Our Jim has the lead essay in the new journal AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT. That journal is not as good as PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL SCIENCE, but it is worth reading.
Jim’s essay is actually quite innovative and brilliantly thought-provoking. Question raised by Jim: Does American have not only a secular but a religious mission?
1. One piece of evidence: The Cold War–won by America–was not only a political but a religious struggle. The American understanding of the struggle was against Godless communism. What distinguishes our political theory is that it limits government in a way that makes room for freedom of the church. Question for Jim: Is the ground of that freedom secular or religious? To what extent does Lockean view of personal identity and personal freedom depend on Christian premises? Does it depend on all human beings being free from any totalitarian civil theology for a transcendent morality and personal destiny shared by us all? Jim asserts that the American victory in that war “can reasonably be judged to have helped saved biblical faith in the world.” But surely that’s too strong for anyone who believes that biblical faith doesn’t have a political origin. In reading Solzhenitsyn and noticing the integration of Eastern Europe in every respect into pretty godless Europe, we can say that the victory of the contemporary West was definitely but still somewhat ambivalently good for biblical faith.
2. Jim, in fact, goes on to explain that the future of biblical faith might still depend on American belief and political power, given the decline to near disappearance of faith in Europe. That seems more than tad ethnocentric, given the strength of such faith in Africa and even China today. I’m all for American power as a chastened force for good in the world. But the future of Christianity can’t be understood to depend on it. Still, there’s a lot to be said for the connection between the persistence of observant religious belief in America and our relatively manageable birth dearth and relatively strong conceptions of family and personal responsibility. We can thank God, probably, for those points of distinction, and we can connect them to the distinctively modest goals of our Founders’ political theory. But our Founders certainly varied on how much they connected the perpetuation of our political institutions with faithful belief in a personal God. All this points more to America’s dependence on the biblical God than the that’s God dependence on American power.
3. In the interesting Christian but semi-mainstreamed movie BLUE LIKE JAZZ, we hear a young evangelical woman quoting Mother Teresa about the spiritual impoverishment of Western–including American–materialism being worse and harder to bear than the material impoverishment of Mother Teresa’s Calcutta. She is the countercultural figure at godless and so seemingly insipid but actually deeply wounded Reed College. What is it about America that allows the biblical virtue of charity to flourish on its own terms and produce such self-criticism?
May 14th, 2012 | 3:00 pm
[...] Ceaser on American ExceptionalismFirst Things (blog)One piece of evidence: The Cold War–won by America–was not only a political but a religious struggle. The American understanding of the struggle was against Godless communism. What distinguishes our political theory is that it limits government in a … [...]
May 15th, 2012 | 8:38 am
Of course no journal can be the equal of Perspectives. And I follow Peter in urging pomo-con readers to study closely the current issue with its focus on statesmanship. Which brings me to the topic of Peter’s post above.
So…. now onto the substance of the article on exceptionalism that appears in that other (new) and (pretty good) journal American Political Thought. I am happy Peter called attention to the article and especially to the part of it that he highlighted.
Basically the article draws attention to the fact that critics of the idea of any kind of “mission” for America have greatly exaggerated the role of–the words to follow are approximate or anachronistic– “puritan” or “orthodox” or “fundamentalist” religion. iThe critics proceed by a simple formula: the source of the American mission is “fundamentalist” religion; fundamentalist religion is narrow-minded, jingoistic, and ignorant of reality; therefore any idea of an American mission, however conceived, is tainted, even idolatrous. This line of argument was used, for example, against President Bush’s policies, which were discredited on the basis that they were said to be an application of this kind of missionary zeal.
My response in the article was two-fold. First, I tried to show, by looking at the periods of Manifest Destiny and late nineteenth century “imperialism” (as it has been called), that the deepest source of the mission in those cases was not puritan or fundamentalist religion. The deepest source was in the first instance in a Hegelian-type idea of Progress and in the second in Darwinian thought. In other words, the sources were philosophy and science applied to politics. Yes, forms of Christianity were brought in. But without trying to adjudicate exactly what is Christianity wand what is not, the most superficial examination shows that these uses of Christianity followed philosophy and science. These were examples of “liberal protestantism,” not orthodox or fundamental protestantism. But the critics today, trying to taint the mission, seek to link it fundamental protestantism. They ask religion to pay for the sins, if sins they be, of these uses of philosophy and science. It is a total misreading of the historical record. That is the gist of a large part of the article.
