God's Own Party

Relevant to our earlier discussion about the Tea Party and social conservatives, I just came across a new book: Daniel Williams, God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (OUP, 2010). The book has already been initially reviewed here and here. Williams also published an Op-Ed at politico.com on the connection of the Tea Party to social conservatism. A taste:

Christine O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware’s Republican Senate primary was the latest confirmation that a conservative GOP candidate can win by combining a religiously inspired social conservatism with an anti-government, libertarian message.

O’Donnell, a conservative Roman Catholic and former abstinence counselor, advocates the use of federal power to restrict abortion and pornography. But she calls for limiting the role of government in many other areas — including gun control and federal social spending.

Why is this blend of moral regulation and curbs on social welfare now a winner for Republicans? Why are social conservatives who urge government regulation in matters of sex so strongly opposed to similar intervention in the economy?

God's Own Party

Relevant to our earlier discussion about the Tea Party and social conservatives, I just came across a new book: Daniel Williams, God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (OUP, 2010). The book has already been initially reviewed here and here. Williams also published an Op-Ed at politico.com on the connection of the Tea Party to social conservatism. A taste:

Christine O’Donnell’s victory in Delaware’s Republican Senate primary was the latest confirmation that a conservative GOP candidate can win by combining a religiously inspired social conservatism with an anti-government, libertarian message.

O’Donnell, a conservative Roman Catholic and former abstinence counselor, advocates the use of federal power to restrict abortion and pornography. But she calls for limiting the role of government in many other areas — including gun control and federal social spending.

Why is this blend of moral regulation and curbs on social welfare now a winner for Republicans? Why are social conservatives who urge government regulation in matters of sex so strongly opposed to similar intervention in the economy?

The Myth of American Religious Freedom: Christian Social Contract Theory?

David Sehat

Social contract theory, a central idea in liberal political theory, holds that at some antecedent time human beings came together to create a social contract regulating their political rights and obligations in a human community. American political theorists like to point to the state constitutions after the Revolution and especially the 1787 U.S. Constitution as example of social contract theory in practice.

But the case is not so simple. This notion of a social contract ascribes a degree of human responsibility for political life that sits uncomfortably with the claims of the religious. Christians of many stripes have long claimed that God created human societies and established the rules under which they live. As a result, many contemporary evangelicals, mirroring their forebears, reject the notion of social contract theory as overly atheistic. They similarly reject that the constitutions can be social contracts in the way that liberal theory claims.

The history of the early state constitutions shows the tensions between these positions in the American past. Many constitutional framers did self-consciously regard their constitutions as a social contract for their respective state polities. When statesmen began formulating these constitutions after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they embarked on a constitutional project of democratic self-determination in which norms and governmental powers arose out of the will of the people. As a result, the inclusion of a specific invocation to God in these contracts was relatively rare and usually limited to those states that had institutional religious establishments (states, in other words, that paid churches through the public treasury). These constitutions also routinely discriminated against non-Christians (or more narrowly, non-Protestants). But with evangelical expansion in the early years of the nineteenth century and the subsequent Christianization of a much larger swath of American society during the Second Great Awakening, state constitutions began invoking God with greater frequency, often dropping the social contract language altogether and looking instead to God’s provision of the blessings of freedom as the foundation for American liberty. This aligned Christianity (or at least theism) with American government and served as an expression of the evangelical belief that God’s provision of freedom to the United States also entailed limits on that freedom that comported with his moral will.

New Jersey was typical of this change. In its 1776 Constitution, it explained that because constitutional authority “was, by compact, derived from the people, and held of them, for the common interest of the whole society,” the colony of New Jersey had “agreed upon a set of charter rights and the form of a constitution, in manner following.” There was no mention of God, though the constitution did level civil disabilities for non-Protestants. By 1844, when New Jersey drafted a new constitution after the Second Great Awakening, the language of social compact and political self-determination was almost gone, along with the civil disabilities for religious belief. In its place was a thanksgiving “to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations.”

