, the American Jewish Committee's watchdog on the radical right, also is vitally concerned with the impact of Waco and Ruby Ridge. But for Stem, the milieu of Identity Christianity and the militias is an undifferentiated realm of unreasoning hatred. Only the federal government, in Stern's view, has the resources and the moral authority to protect us from the violent enmity of the radical right. Thus, the FBI and to a lesser degree the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms emerge as the strong, if flawed, shield of the nation. Their vigilance is all that stands between us and the "millions of Americans" whom Stern posits as sympathetic to the militia message. His book expresses the American Jewish community's fear of an armed and active right wing -- a fear which itself has become an important subtext in the militia movement.

Stem contends that the militias represent a virulent form of anti-Semitism which has the potential to infect a greater segment of Americans than the militias' meager numbers (about 10,000 by most estimates) would suggest. He offers as evidence a litany of recent congressional developments, such as the vote in the House of Representatives to gut the Clinton administration's counterterrorism bill -- a move that Henry Hyde (R., Ill.) attributed to a corrosive distrust of government on the part of a broad coalition in Congress. Consider as well the so-called "sagebrush rebellions" against federal control of vast areas of the western U.S -- a revolt that gave birth to many threats and acts of violence directed at Park Service personnel. To this could be added the recent congressional hearings in which militia leaders received a surprisingly respectful hearing from a subcommittee chaired by Senator Arlen Specter (!R., Pa.). A tearful Randy Weaver was given a more than sympathetic hearing by the same committee, which in turn castigated the U.S. Marshals Service and the FBI for their actions at Ruby Ridge.

Equally ominous in Stern's view are militia "agents of influence," activists or fellow travelers who advance the militias' "politics of hate" at local, state, federal and even international levels. All act openly in the political process, and their ideas are spread widely via the Internet -- Stem's primary research tool. These agents include people like Larry Pratt, a far-right Washington lobbyist on guns and abortion whose less savory affiliations led to his resignation as national cochairman of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign.

More threatening still are the activities of two Idaho Republicans, Helen Chenoweth, a freshman congresswoman, and Senator Larry Craig, whom Stern depicts as primary examples of the militia's influence in high places. After a questionable preliminary chapter that connects the militias to every far-right-wing group in American history, from the Ku Klux Klan to the Silent Brotherhood (the Order), Stern builds his model of how militia ideas infiltrate the American mainstream. He believes that those ideas have found favor with "millions of supporters" through the militias' appeal to selected constituencies that are concerned with such issues as gun control and land use and are animated by a pervasive fear of "Washington," a fear Waco and Ruby Ridge dramatically confirmed.

Stern's Foreword offers a remarkable portrait of how the decision to focus on a particular movement was reached by watchdog groups. First, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Southern Poverty Law Center agreed that "these new private armies posed an imminent danger." Next, they faxed their findings to the government and the media, both of which were deaf to their pleas. This impasse was broken when Representative Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), armed with Stern's 600-page manual composed of "media clips, Internet postings, and militia literature," tried to organize congressional hearings. That Schumer's role in introducing AJC material into the political process mirrors what Chenoweth and Craig are accused of doing for the militias is an irony that goes unremarked.

While lobbying Congress for hearings, the AJC relentlessly pushed for the passage of antiparamilitary legislation. The adoption by some states of this legislation was in large part responsible for the fading popularity of radical-right events such as the Aryan Nations annual congress and other activities sponsored by groups like John Harrell's Christian Patriots Defense League.

Stern offers four reasons for asserting that the militias are intrinsically anti-Semitic: 1) Many of the figures in the militia movement such as John Trochmann and Bo Gritz (who is not a militia leader but does have influence) are anti-Semites. 2) Anti-Semitic literature is invariably found at militia gatherings. 3) Terms like "states' rights" and "county supremacy" are frequently used as code words by such anti-Semitic groups as the (now defunct) Posse Comitatus. 4) The conspiracy theories that underlie the movement are rooted in the anti-Semitic text "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

There is some truth to all these allegations. Many leaders and rank-and-file adherents of the militia movements are indeed openly anti-Semitic, and anti-Semitic literature is displayed at militia gatherings and gun shows (not to mention in many Afrocentric bookstores). But these share space with "how to" manuals, survivalist literature, a bewildering variety of religious appeals, exposes of the latest cover-ups of UFO activities and much, much more. The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are but one item in a sea of arcane literatures.

As I have written earlier in these pages ("A guide to the far right," August 2-9, 1995), the militias are in many ways the successors to the tax resistance movement of the 1980s. Tax resistance provided a portal to the vast array of theologies and ideologies of the American cultic milieu -- including the doctrines of the Posse Comitatus, who regard all jurisdictions higher than that of the county as illegitimate. Like today's militia groups, tax resistance had a strikingly ecumenical appeal, offering a place to any and all who perceived the Internal Revenue Service as an illegal collection arm of a morally and financially bankrupt nation. Unlike the militias, however, tax resistance never had the potential to form significant links to the dominant society. Its arguments were simply too esoteric and the costs of opposing the IRS were too high.

The militia movement is more diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity and religious background and focuses on issues with wider resonance. These links to the mainstream culture on the one hand and the wider reaches of the cultic milieu on the other may so far have dampened the anti-Semitic paranoia, which today afflicts only a portion of the movement.

