Americanism and Puritanism

This is my entry for the first Evangelical Outpost Blog Symposium on the subject 'Is Americanism the Successor of Puritanism?" 

This blog symposium uses the article Americanism and It's Enemies by David Gelernter in the January 2005 issue of Commmentary Magazine as it's jumping off point.  Gelernter answers Joe's question with a pretty unqualified "yes" - Americanism is the successor of Puritanism.  He marshals a good deal of evidence in favor of his thesis and much of it I agree with.  I do believe he has many valid points, but I also believe the issue is far more nuanced than the article suggests. 

As a Christian I deeply desire to see America more Christianized, as more and more people respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ and as this gospel works its transforming influence in every sector of society.  Furthermore, I share what I assume to be a presupposition of Gelernter's - that both in the academy and popular culture, there is a concerted effort to remove all traces of our religous roots.

Having said that I don't think this article gives a complete picture of our historical situation, and I believe that Gelernter's insight's need to be massaged and blended with other trains of thought.

 

First a quick summary. Gelerntner says that Americanism is a religion composed of a set of beliefs that cause Americans to suppose that their nation is morally superior and closer to God than others. These beliefs are that America is a "city set on a hill," a new Israel. This is coupled with the belief that the three core tenents of the "American Creed" - freedom, equality and democracy are biblically derived. Gelernter says these beliefs were inculcated into our national psyche through our Puritan forbearers and have been manifested throughout our history as represented by quotes all the way from Revolutionary era preachers to presidents including Ronald Reagan.

Gelernter says that Puritanism as a religious movement may have died out in the late 1700's and 1800's as Puritan congregations were liberalized and overcome by Unitarianism. But Puritanism as a movement didn't really die - it morphed into Americanism. And, there is a parallel between anti-Puritanism and anti-Americanism. Here's the crux of the argument as best I can tell.

I believe that Puritanism did not drop out of history. It transformed itself into Americanism. This new religion was the end-stage of Puritanism: Puritanism realized among God’s self-proclaimed “new” chosen people—or, in Abraham Lincoln’s remarkable phrase, God’s “almost chosen people.”

Many thinkers have noted that Americanism is inspired by or close to or intertwined with Puritanism. One of the most impressive scholars to say so recently is Samuel Huntington, in his formidable book on American identity, Who Are We? But my thesis is that Puritanism did not merely inspire or influence Americanism; it turned into Americanism. Puritanism and Americanism are not just parallel or related developments; they are two stages of a single phenomenon.

This is an unprovable proposition. But as a way of looking at things, it buys us something valuable. Consider: Puritanism was shared by people of many faiths, at any rate within Protestant Christianity. You could find Puritans in Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches, and in Baptist and Quaker churches; some Puritans never left the Episcopalian or Anglican church, and eventually you could find Puritans in Methodist churches, too. Later, as I have noted, you could even find them in Unitarian churches—despite Unitarianism’s dramatic disagreements with other forms of Protestantism.

Americanism has these same peculiar properties, and takes them a step further. It, too, is a religion professed by people of many different faiths. Because of its “political” or biblical aspect, specifically its “Old Testament” focus, it was destined ultimately to be at home not merely in many kinds of Protestant churches but in every congregation that venerated the Hebrew Bible—in American Protestant churches, American Catholic churches, and American synagogues. This may seem like a strange set of attributes for a Judeo-Christian religion—yet Puritanism itself had the same attributes.

His basic thesis is that, because Americanism (as he defines it) has many of the same attributes of Puritanism (as he understands it), then the one must be derived from the other. Yet he prefaces this by admitting that it is an unprovable proposition. If it were up to me I would put the words "unprovable assertion" in all caps, bold and italicized because I truly don't believe he has proven his case. But, to quote him, his observations do buy us something valuable. I'm just not sure I see the same value at the same places he sees it.

Logicians warn us of the fallacy of the complex cause, which ascribes a particular effect to a single cause, when in fact there are many causes. This is where I have the greatest difficulty with Gelernter's essay. On the one hand I agree that Americanism as he defines it has been popular throughout our history, yet this form of Americanism is only one slice of the total pie we call America.  There are many, many, both today and in the past who don't see us as a city on a hill and don't buy the idea of American exceptionalism.

Furthermore, Puritanism is not the "one-single" cause of this form of Americanism, rather it is one influence among many. Our pilgrim forefathers and their earliest descendents had a puritan "city on a hill" vision for our nation, but as we grew to become the great melting pot, this insured the dilution of the puritan vision. With people from so many nationalities, so many religions and so many different philosophies coming to America and rightly being welcomed here, there is no way that the core puritan vision could sustain itself over time.

The Puritan vision was an explicitly Christian vision, whereas Americanism is not. One of the clearest examples of such a Puritan vision is seen in the Solemn League and Covenant of the Scottish Covenanters:

All with one voice approve ad embrace the same, as the most powerful mean, by the blessing of GOD, for settling and preserving the true Protestant religion with perfect peace in his Majesty’s dominions, and propagating the same to other nations, and for establishing his majesty’s throne to all ages and generations.