Other states had similar formulations. Rhode Island’s 1842 Constitution, for example, mirrored New Jersey’s statement with a statement of thanksgiving “to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which he hath so long permitted us to enjoy.” The invocation altered the social contract theory of the constitution, which claimed: “We, the people of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations . . . do ordain and establish this constitution of government.” As much as the people ordained and were responsible for the constitution, liberty, which the constitution sought to protect, was a gift of God and somehow dependent upon God, not the result of human contract. The Texas Constitution of 1845 modified the formulation slightly. That constitution began with an acknowledgment of “the grace and beneficence of God in permitting us to make a choice in our form of government.” God had given the people the freedom to choose. The constitutional conveners utilized their God-given freedom to create a government that, by implication, honored his will. Iowa’s Constitution of 1846 put the matter somewhat differently. It began with a statement of gratefulness “to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed” and confessed “our dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings.” The people hoped for his continued blessing in ordaining their Constitution. New York’s 1846 Constitution put the language of freedom and blessing together: “We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this constitution,” it claimed.

The small differences in each formulation suggested that the language was not merely formulaic, as each convention sought to find the appropriate expression of God’s provision of the blessings of freedom that constitutional conveners sought to perpetuate. Social compact and political self-determination relied upon God’s prior provision of freedom and somehow presumed God’s active providence.

Although the language of these constitutions demonstrates the tensions within American political theory over the exact relationship between human law and divine law, this connection of religion, politics, and law had negative consequences for those who did not fall under the religious canopy. Because God had provided the initial freedom that the constitutional framers enshrined in their constitutions, unbelievers had no claim to use that freedom in the advancement of unbelief. Unbelief would advance licentiousness and anarchy and would ultimately be dangerous to what many state constitutions labeled “the peace and safety of the state.” In order to restrain the power of unbelievers to use religious freedom in the promotion of licentiousness, state laws relied upon blasphemy laws, indecency laws, and the promotion of religion in the schools as a check on the ability of unbelievers to subvert governance. “[T]he blessings of liberty,” in the words of the 1848 Illinois Constitution, implied certain prerogatives to Christians whose God first provided that liberty.

This is the second in an ongoing series of essays that uses material from my forthcoming book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom. The book can be found here and here.

The Myth of American Religious Freedom: Christian Social Contract Theory?

David Sehat

Social contract theory, a central idea in liberal political theory, holds that at some antecedent time human beings came together to create a social contract regulating their political rights and obligations in a human community. American political theorists like to point to the state constitutions after the Revolution and especially the 1787 U.S. Constitution as example of social contract theory in practice.

But the case is not so simple. This notion of a social contract ascribes a degree of human responsibility for political life that sits uncomfortably with the claims of the religious. Christians of many stripes have long claimed that God created human societies and established the rules under which they live. As a result, many contemporary evangelicals, mirroring their forebears, reject the notion of social contract theory as overly atheistic. They similarly reject that the constitutions can be social contracts in the way that liberal theory claims.

The history of the early state constitutions shows the tensions between these positions in the American past. Many constitutional framers did self-consciously regard their constitutions as a social contract for their respective state polities. When statesmen began formulating these constitutions after the Declaration of Independence in 1776, they embarked on a constitutional project of democratic self-determination in which norms and governmental powers arose out of the will of the people. As a result, the inclusion of a specific invocation to God in these contracts was relatively rare and usually limited to those states that had institutional religious establishments (states, in other words, that paid churches through the public treasury). These constitutions also routinely discriminated against non-Christians (or more narrowly, non-Protestants). But with evangelical expansion in the early years of the nineteenth century and the subsequent Christianization of a much larger swath of American society during the Second Great Awakening, state constitutions began invoking God with greater frequency, often dropping the social contract language altogether and looking instead to God’s provision of the blessings of freedom as the foundation for American liberty. This aligned Christianity (or at least theism) with American government and served as an expression of the evangelical belief that God’s provision of freedom to the United States also entailed limits on that freedom that comported with his moral will.