Nevertheless I have gradually come to agree with Stern that anti-Semitism will increasingly be typical of the militia movement. There are three reasons for this. First, there has been an across-the-board rise in temperature among oppositional religious and political movements. Both in interviews and in their literature, members of such movements as the militias, the skinheads and the pro-life rescue movement express increasing anger. This darkening mood may be traced most directly to Waco and Ruby Ridge, and may have motivated the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.

On a deeper level, the sudden and dizzying changes taking place in the American economy, combined with the even more bewildering changes brought by the end of the cold war, foster radical social movements of every description. Adverse economic conditions in the past have proven to be fertile breeding grounds for anti-Semitism. It would be surprising if militia supporters were to prove more resistant to this demonology than others have been. An atmosphere of anger and paranoia fuels the desire to find a scapegoat.

There is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy at work here as well. R. N. Taylor has observed that if we give a wolf a bad name, he'll live up to it. Such was the case with the former neo-Nazi leader Ingo Hasselbach, who reports that the East German National Socialist skinhead movement was born of disaffected but essentially apolitical youths who discovered Nazism only when the state and other hated authority figures labeled them as "neo-Nazis."

The case of Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center and author of the recent book Gathering Storm: America's Militia Threat, illustrates another dynamic. The SPLC has been as outspoken as have the Jewish groups, and though Dees is not Jewish, the far right firmly identifies him as a Jew on the basis of his actions, a distinction he shares with, among others, Franklin Roosevelt.

Indeed, as Michael Shafir has demonstrated in discussing the upsurge of anti-Semitism in Romania and Poland, anti-Semitism does not require the presence of actual Jews to flourish in times of crisis, for national leaders can be "judaized." Helene Loow has explored an analogous phenomenon in Scandinavia, where the "Judaization" of local leaders has encouraged the rapid acceptance of the American ZOG discourse, despite the dearth of local Jews.

Stern notes the argument that an overly aggressive legislative (and by implication, police) response to militias might risk increasing the militias' paranoia, but he dismisses it with the flat assertion that the militias are already so paranoid that their attitude simply cannot get any worse. This is a dangerously myopic view.

The militias can become much more paranoid. Previously, when American paramilitary groups became convinced of the inevitability of official persecution, their most militant adherents shifted from a defensive to an offensive mind-set, unleashing terrorist violence. This is the course followed by the Order's leader, Robert Mathews, in his evolution from tax protester to revolutionary. It is a course that Stern's aggressive prescriptions may make inevitable for the most dedicated of the militia movement.

Stern and the AJC would profit from the adapting lessons taught by the AJC's Rabbi S. A. Fineberg in the 1940s and 1950s when faced with such genuine anti-Semites as Gerald L. K. Smith and George Lincoln Rockwell. Fineberg's successful policy of "dynamic silence" was designed to isolate anti-Semites from access to the public square. Applied to militias that have not adopted an anti-Semitic posture, this policy would mean talking no public action against groups whose agendas may be unpopular or even bizarre. The militia movement's stance on such issues as gun control or abortion or the sightings of UN troops in the American heartland do not threaten the Jewish community and thus need not trigger the public opposition of the Jewish community. Where anti-Semitism is found in segments of the militia movement, however, reaction should be measured, truthful, and focused on that particular group rather than on broad-brush attacks on the movement as a whole.

The Title of Benjamin Ginsberg's 1993 book The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State points to the inevitability of a rapid increase in militia anti-Semitism given the confluence of rising anger and an increasingly strident watchdog campaign calling for action against militia groups. Ginsberg notes that throughout history Diaspora Jewry has of necessity sought to ally itself with the governments of its host nations. This policy has been largely advantageous, in some eras and some places allowing Jews to assume positions of considerable prominence. Rarely, however, have the Jewish people found the level of acceptance and success they enjoy in the contemporary U.S. In a nation in which Jews constitute barely 2 percent of the population, they account for close to half its billionaires, for the leadership of all three major television networks and many movie studios, for the ownership of the nation's largest chain of newspapers, and for considerable percentages of university faculties.

Ginsberg notes, however, that the fortunes of the Jewish people have always fluctuated. One day the embrace of the state may be beneficial and the polity benign, but this felicitous state can change rapidly. Moreover, as Ginsberg correctly states, governments under attack from their own citizenry have often been less than zealous in sheltering their Jewish supporters. The statistical measures of Jewish success which Ginsberg notes with justifiable pride have for some years fed the conspiratorial fantasies of the radical right. Indeed, these believers regard them as the mathematical proof of ZOG theory.

To this point, ZOG theory and the pervasive anti-Semitism which it objectifies have planted only the weakest of roots in the militia movement. As antigovernment anger spreads, however, there will be an increasing focus on the most outspoken proponents of government action against the militias. In militia circles, the perceptual merging of such Jewish organizations as the AJC and the ADL with the power of the U.S. government is growing. This process led to the birth of ZOG theory in the American radical right in the 1980s. It appears to be only a matter of time before the militias accept the "fatal embrace" of the Manichaean ZOG theory and of its most radical proponents in the U.S.radical right.