Morphemics

Be Free or Else

Over on Intellectual Defenestration, Nathan Maphet points out an article by David Gelernter, the thesis of which is, "Puritanism did not drop out of history. It transformed itself into Americanism." Even though I'm not prepared, just yet, to jump on board with Gelernter's idea, I don't agree with Nathan's stated reason for rejecting it. He writes, "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." He goes on to give a possible argument to his objection- "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." There may be another alternative.

Personal piety was a core belief of the Puritans and, most likely, would not have been the case if they had not been Puritans; however, it does not follow from this that it was a core aspect of Puritanism per se. Gelernter states that Puritanism is "not a separate type of Christianity but a certain approach to Protestantism." As such, it was found in a wide range of Protestant churches. It starts out among Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians only to broaden out into Quakers and Unitarians. I submit that the Puritan concern for personal piety was not a secondary issue derived from some aspect of Puritanism, nor was it a primary issue for them but having little to do with their Puritanism. They were Purtian to the core; this approach informed everything about them. Rather, it was a primary issue necessarily brought about by the union of Puritanism with orthodox Protestantism. When the religious orthodoxy went, this piety either vanished altogether or turned into legalism.

As far as the connection itself between Puritanism and Americanism, it isn't just a matter of the core ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy. The French have these ideals, yet no one is accusing them of Americanistic tendencies. Americanism is not so much that Americans want these ideals for themselves but that everyone, everywehere is entitled to what these ideals represent- and it's our duty to make sure that they get them. Gelernter lists these ideal as conclusions of two premises: "first, every member of the American community has his own individual dignity, insofar as he deals individually with God; second, the community has a divine mission to all mankind." These, in turn, derive from the fundamental fact that the Bible is God's Word. The fundamental fact along with the premises explain how Americansim reached its conclusions. Today, I'm not so sure that holding to the missionary zeal for the conclusions need imply that one also hold to the premises, much less to the fundamental fact. There is a tendency in the history of a belief system to retain hold on particular tenets even while abandoning the reason for reaching them. We find the same sort of thing in much of American Christianitry- evangelize the central gospel truths while failing to emphasize or, perhaps, even to mention, why they are so important. When one generation is unable to defend the faith, the next will be unable, or unwilling to hold it.

I suppose I'm gettimg off track here, but not quite. The same sort of phenomenon acounts for the liberalizing tendency within Protestantism into which Puritnanism fell before vanishing or, if you agree with Gelernter's thesis, before it transmited itself into Americanism. Like I said, I'm not sure if I buy his thesis; however, this is more due to wanting to know what other factors may be involved than it is to a fundamental diagreement with the elements of his argument as presented. For the sake of argument, then, I'm going to assume that he is correct. If so, what accounts for the big differences that one finds betwen Puritanism and Americanism? Differences that go quite a bit beyond the existence of personal piety. I've already mentioned one reason: the evolution of a belief system caused by divorcing present core beliefs from an historically based apology for those beliefs. A product of the sin nature in general or maybe just plain laziness. But the transformation of Puritanism, from orthodox to liberal Protestantism and then to a nationalistic religion, was relatively rapid. I'm inclined to think that something other than natural development was driving it.

Two possibilities present themselves for consideration. The first is the influence within Puritanism of a faulty view of the millennium, or of the nature of the Kingdom of God. Gelernter speaks of the second main element of Purtitanism as a political doctrine, the goal of which was to "to reach back to the pure Christianity of the New Testament—and then even farther back. Puritans spoke of themselves as God’s new chosen people, living in God’s new promised land—in short, as God’s new Israel." There is nothing wrong with the view- in fact, it is correct that Israel, that is, the visible Kingdom of God, finds its fulfillment in the church: if this is as far as it goes. And, at least among one prominent faction of ealry Puritans, this was confessed to be the case. The WCF XXV.I identifies the visible church, which is not confined to one nation, as "the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ." Still, it is hard to maintain such a distinction when the document in question was born in the context of the English Civil Wars, wars in which the crown and Parliament took decidedly different religious stances and fought from these religious motivations. The temptation to make the kingdom a fusion of church and state was too great. This would be magnified with American Puritanism, in which everyone who migrated over at that time was a Puritan and, for a while, all who were members of the church were, by definition, also members of the state (state here being defined as the most immediate political unit to which they belonged). This view of the kingdom combind with the first element of Puritanism, which was "the Calvinist belief in predestination with associated religious doctrines" to form a kind of manifest destiny that would survive in the political realm long after religious orthodoxy, including the Calvinism, had been abandoned.

So much then for why the religious and political realms were combined. The second possible explanation for the rapid transmutation of Puritanism goes to the virtual irrelevance of supernatural religion in Americanism. Why was religious orthodoxy abandoned? To be sure, many of this ideology still invoke the deity in support of their cause. Nevertheless, there is no need to. The combination of the core ideals with religion is not nearly as prominent as it was at the inception of Puritanism. Where religion is brought in as justification for Americanism, it is personalized. I do not doubt that President Bush has the sincere religious conviction that all men are entitled by their creator with the right to freedom, equality, and democracy. However, he's not going to quibble with someone else's religious motivations, be they Christian, Hindu, Atheist, or even Islamic- just so long as these ideals of Americanism are supported. I can't see the Puritans being able to maintain this distinction between religious motivation and personal conviction. The second possible explanation is, namely, the influence upon the society at large of Enlightenment thinking.

I notice many things getting blamed, injustly in my opinion, on the Enlightenment. Along with modernism, it is cited as the evil fountainhead of all things logical and of belief in objective truth. But this is too shallow a dismissal. Modernism and the Enlightenment may have incorporated these elements, but it did not give birth to them. That part of the WCF I.VI, which states, "The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture," is not a product of Enlightenment or foundationalist corruption, but is a safeguard of orthodoxy. The fault of the Enlightenment lay, not in reason, but in rationalism, in the attempt to dethrone God and replace him with the goddess Reason. Assign God to his corner and see how many things can be explained without him. The freedom to worship God as he has commanded turns into the more broadly defined subjugation of the king. And while, to an extent, this may be a good thing, insofar as it is derived from the creation of all human beings in the imago dei, soon, there arises a shift in thinking. No longer man in the image of God, but man endowed by his creator (defined deistically) with certain inalienable rights. But then, doesn't it just stand to reason that people inherently deserve freedom and equality? Why bother God at all?

If Gelernter's thesis is right, Calvinistic post-millennielsim was transmogriphied into imperialistic democratization. Yet, wherever it came from, I cannot subscribe to what he has called "Americanism." This is not an argument against the current war in Iraq. Nor is it, necessarily an argument against democratizing the Middle East- if this is truly in the best interest of our own national security. No, what I object to is the idea that God wants everyone to be free, equal, and democratic. Democracy is not a bad thing; however (and this may be overly simplistic), I don't recall in those cases where God does get directly involved in the affairs of state, such as ancient Israel, that there was a duly elected President David. My point is not to argue the merits of a monarchy, but to say that the diginity due to all individuals from their creation in God's image does not need to manifest itself in their being free, equal, and registered voters. Nor, unless it be for our own national security reasons or for a foreign power's blatant abuse of its citizens, should we take lightly the overthrow of another government just so we can share our democratic good fortune. Most of all, I do not support Americanism because it thrives by making religious motivation, even if publically stated, a matter of private conviction. The gospel, the imperative to make disciples of all nations, is subordinated to making all nations politically free.