American Enterprise Institute
Despite the media’s fixation on the religious participants taking part in the pro-Palestinian collegiate protests, the vast majority of protestors on today’s college campuses in all likelihood are secular, or religious “nones,” as social scientists like to call them. After all, the pro-Palestine position is more popular among progressives and the political left, and, as we know from numerous surveys, religiosity in all its forms is lowest on the left—among those who self-identify as progressives or “very liberal.”
Yet despite the likely irreligiosity of the campus protesters, they are acting in a religious manor.
Most fundamentally, these protestors gather to experience and express a morally driven community to achieve a higher purpose, to make the world a better place as far as they are concerned (as in the Jewish concept of “Tikkun Olam.”) These student protestors are now spending extended time with people who share heavily in their demographics, social origins, cultural tastes, and location in the social tapestry. They have a sense of otherness, sporting a combined and often embattled social identity against an indifferent, if not sometimes hostile, larger society, and one which they see as morally ignorant, or indifferent, or worse. Yet they call upon their institutions to, in effect, repent and abandon their immoral ways in favor of more ethical and morally informed positions.
They spend hours chanting in unison, articulating rhythmic chants. The crowds articulate their protest liturgy in unison, melodically repeating after the chant-leader, with a variety of slogans.
And these can be heard not just at Columbia or Harvard or UChicago or UCLA, but on numerous campuses across the country with regularity and solidarity now: “Hey so-and-so [a college president perhaps], You can’t hide. You’re supporting genocide” Or “From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free.” And, “There is only one solution. Intifada. Revolution.” Another: “We don’t want no two-state, we want all of ’48” This last one expresses rejection of the idea of Israel and Palestine as separate entities in favor of a single sovereignty over all of 1948 Palestine.
Beyond all these features of moral community and culture, the anti-Zionist protestors also exhibit distinctive dress—the kaffiyeh, usually sporting red and white or black and white colors. Beyond the kaffiyeh, facial masks (often the kind worn in the age of Covid) constitute another element in the protesters’ distinctive dress, albeit with a different symbolism than that evoked by the kaffiyeh.
What are we to make of all these parallels between anti-Zionist protest gatherings, and the thousands of congregations that assemble weekly in churches and other houses of worship across America?
One inference is that both sorts of gathering address similar needs and exert similar appeals. Apparently, whether conventionally religious or not—and left-identifying college students are among the least religious by any and all measures—these protesters have religious needs and sensibilities. They are passionate about coming together to form, express, and experience community; they derive meaning and purpose from acting to advance what they see as important moral causes; they have a sense of differentiation, if not embattlement, with the larger amoral/immoral society; they chant a liturgy of sorts under leaders with powerful (or mechanically magnified) voices; their liturgical elements and congregational style are replicated elsewhere, albeit with local variations; and they partake of distinctive elements of dress.
A critical implication of these gatherings is that religious needs and motivations are rather widespread, if not universal. Another is that the move away from conventional religiosity, if not the move toward SBNR (spiritual but not religious), has expanded and deepened the opportunity for spontaneous protests with moral purpose and elements of distinctive religious community. Students—and liberal students in particular—regularly report being anxious, depressed, isolated, lonely, and wondering about their purpose, and these gatherings have seemingly found purpose and community; so many students who have protested have shared with me that they feel far less lost and now are far more focused and less isolated or lonely.
If opponents of these, or other protests, expect to gain any traction—be it to mobilize their like-minded constituencies or even to tempt protesters to change sides—they’ll have to consciously and intentionally offer the benefits of religious participation. They’ll need a compelling and persuasive moral framing; an opportunity for regular communal gathering; as well as a “liturgy” and liturgical leaders, if not elements of symbolic dress and signage. These frames and organizational tools have created social capital and promoted civil and social change over centuries, and they are powerfully at work today.
Sometimes the so-called least religious—who are looking for community—can act in religious ways and achieve connection with others. And, with a little imagination and boundary-stretching, we can come to see the anti-Zionist protests of 2024 as exemplifying that point.