New Jersey was typical of this change. In its 1776 Constitution, it explained that because constitutional authority “was, by compact, derived from the people, and held of them, for the common interest of the whole society,” the colony of New Jersey had “agreed upon a set of charter rights and the form of a constitution, in manner following.” There was no mention of God, though the constitution did level civil disabilities for non-Protestants. By 1844, when New Jersey drafted a new constitution after the Second Great Awakening, the language of social compact and political self-determination was almost gone, along with the civil disabilities for religious belief. In its place was a thanksgiving “to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations.”

Other states had similar formulations. Rhode Island’s 1842 Constitution, for example, mirrored New Jersey’s statement with a statement of thanksgiving “to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which he hath so long permitted us to enjoy.” The invocation altered the social contract theory of the constitution, which claimed: “We, the people of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations . . . do ordain and establish this constitution of government.” As much as the people ordained and were responsible for the constitution, liberty, which the constitution sought to protect, was a gift of God and somehow dependent upon God, not the result of human contract. The Texas Constitution of 1845 modified the formulation slightly. That constitution began with an acknowledgment of “the grace and beneficence of God in permitting us to make a choice in our form of government.” God had given the people the freedom to choose. The constitutional conveners utilized their God-given freedom to create a government that, by implication, honored his will. Iowa’s Constitution of 1846 put the matter somewhat differently. It began with a statement of gratefulness “to the Supreme Being for the blessings hitherto enjoyed” and confessed “our dependence on Him for a continuation of those blessings.” The people hoped for his continued blessing in ordaining their Constitution. New York’s 1846 Constitution put the language of freedom and blessing together: “We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this constitution,” it claimed.

The small differences in each formulation suggested that the language was not merely formulaic, as each convention sought to find the appropriate expression of God’s provision of the blessings of freedom that constitutional conveners sought to perpetuate. Social compact and political self-determination relied upon God’s prior provision of freedom and somehow presumed God’s active providence.

Although the language of these constitutions demonstrates the tensions within American political theory over the exact relationship between human law and divine law, this connection of religion, politics, and law had negative consequences for those who did not fall under the religious canopy. Because God had provided the initial freedom that the constitutional framers enshrined in their constitutions, unbelievers had no claim to use that freedom in the advancement of unbelief. Unbelief would advance licentiousness and anarchy and would ultimately be dangerous to what many state constitutions labeled “the peace and safety of the state.” In order to restrain the power of unbelievers to use religious freedom in the promotion of licentiousness, state laws relied upon blasphemy laws, indecency laws, and the promotion of religion in the schools as a check on the ability of unbelievers to subvert governance. “[T]he blessings of liberty,” in the words of the 1848 Illinois Constitution, implied certain prerogatives to Christians whose God first provided that liberty.

This is the second in an ongoing series of essays that uses material from my forthcoming book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom. The book can be found here and here.

New Book: Late Modernism: Art, Culture, and Politics in Cold War America

Dear Readers:

I would like to bring your attention to what looks like an extremely important book: Robert Genter's Late Modernism: Art, Culture, and Politics in Cold War America. This is another in the excellent The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America from Penn Press, edited by Casey Nelson Blake. Here at UISH book reviews, we've already reviewed two books from this series. Tim Lacy reviewed Richard Cándida Smith's The Modern Moves West: California Artists and Democratic Culture in the Twentieth Century. Tim also interviewed Professor Cándida Smith here. And I reviewed the Casey Nelson Blake edited The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State.