The second point I make is that there are a variety of non-religious sources of the mission, some (like the ones just noted) deeply problematic, but others, like that found in the Federalist papers, very admirable. The source in the Federalist is a product of political science and historical analysis. The Federalist, beginning in Federalist #1, argues that America indeed has a central role in the destiny of modernity in (somehow) bringing liberty and republican government to light and to promoting it as a cause. This is not a matter of mere indifference, but a cause or a “value,” as we say today. This is a mission. It does not say by what means, which would of course be impossible, as it is a question of prudence. Nor for the same reason does it say how this is to balanced against other goals. But the main point here is that there is an intelligible rational or non-religious source for the notion of mission in American political thought. And I urged Americans to consider that source, rather than dwell on the caricatures that have been created to explain and discredit the mission. In short, back to political science!
This was about 90 percent of the article, and I could have ended it there. Everything might then have been resolved, at least to the satisfaction of many. The nation could be saved from being guided in politics by theological considerations, which no one should want; and yet there could still be some intelligible, rationalist source for an idea of mission. In brief, everything could be in order: religion in its sphere and politics in its sphere…God is in heaven and all is right with the world. And the neo-cons could sleep “peacefully.”
But I could not end things there, as it was incomplete in addressing the subject–”inadequate to the phenomena,” as some like to say. What I tried to do in the final part is re-open the lingering question: Ok, so there are these caricatures of the role of religion–I proved that!– but still there is, and has been, a real concern and much speculation of the place of American religion in the unfolding of God’s plan for the destiny of man and of biblical faith. This original Puritan idea is far less political than many have supposed, but it has had a political dimension. What do we do with this part of our “tradition”?
The question today is whether people of faith should treat this element of American religion as an embarrassment–something we are happy to ignore and jettison–or, instead, as something that can and should be thought and re-thought. Should those of faith just forget this idea, dismissing it as an anachronism, or should they make an effort to bring it up date? Is the curious notion of a special role for America in God’s plan an idea that not only may have some plausibility, but that, intelligently considered, might add something to a sound political science?
I chose to at least open up this last possibility. There are difficulties, I am aware, in entertaining this position. (For some Catholic readers, I know, the idea of a nation or community having a role in the providential plan is objectionable, though there are splits on this point that could be discussed.) But I proposed asking the some to try to think through this idea in a constructive way, in a way that would avoid idolatry and ethnocentrism. I worry about the kind of religion today that argues that any involvement of the religious in the political taints the religious, that any mix of the religion with “power politics” is apostasy. There is a danger in this view, too. For all the difficulties of linking the two realms, they are arguably connected. The Cold War is an example. It seems to me at least that it did matter (so far as we humans can see) which side prevailed, not only from a political but from a religious viewpoint. It does matter today that there is a nation that can protect peoples of faith threatened with annihilation. It may sound nice to say that faith works “above” this level, that faith has nothing to do with nations or politics but only our individual souls and salvation…This is a “popular” view in some religious circles today, as it seems to allow for clean hands. And yet, when certain things happen in the world down here, those hands can suddenly appear very sullied.
May 15th, 2012 | 9:16 am
So thanks to Jim for the great summary that might have the unintended and unfortunate effect of keeping people from checking out the original that is, Ken Masugi tells me, readily available online. Insofar as Jim’s article is a criticism of the clean-hands approach of “radical orthodoxy” or MacIntyrism or even Deneenism, I’m 92% for it. Dr. Pat has an article in the pretty good journal responding to our Jim, and it’s an incoherent mixture of Augustinism and romantic civic republicanism in my opinion.
