Liberal Creeds

Liberal Creeds:Signs of Belief in the US Suburbs Méadhbh McIvor On a recent research trip to Arizona, I was struck by the number of brightly colored "We Believe . . ." signs gracing the gardens of affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods in Phoenix and Tucson.1 Dotted throughout what tend to be well-manicured and surprisingly green lawns (surprising, given their location in the desert), these signs showcase the liberal credentials of the relevant home, the inhabitants of which—we are told—believe that "science is real," "no human is illegal," "love is love," and a host of other aphorisms tied (or reduced) to what are often described as the United States' "culture wars."2 Such "earnest liberal word [salads]," as New York Times writer Amanda Hess puts it, are easy to mock.3 (And mocked they often are: see the much-shared [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Photograph taken by the author in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 2022. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Photograph taken by the author in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 2022. [End Page 2] post on the satirical Reductress website, "'All Are Welcome Here,' Says Sign in Neighborhood Where Average House Costs $2 Million.")45 Along with other post-2016 acts of social-media-inspired gesture politics—such as wearing a safety pin to show one's solidarity with "minorities, immigrants, women and members of the L.G.B.T. community," a sartorial decision one participant loftily described as "a form of resistance to hate and to negativity"5—they're easily read as words, not deeds; a performance of virtue in lieu of its actual practice. In discussing the signs in these terms, I do not mean to suggest that the issues they focus on are trivial. Editorials framing them as "the epitome of virtue signalling" or evidence of a "cultural battle"6 (as opposed to a political one) might imply that the kinds of policies referenced here—policies that overwhelmingly affect women, people of color, migrants, and LGBTQ+ persons—ought to receive less airtime than those affecting a more "Vitruvian" vision of the person7(that is, a person who is white, male, and wealthy, a reduction that, in Sylvia Wynter's words, "overrepresents itself as if it were the human itself").8 By contrast, it is clear that racial justice, abortion access, immigration reform, and LGBTQ+ rights are serious matters worthy of serious discussion (and urgent policy change). Indeed, it is precisely because of their seriousness that their reduction to a jumble of hashtag-able slogans can feel somewhat jarring. Rather than critiquing these signs as merely "symbolic gestures,"9 I am interested in exploring what it might mean to assert publicly this kind of "belief." [End Page 3] In what follows, I offer some thoughts on what these signs might tell us about the category of American religion—more specifically, about a particular kind of American creed. By "creed" I mean a set of propositional statements, often presented in a simple, repetitive form, which may or may not be expected to guide one's actions in the world. As with all creeds (and to the chagrin, no doubt, of many catechists, Sunday school teachers, and others involved in religious instruction), propositions do not need to have a measurable impact on one's behaviour, be understood in depth, or be taken particularly seriously to warrant the application of the label. In addition to offering a concise summary of (what are framed as) one's "beliefs," they function primarily to affirm one's membership in a group. Creeds, whether sung, spoken, or presented in the form of garden decor, are an example of what the anthropologist Webb Keane calls "semiotic forms": material manifestations "available to [and] interpretable by" other people, regardless of their relationship to one's subjectivity or inner state.10 By taking textual form, Keane suggests, creeds make religion "highly portable."11 In the case of the "We Believe . . ." signs, this portability has enabled their spread from a garden in Wisconsin in late 2016 to their near ubiquity in certain neighborhoods throughout the United States today.12 In offering these reflections, my intention is not

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