Here are a few enticing blurbs in support of Genter's new book:

"Late Modernism is a boldly original and undoubtedly controversial study of how modernism was transformed, assimilated, and sometimes institutionalized after 1945, before being challenged in the 1960s and 1970s. Exhaustively researched and lucidly argued, the book sheds light on a large, idiosyncratic cast of artists and thinkers, from David Riesman and C. Wright Mills to Jasper Johns and Kenneth Burke. It provides us with a fresh, illuminating synthesis as it tracks the eddies and crosscurrents of postwar American culture."
—Morris Dickstein, author of Gates of Eden and Dancing in the Dark

"Late Modernism makes a profound contribution to the understanding of the history of modernism in American arts and letters in the mid-twentieth century. I do not know of anything currently available in intellectual and cultural history that offers such a striking reformulation of the course of modernist ideas and practices in the decades after World War II."—Howard Brick, author of Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s

New Book: Late Modernism: Art, Culture, and Politics in Cold War America

Dear Readers:

I would like to bring your attention to what looks like an extremely important book: Robert Genter's Late Modernism: Art, Culture, and Politics in Cold War America. This is another in the excellent The Arts and Intellectual Life in Modern America from Penn Press, edited by Casey Nelson Blake. Here at UISH book reviews, we've already reviewed two books from this series. Tim Lacy reviewed Richard Cándida Smith's The Modern Moves West: California Artists and Democratic Culture in the Twentieth Century. Tim also interviewed Professor Cándida Smith here. And I reviewed the Casey Nelson Blake edited The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State.

Here are a few enticing blurbs in support of Genter's new book:

"Late Modernism is a boldly original and undoubtedly controversial study of how modernism was transformed, assimilated, and sometimes institutionalized after 1945, before being challenged in the 1960s and 1970s. Exhaustively researched and lucidly argued, the book sheds light on a large, idiosyncratic cast of artists and thinkers, from David Riesman and C. Wright Mills to Jasper Johns and Kenneth Burke. It provides us with a fresh, illuminating synthesis as it tracks the eddies and crosscurrents of postwar American culture."
—Morris Dickstein, author of Gates of Eden and Dancing in the Dark

"Late Modernism makes a profound contribution to the understanding of the history of modernism in American arts and letters in the mid-twentieth century. I do not know of anything currently available in intellectual and cultural history that offers such a striking reformulation of the course of modernist ideas and practices in the decades after World War II."—Howard Brick, author of Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s

New Book: Massa Offers A Catholic Intellectual History Of The 1960s

Continuing somewhat this week's discussion of the intellectual history of religion in the United States, I present to you a new work by Boston College Professor of Church History---and Dean of the School of Theology and Ministry---Mark Massa titled The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever.

I learned of Massa's new work from John Fea, who also presented a relevant discussion with Massa conducted by Daniel Burke. It's not the most comprehensive or penetrating of interviews, but I offer a few excerpts nonetheless:

-----------------------------
- "Massa's [book]...describes how celebrating the Mass in English, butting heads with the pope on birth control, and priests protesting the Vietnam War opened new possibilities -- and controversies -- in the church."
- "Q: Why did the "Catholic Revolution," as you call it, begin in 1964? A: The new Mass (which was introduced in America that year) made real, or concrete, the changes that Vatican II made in ways that theology, or other declarations from the council could not."
- [Massa] "A great majority of Catholics (once) thought of the church as outside of time altogether. ...Vatican II attacked this notion of the church as providing a timeless set of answers to life's questions about meaning."
- [Massa] "Catholics, like all believers, want security. The world seems, and can be, a very scary place; and they want...certainty, security, and peace of mind. But faith is a stance in history; it doesn't preserve us from messiness."
- "Q: How much was the "Catholic Revolution" affected by the cultural tumult of the'60s? A: There was always an international dimension that made the Catholic '60s different from the general culture, because of this long devotion to Rome and the primacy of the pope. My sense is that most of the important stuff wasn't a reaction to events and ideas outside the church but to things happening inside the church itself."
-----------------------------

As a practicing Catholic and intellectual historian, my personal sense is that this book will find an audience---either via discussions about reviews or through actual readings. Why? Conservative Catholic intellectuals fancy themselves keepers of the true/real/authentic/orthodox history of the Church (and hence police new histories). Liberal Catholic intellectuals either still celebrate the era of concern, or at least wonder what the fuss today is about (and hence may read the book for curiosity's sake). My prediction, however, is that if this book gets wider attention, it'll be because of disgruntlement by the former rather than celebration by the latter.