It was this vision that was brought to America on the Mayflower, as can be seen in these words from the Mayflower Compact:

Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith,

The Preamble to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut includes these words:

. . . where a people are gathered together the Word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people . . . enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we do profess . . ."

To our Puritan/Pilgrim forefathers, to be a "city on a hill" meant to set the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ on that hill, not mere ideals like freedom, equality and democracy. The ideals of freedom, equality and democracy could arguably be found in Puritanism and Gelernter is correct in saying that they are ultimately found in the bible. 

But by the time of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence this explicilty Christian vision was replaced with an emphasis on the ideals of freedom, equality and democracy.  Explicit references to a Christian God were replaced with reference to someone called "nature's god."

In my prior post "Is this Land Our Land?" I have a few comments that I believe are pertinent here:

(Dennis) Woods points out that there is a kind of declension that sets in by the time of the writing of our constitution. Rather than explicitly declaring that God is related to Jesus Christ, we have "nature's God.' Moreover, Woods points out that the Federalist Papers have no references to the Bible, but twenty eight references to pagan Greece and Rome. True, many of the founders, in private correspondence talk of their Christian beliefs, but these Christian beliefs seem to be sublimated in our constitution, or at least watered down a bit. This doesn't prove that they intended to create a secular republic. They simply wanted to avoid favoring one church over another. But it is curious to note that the founding fathers didn't give the same explicit endorsement to the Christian faith in the constitution that those who had gone before them had.

What is pertinent is that a great declension had taken place by the time of the Declaration of Independence. Gelernter gives an interesting explanation of why it is that the Declaration of Independence was not explicitly Christian:

But is it not true that the Declaration of Independence—one of America’s holiest writings—treats religion in a cool, Enlightenment sort of way? It does. But we ought to keep in mind an observation by the historian Ralph Barton Perry. The Declaration, Perry reminds us, was an ex post facto justification of American beliefs. It was addressed to educated elite opinion, especially abroad; it was designed to win arguments, not to capture the essence of Americanism as Americans themselves understood it. That essence emerges in the less guarded pronouncements of the Founding Fathers and many other leading exponents and prophets of Americanism, from Winthrop and Bradford through John Adams and Jefferson through Lincoln and Wilson, Truman, Reagan.

I don't buy that line of reasoning. We always deal with people and organizations on the basis of their official pronouncements, not their "less guarded pronouncements." My church's doctrine is evaluated on our "official" statements of faith, not "less guarded" comments by it's members or leaders. A company is known by it's official vision and mission statements.

But even if we accepted Gelernter's assertion that the essence of America "emerges in the less guarded pronouncements of the Founding Fathers . . . " that would be a two edged sword. Many less guarded pronouncements were favorable to the Christian faith, but many were not. Would the Treaty with Tripoli be one of those "less guarded pronouncements," especially Article 11:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

By the way, I know that David Barton and others have taken great pains to say that this applies merely to the federal government.  Therefore, the Treaty with Tripoli doesn't say that this is not a Christian nation, only that the federal government is not Christian.  I didn't find this a bit persuasive, but at the same time, I am willing to grant his premise that this doesn't completely overthrow the idea that many revolutionary era Americans believed that America was founded as a Christian nation. Maybe I am reading my 21st century cynicism back into the politics of the 1700's, but the Treaty with Tripoli sounds to me like politicians playing politics by saying one thing to the folks at home (we're a Christian nation) and another to the folks abroad (we're not a Christian nation).

Also, in the "less guarded pronouncements" department, we need to be careful about quoting from our founding fathers. We might think that Ben Franklin affirms the "Christian foundations" of our government when he says:

"I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it."

But we dare not forget what Franklin actually thought of Christ:

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England some doubts as to his [Jesus] divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as it probably has, of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive, that the Supreme take it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with any particular marks of his displeasure."

Thomas Jefferson believed that it was our creator who endowed us with certain inalienable rights, but this "creator" was certainly not the father of Jesus Christ:

"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

Jefferson's famous vow of "eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" was directed at the clergy of Philadelphia.

In quoting Franklin and Jefferson I am not saying that all of the signers of the Declaration shared their views. I realize that many folks like Barton, Peter Marshall, and D. James Kennedy would insist that Franklin and Jefferson's views were in the minority and I can accept that as far as it goes.
However, if the vast majority of our founding fathers had the explicit desire to form a "Christian" nation, it makes me wonder how men like antagonists of the faith like these men could reach such a place of influence.

Gelernter says that Puritanism morphed into Americanism, but he doesn't tell us how it morphed. Because of that I don't want to criticize him for something he didn't say, but I will say that he leaves the impression that Puritanism became Americanism the way a boy becomes a man, or maybe the way a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. The caterpillar-butterfly illustration may capture the idea better - butterflies and caterpillars look very different but this is a natural transformation. I don't believe that Puritanism became Americanism through a natural transformation.