May 15th, 2012 | 10:00 am
Ceaser’s analysis above is outstanding. Then Lawler slaps Deneen around, a bit. So, I’ll have to read both Ceasar and Deneen’s essays. On that probably more later.
” I worry about the kind of religion today that argues that any involvement of the religious in the political taints the religious, that any mix of the religion with “power politics” is apostasy. There is a danger in this view, too. For all the difficulties of linking the two realms, they are arguably connected. The Cold War is an example.”
Re: this (from Ceaser’s above comment) there is much that mirror’s Dr. Stefan Rossbach’s brilliant study: “Gnostic Wars, The Cold War in the Context of Western Spirituality). At first glance I might argue in favor of a conflated religio-politico (how can it be any other way?) were we a ‘moral’ or virtuous people, as some have argued we were during the founding era. So the question is what is the effect of secularism on republican doctrine when we have abandoned republicanism and devolved into a social democracy? Can we restore those republican virtues in the face of the Secularist-Hegelian triumph?
May 15th, 2012 | 1:02 pm
Dr. Caesar, thank you for the account of the main points of your article. Rather than keeping me from reading your article (as Peter feared) your comments led me to want to read it in toto, which I’ve now done once. I thought your references to Rawls and Habermas in the last section were especially strong. I wasn’t aware of Rawls’ “second thoughts,” though I’ve read the account of the “conversation” between Habermas and Ratzinger.
May 15th, 2012 | 1:31 pm
And Peter, whatever comprises the 8% of your disagreement with Dr. Caesar, I agree 100% with your characterization of Dr. Deneen’s article. It’s one thing to argue that Augustine warns against our reducing the agency of Divine Providence to any particular nation or people; it’s something else to say that Augustine forbids us from seeing or glimpsing it ever at work in this world. Ceasar’s article culminates in a question: whether we can know or discern anything about “the unfolding of God’s plan for the destiny of man and of biblical faith” in this world, specifically in America, in a way that “avoids idolatry and ethnocentrism.” Deneen’s article culminates in an answer: NO!
May 15th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
Having read both Ceaser’s and Deneen’s articles, I concluded pretty quickly that Ceaser has a better grasp of the issue. Of course, my conclusion had nothing to do with the fact Ceaser was my dissertation chair and will be buying me a pizza tomorrow.
The problem with American exceptionalism is a category problem. Deneen gets these categories wrong because he fails to understand how the “kingdom” in the Kingdom of God can be one of two things: an state anointed by God or a Church anointed by God that the state must protect.
American exceptionalism, as Ceaser explains, can be one of two things: 1. the Kingdom of God on earth (what Ceaser calls “something special about America”) or 2. facilitating the Kingdom of God on earth (what Ceaser calls “something different about America”). These two are radically different, even if they sound the same.
The first kind of American exceptionalism (AE1) identifies the church with the state, which also, thereby, fuses the sacred with the profane. The state then becomes the Kingdom of God on earth. To oppose it is to oppose God, and to support it is the duty for those within it. The scholar who got the ball rolling on this was Sacvan Bercovich, who popularized Perry Miller’s concept of the “jeremiad.” Mind you, Bercovich hated the jeremiad, but he was right in the broader point that the state can use religion to anoint is own authority. Of course, others made the same point better, such as Voegelin, but Bercovich is the scholar of choice, mostly because he more closely reflects the broad opinions of academics.
Academics like Bercovich not because he condemns state overreach but because Bercovich believes religion constrained the state from (over)reaching into areas of social justice. James Morone made the same argument in his Hellfire Nation tome–that moral panics of Victorian lumpenproletariat Christians used up all the fuel that should have built the socialist fires. But (as Morone also points out) “social justice” Christians used AE1 to describe the American state as the place where, in the words of Richard T. Ely, “Teutonic Protestant” churches establish state-sponsored welfare programs. Even before the Social Gospelers and their modern view of the state, Protestants used the state of a divine instrument; during first “marriage” crisis of the mid 19th Century, Protestants rushed to pass monogamy laws to force out Mormons–and thus prevent the conversion of Protestant faithful.
