Americanism and Puritanism
Joe Carter at the evangelical outpost is hosting the first EO Symposium on David Gelernter's fascinating essay Americanism -- and Its Enemies in Commentary magazine. This is my meagre contribution.
Gelernter's thesis is intriguing. The best way to understand both Americanism and anti-Americanism, he argues, is to see Americanism as the culmination of Puritanism. Briefly:
Puritanism did not drop out of history. It transformed itself into Americanism. This new religion [of Americanism] 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.?
Americanism, seen this way, is not merely influenced by Puritanism. Instead, its core ideals ("creed") are the same as those of Puritanism. These core ideals are freedom, equality, and democracy. Understanding both this creed and the sense of being a chosen people helps one to understand both the development of the American national consciousness and the constant agitation against it.
As a general rule, I am always happy to see a portrayal of the Puritans that goes beyond the standard stereotyping and mocking of sexually-repressed, judgmental killjoys. If nothing else, Americanism is helpful as it seeks to understand the Puritans in a fuller sense than the usual.
More than that, the comparison of Americanism's and Puritanism's core ideals is genuinely insightful. Gelernter's case for continuity between the two movements is strong and thought-provoking.
Still, I am not persuaded. Gelernter's portrayal of Puritanism, while careful and well-researched and demonstrating much of the similarity between it and Americanism, misses a key point: at the heart of Puritanism lay not only a broad political worldview, but also an intense desire for and focus on personal piety. Inasmuch as Americanism does not also have this element, it is not the same as Puritanism.
The Puritans, I tend to think, cannot be properly understood apart from their views on their own spiritual walks. At its best this focus led to what is arguably some of the greatest work on the doctrines and practice of Christian living (John Owen's The Mortification Of Sin and Walter Marshall's The gospel mystery of sanctification come to mind). At its worst this focus led to legalism and some of the excesses that developed into the overwrought caricatures of today. Regardless, even a cursory browsing of the Puritans' works will show how important this was to the way they saw themselves and the world around them.
It would be extremely difficult to argue that Americanism has carried over this zeal for piety from Puritanism. For every example one might conceive of the morality of Americans (e.g., generosity, the so-called moral vote in the last election, etc.), I can easily think of at least one counter-example (rampant divorce, abortion-on-demand, porn, and so on). We may be the culture that exports democracy, but we also export Baywatch. And from my own experience, I have seen little like the Puritan's fervency for holiness even in the American Evangelical Christianity.
I suppose one could argue that the focus on Christian living was an ancillary element of Puritanism, that the personal flowed from the political and therefore Americanism is still fundamentally the inheritor of Puritanism, only modifying the non-essentials. I have neither enough time or knowledge of the Puritans to deal with this potential objection as I would like. But it seems that the personal way in which the Puritan writers spoke of sanctification would mitigate against this objection. In my readings of the Puritans, the impression I get of their views on piety is that they are not logical deductions of a grander political narrative, but views worked out in their own lives (albeit shaped and guided by their theology). Piety, in their view, does not come across as the specific necessary component of political stability, a set of rules whose sole task is to preserve the status quo. Rather, piety is viewed, it seems, as a vital and crucial element of pleasing and obeying God, which then shapes and forms one's national and political consciousness. Man's chief end, after all, "is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever"*, not to make the world safe for democracy.
January 11, 2005 07:54 PM