A better analogy would be that Puritanism became Americanism the way a cow becomes a beefalo. To produce a beefalo, something very unnatural had to happen to a cow - it had to be mated with a buffalo - a totally different species of animal.  It's not that the mere appearance of the animal was changed, i.e. a set of Puritan clothes was exhanged for Americanist clothes.  Rather the whole DNA of the animal was changed by this, it became a different species. I agree with Mark Byron in his response to this symposium when he says that the Declaration of Independence was a product of Puritanism and Enlightenment thought. Hence, Americanism is the beefalo - with enough Enlightenment thought to not be truly Puritan and enough Puritan thought to not be a purely Enlightenment document.

This is really the only way to understand the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Mayflower Compact or the Fundamentals of Connecticut. America started out with Puritan roots but the Enlightenment came in and diluted the Puritan influence.

This raises another issue when it comes to defining the American identity, and that is the issue of "what era do we look to as our founding era?" If we look to the Pilgrim era and a few succeeding generations then we can unequivocally say that we were founded as a Christian nation. But if you step ahead to the revolutionary era things get a great deal more muddled. It was a mixed bag. There were religious influences and enlightenment influences. The Declaration of Independence was a good deal closer to a "Christian" document than the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of the French Revolution, but it was a far cry from the Solemn League and Covenant or many of the earlier founding documents of America.

I look at the Christian influence in America as gas in the tank of an automobile. When the Pilgrim's arrived, in their own self-consciousness, they landed with a full tank of gas. By the time of the American Revolution the tank was half-empty. We've been burning the gas ever since to the point that now we are running on fumes. By the same analogy, the fact that Christian influence has been diminishing doesn't mean it wasn't there. This is why secularists who want to excise Christian and religious influences from our history books are dead wrong and are lying to our kids and those who listen to them. The current secular hostility toward religion and Christianity cannot be justified by appeals to our founding fathers.

At the same time, Christians cannot deny the secularizing influences that came out of the enlightenment that were present in our founding era.

So, as I begin to draw to a close I see that I have some agreements with Gelernter and some disagreements.  Yes, Puritanism has influenced Americanism, but it is not the only influence.  Puritanism didn't naturally transform into Americanism, but became Americanism through a very unnatural process as it was combined with enlightenment ideas.

Furthermore, in saying that the Puritans had an explicitly Christian vision that declined to become Americanism, I am not saying that I agree completely with the Puritan vision.  I have been influenced by Kuyper's notion of "sphere sovereignty" which keeps the ecclesiastical and political spheres distinct.  Both are accountable to God, but are still separate from one another.  I am concerned that much of the "city on a hill" rhetoric confuses the two spheres.  But again, that is for another post.  My intention in this one was not to argue the validity of the puritan vision, but to compare it to "Americanism" as defined by Gelernter.

Also, I would point out that, of all the symposium submissions I have read, the one by Gideon Strauss is far and away the best - IMHO.  I'm not on Joe's panel that votes for a winner, but if I had a vote it would go to Gideon.  He says that Americanism is idolatry.   If "Americanism" as Gelernter defines it is a religion, then it is not a Christian religion and is, by default a competing religion. 

And, I have not dealt with the whole issue of anti-Americanism, which is one of the key issues for Gelernter.

Whenever I write and say such things I always fear that I am going to get myself in hot water with my fellow evangelicals.  The notion that America was explicitly founded as a Christian nation is sacred to many and to call this notion into question is anathema.  This is thought to be an important plank in our strategy to "reclaim America." It is as if I am selling out to the forces of secularism when I bring up such things.  Such a mindset has been prevalent in America since the days of the revolution.  In the book The Search for Christian America, the authors say:

Yet, Christians leaders spoke as if it were more important for fellow believers to make the proper choice against Britain than it was to maintain spiritual unity around the gospel. It became common for believers during the Revolution simply to equate loyalty to the new nation and loyalty to Christ.

I want to go on record as saying that I am glad to be an American, I love this country and consider myself blessed to live here.  But loyalty to Christ supercedes loyalty to the nation and it supercedes loyalty to any ideology, or any '-ism." 

We don't lose anything by admitting that our history is a mixed bag of Christian and enlightenment influences.  The gospel is still the gospel whether the nation was founded on Christian principles or not.  Christians have the responsibility of being salt and light in every sphere of creation whether or not any particular sphere has Christian influences in its history. 

The Christian worldview carries enough strength, in and of itself, to claim America for Christ.  The degree of Christian influence on our history does not determine the degree of Christian influence that may be exerted on our future.

Our task as Christians is not to be Americanists, nor is it to return to an allleged Puritan golden age.  It is simply to be salt and light wherever we find ourselves.