The second kind of American exceptionalism (AE2) draws a clear line between the state and church. The role of the state is to provide the freest possible context for worship, and America was different from other Western states because it had no single, dominant denomination that could lay claim to a national role. Sure, at the Founding, Virginia had its Episcopalians and Massachusetts its Congregationalists, but these regional advantages actually spurred free exercise. If no one denomination could dominate the rest, then they could at least dominate their home states–which became next to impossible with Americans rapidly expanding westward faster than Episcopalian and Presbyterian preachers could graduate from seminaries (hence why the unschooled Methodist and Baptists got to them first).
These details subsidize the more natural-law rationale that Ceaser outlines in his article. When Jefferson and Madison, among others, advocated religious liberty using natural rights, clergy in the majority could see how easily they would depend on minority rights if their fortunes ever changed. Indeed, Isaac Backus (writing 3 years before the Revolution) made exactly this point: the Puritans fled persecution only to persecute the Baptists; better that no one be persecuted. Save your energy for those Mormons, Jews, and Catholics.
And there’s the rub. AE1 was a resource that united disparate Protestant sects. Roman Catholics used AE2 to facilitate respectability by insisting on their own commitment to the nation, as are the Mormons right now. AE1 was an instrument of power for religious majorities to protect places of status. What’s amazing to many people is that even the late Rev. Jerry Falwell was no fan of AE1. He was firmly in the AE2 camp; he was a Baptist after all. Here’s a quotation from his Old Time Gospel Hour:
You see, Jesus didn’t die for America alone. For God so loved the world, every nation in this world, every nationality, every person, that He gave His only begotten Son. Jesus died for the Russians and the Chinese and the Europeans and the Asians and on and on. He died for everybody. He died for every African. And he loved them enough to shed His own blood. Then we have an obligation to tell them. And it’s only in the environment of freedom that we can do that. Christians hold the key to the destiny of this nation.
I stumbled across quotations like these all the time when I was doing research on Jerry Falwell, and when Ceaser was putting together the article we’re discussing, I had to laugh. I told him that he was Falwell’s biggest fan and didn’t even know it. (Yes, yes, Falwell was a big opponent of the removal of Protestant worship from public schools; so he had AE1 inclinations–but his response to the removal of prayer from public schools was actually quite a Catholic one: build your own schools).
But the larger point is this: the difference in types of American exceptionalisms are not between liberal and communtarian varieties, as Deneen believes them to be. He’s simply creating categories based on existing divisions (liberal v. communitarian) and retrofitting American history into them–categories in search of cases, if you will. The historical record is much more replete with examples of those who wish to use the state to protect existing religious groups, AE1, and those who wish to protect themselves from this very same state power by insisting on their natural right to conscience, AE2.
It’s hard for many to tell the difference, and I believe the reason is that religious groups are tempted to AE1 when in a position to benefit and resort to AE2 when not. Churches will take government money for social programs, but they’ll object to state inference in those programs. The ensuing conflicts are a great reason for churches to stop taking the money and government to stop offering it.
Anyway, Ceaser’s article was great. And don’t forget about Hilde Restad’s contribution concerning American exceptionalism in international relations. She’s a friend, so I had plug her work!
May 15th, 2012 | 3:32 pm
Thanks, James. How would you stand on the issue of Locke’s being parasitical on the Christian idea of the person? Enjoy that pizza, you’ve earned it at this point.
May 15th, 2012 | 3:41 pm
And Germaine: It’s exactly right that Ceaser’s article is about the exploration of a question that shouldn’t have any obvious or certain answer. Deneen’s is about a negation that’s radically incoherent. The fact that there’s no Christian polis, strictly speaking, might provide some support for a Christian and so chastened support for the modern idea of liberty embodied in the American political form that stops short of being a regime. (See Tocqueville, Orestes Brownson–the latter a source probably worth Jim’s time.) I notice considerable overlap between Brownson’s “catholic” and Falwell’s evangelical and Baptist understanding of the truth embodied in America.
Because we are embodied, social, conscious or knowing-with beings, we are hardwired to depend upon both nations and churches (see Manent).
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