Unless another faithful USIH reader or contributor wants to review Massa's new offering, I think I'll commit myself to the task (although multiple reviews of a book never hurt---even if published by the same entity). - TL

New Book: Massa Offers A Catholic Intellectual History Of The 1960s

Continuing somewhat this week's discussion of the intellectual history of religion in the United States, I present to you a new work by Boston College Professor of Church History---and Dean of the School of Theology and Ministry---Mark Massa titled The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever.

I learned of Massa's new work from John Fea, who also presented a relevant discussion with Massa conducted by Daniel Burke. It's not the most comprehensive or penetrating of interviews, but I offer a few excerpts nonetheless:

-----------------------------
- "Massa's [book]...describes how celebrating the Mass in English, butting heads with the pope on birth control, and priests protesting the Vietnam War opened new possibilities -- and controversies -- in the church."
- "Q: Why did the "Catholic Revolution," as you call it, begin in 1964? A: The new Mass (which was introduced in America that year) made real, or concrete, the changes that Vatican II made in ways that theology, or other declarations from the council could not."
- [Massa] "A great majority of Catholics (once) thought of the church as outside of time altogether. ...Vatican II attacked this notion of the church as providing a timeless set of answers to life's questions about meaning."
- [Massa] "Catholics, like all believers, want security. The world seems, and can be, a very scary place; and they want...certainty, security, and peace of mind. But faith is a stance in history; it doesn't preserve us from messiness."
- "Q: How much was the "Catholic Revolution" affected by the cultural tumult of the'60s? A: There was always an international dimension that made the Catholic '60s different from the general culture, because of this long devotion to Rome and the primacy of the pope. My sense is that most of the important stuff wasn't a reaction to events and ideas outside the church but to things happening inside the church itself."
-----------------------------

As a practicing Catholic and intellectual historian, my personal sense is that this book will find an audience---either via discussions about reviews or through actual readings. Why? Conservative Catholic intellectuals fancy themselves keepers of the true/real/authentic/orthodox history of the Church (and hence police new histories). Liberal Catholic intellectuals either still celebrate the era of concern, or at least wonder what the fuss today is about (and hence may read the book for curiosity's sake). My prediction, however, is that if this book gets wider attention, it'll be because of disgruntlement by the former rather than celebration by the latter.

Unless another faithful USIH reader or contributor wants to review Massa's new offering, I think I'll commit myself to the task (although multiple reviews of a book never hurt---even if published by the same entity). - TL

The Myth of American Religious Freedom: Religion, Morality, and Law

David Sehat

Social conservatives have been in the news in recent days, calling upon the Republican Party not to forget social issues as they put together their new election platform for November. The reemergence of social conservatism strikes a discordant note in the widespread media claim that the 2008 election signaled the end of the Religious Right. After that election, pundits and journalists rolled out numerous stories with the assertion that George W. Bush, a man brought into power through the activities of social conservatives, had so discredited the connection of faith and politics that social conservatism was, for all intensive purposes, at a political end.

Yet the continued presence of the Religious Right in the news suggests that the predicted demise of the Christian Right as a political force was premature. I, for one, am not surprised that they have not gone away, and don’t believe that they will do so any time soon. The Religious Right taps into an old tension within the United States political community over the degree to which the laws of the U.S. government and the various states rely upon a religious foundation.

Consider the example of George Washington, a deist, if there ever was one, who cannot be made into an orthodox Christian or a particularly fervent believer. Washington was a moderate civic republican who first supported paying Christian teachers through the state in 1785 in Virginia before turning away from the plan. He continued, though, to believe that the public presence of religious institutions and believers formed the basis of national moral norms. As he explained in his farewell address, “Religion and morality are indispensable supports” to a system of “popular government.” Popular government rested upon public opinion, which needed to be enlightened if it was to be an effective guide to rule. Religion, in other words, provided the mechanism for inculcating moral norms in the populace, shaping public opinion to uphold a just rule. He was particularly skeptical of the idea that morality could exist without religion, noting, “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Fortunately, Washington explained, the citizens of the United States shared “Religion, Manners, Habits and political Principles,” which allowed religious institutions to be present in public life without threat of tension or conflict.

