Summary Of Will Herberg's Protestant, Catholic, Jew

Political campaigns, social movements, and moral deliberations ceaselessly compel religious devotees to investigate the intersections between their personal values and those of larger religious institutions. These spiritual examinations accentuate nuanced distinctions between various strains of religious thought and ultimately trigger the conception of a clear ideological majority and minority. In his “Protestant, Catholic, Jew,” Will Herberg explores how religious minority groups interact with other institutions as they struggle to attain dominance. Herberg utilizes the experience of American Catholics to identify three universal components of this ideological minority experience: dissociation, vilification, and estrangement. These pivotal

Similar to the Catholics’ approach, the Mormons’ first method of vilification takes the form of equating Brooks to a nonbeliever. She writes, “[o]ne morning I opened the door of the apartment and found there freezing on the doorstep a six-pack of beer…’ Go ahead’ said the note tucked in between the beer cans. ‘Have a drink. You’re already there’” (Brooks 122). By equating Brooks’ feminist activism to the forbidden act of consuming alcohol, it becomes evident that the conservative majority of the Mormon Church interprets Brooks’ liberal ideals to be in direct violation of Mormon principles. Furthermore, when Brooks recalls a moment in which her peers mockingly labeled her as the Antichrist, it once again becomes evident that in posing an internal threat to a minority group, rather than an external one, Brooks’ minority experience is amplified. Through openly vilifying Brooks, the Mormon Church seeks to attain moral dominance and forces Brooks to contemplate whether she wants to continue distancing herself from her faith through feminist

After being cast as divergent and harshly scorned for her minority beliefs, Brooks seeks to overcome her separation and coexist with the conservative Mormons, yet, despite their common faith, she finds herself struggling to achieve this. She writes, “[f]or years, I cried every time I set foot in a Mormon ward house. Crying out of fear and anger and loneliness and misunderstanding. Crying that the church had punished women like me, people like me, leaving us exiled amongst our own” (Brooks 149). Despite desperately wanting to make amends with the conservative majority and secure a stable position within religious society, Brooks is incapable of overlooking the majority’s previous attempts at excommunication. However, it is notable that in the estrangement stage of the minority experience, Brooks’ micro- experience differs from the universal experience outlined by Herberg. Although the severe strain induced by dissociation and vilification maintains its hold on Brooks’ spiritual journey, she continues to identify as Mormon and seeks to promote complex intrafaith discourse. This difference in experiences is rooted in Brooks’ continual allegiance to the Mormon faith. The same allegiance that causes her to be perceived as a greater threat to Momonism, thus amplifying the dissociation and vilification phases, simultaneously secures her position within the community and allows her to remain