Religious partisans in the present often invoke Washington as a justification for their own activities in the present. But Washington downplayed the real diversity of religious sentiment that existed even at the time and that has grown exponentially in the years sense. The problem that religious partisans ignore is that, given the diversity of American religious sentiment, how can we claim that religion provides some kind of foundation for national life?

I’m afraid that the answer of conservative Christians would too often be the same as that of the nineteenth-century Christian activist, Josiah Strong. Strong was the pastor of the Vine Street Congregational Church of Cincinnati and the secretary of the evangelical political organization, the Evangelical Alliance, which was founded first in 1846 in England and then replicated a year later in the United States. Strong elaborated on Washington’s belief that religion supports democracy, but admitted that he did not think that religion in general supported democracy. Protestant Christianity alone supported proper moral character necessary for a democracy, but other forms of religion did not. “Democracy," he explained, "is the best form for those who have sufficient intelligence and moral character to be capable of self-government,” because “[w]ithout such qualifications . . . liberty lapses into license and ends in anarchy.” To keep society from breaking apart, the individual needed to possess internalized moral sensibilities that were sanctioned by the community. Without those sensibilities individual liberty would threaten the whole with its creep toward anarchic licentiousness.

To Strong, the moral sensibilities necessary for political self-preservation were essentially Christian. If a person did not possess them, that person could not be trusted to self-government. Strong particularly worried about Catholics and Mormons, who he thought possessed a degraded religious sensibility that could not sustain a proper moral orientation necessary for the perpetuation of American democracy. In our contemporary political environment, it appears that Muslims and secularists have taken the place of Catholics and Mormons in the conservative religious imagination, and the long genealogy of these claims suggests that they will not be going away any time soon.


This the is the first in an ongoing series of essays that uses material from my forthcoming book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom. The book can be found here and here.

The Myth of American Religious Freedom: Religion, Morality, and Law

David Sehat

Social conservatives have been in the news in recent days, calling upon the Republican Party not to forget social issues as they put together their new election platform for November. The reemergence of social conservatism strikes a discordant note in the widespread media claim that the 2008 election signaled the end of the Religious Right. After that election, pundits and journalists rolled out numerous stories with the assertion that George W. Bush, a man brought into power through the activities of social conservatives, had so discredited the connection of faith and politics that social conservatism was, for all intensive purposes, at a political end.

Yet the continued presence of the Religious Right in the news suggests that the predicted demise of the Christian Right as a political force was premature. I, for one, am not surprised that they have not gone away, and don’t believe that they will do so any time soon. The Religious Right taps into an old tension within the United States political community over the degree to which the laws of the U.S. government and the various states rely upon a religious foundation.

Consider the example of George Washington, a deist, if there ever was one, who cannot be made into an orthodox Christian or a particularly fervent believer. Washington was a moderate civic republican who first supported paying Christian teachers through the state in 1785 in Virginia before turning away from the plan. He continued, though, to believe that the public presence of religious institutions and believers formed the basis of national moral norms. As he explained in his farewell address, “Religion and morality are indispensable supports” to a system of “popular government.” Popular government rested upon public opinion, which needed to be enlightened if it was to be an effective guide to rule. Religion, in other words, provided the mechanism for inculcating moral norms in the populace, shaping public opinion to uphold a just rule. He was particularly skeptical of the idea that morality could exist without religion, noting, “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Fortunately, Washington explained, the citizens of the United States shared “Religion, Manners, Habits and political Principles,” which allowed religious institutions to be present in public life without threat of tension or conflict.

Religious partisans in the present often invoke Washington as a justification for their own activities in the present. But Washington downplayed the real diversity of religious sentiment that existed even at the time and that has grown exponentially in the years sense. The problem that religious partisans ignore is that, given the diversity of American religious sentiment, how can we claim that religion provides some kind of foundation for national life?

I’m afraid that the answer of conservative Christians would too often be the same as that of the nineteenth-century Christian activist, Josiah Strong. Strong was the pastor of the Vine Street Congregational Church of Cincinnati and the secretary of the evangelical political organization, the Evangelical Alliance, which was founded first in 1846 in England and then replicated a year later in the United States. Strong elaborated on Washington’s belief that religion supports democracy, but admitted that he did not think that religion in general supported democracy. Protestant Christianity alone supported proper moral character necessary for a democracy, but other forms of religion did not. “Democracy," he explained, "is the best form for those who have sufficient intelligence and moral character to be capable of self-government,” because “[w]ithout such qualifications . . . liberty lapses into license and ends in anarchy.” To keep society from breaking apart, the individual needed to possess internalized moral sensibilities that were sanctioned by the community. Without those sensibilities individual liberty would threaten the whole with its creep toward anarchic licentiousness.

To Strong, the moral sensibilities necessary for political self-preservation were essentially Christian. If a person did not possess them, that person could not be trusted to self-government. Strong particularly worried about Catholics and Mormons, who he thought possessed a degraded religious sensibility that could not sustain a proper moral orientation necessary for the perpetuation of American democracy. In our contemporary political environment, it appears that Muslims and secularists have taken the place of Catholics and Mormons in the conservative religious imagination, and the long genealogy of these claims suggests that they will not be going away any time soon.


This the is the first in an ongoing series of essays that uses material from my forthcoming book, The Myth of American Religious Freedom. The book can be found here and here.

USIH3 Registration

In order to register for the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference, please mail a check for $60.00 by October 15 to the following address:

Ana Bozicevic
Program Manager
The Center for the Humanities
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5103
New York, NY 10016

Please make your checks out to The Graduate Center Foundation.

Along with the check, please include a separate sheet with your name, affiliation, and contact information. In addition to covering the costs of conference space, this fee will cover coffee and snack services during all day sessions, and wine and cheese services prior to both evening plenary sessions.

USIH3 Registration

In order to register for the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference, please mail a check for $60.00 by October 15 to the following address:

Ana Bozicevic
Program Manager
The Center for the Humanities
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5103
New York, NY 10016

Please make your checks out to The Graduate Center Foundation.

Along with the check, please include a separate sheet with your name, affiliation, and contact information. In addition to covering the costs of conference space, this fee will cover coffee and snack services during all day sessions, and wine and cheese services prior to both evening plenary sessions.

Conference Announcement: American Ideas In Context (Nottingham, UK, 9/13-14/2010)

[From Nick Witham - TL]

A full programme is now available for American Ideas in Context, a postgraduate and early career conference on U.S. intellectual history to be held at the School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, UK on 13-14 September 2010.

The event will be an opportunity for scholars from a variety of disciplines to meet and discuss the latest work in the field of U.S. intellectual history (broadly defined). It will feature plenary lectures from Michael O’Brien (Cambridge University) and Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen (University of Wisconsin-Madison), along with roundtables on early career publishing and “Ideas and Ideology in American History”.

Registration is FREE, and includes lunch and a wine reception. To register, please email american.ideas@gmail.com with your institutional affiliation and any dietary requirements. To find out more information about the conference, especially accommodation in Nottingham, please visit the conference blog:

http://americanideasincontext.wordpress.com/

We look forward to seeing you in September!

Nick Witham (on behalf of the conference committee)

Conference Announcement: American Ideas In Context (Nottingham, UK, 9/13-14/2010)

[From Nick Witham - TL]

A full programme is now available for American Ideas in Context, a postgraduate and early career conference on U.S. intellectual history to be held at the School of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, UK on 13-14 September 2010.

The event will be an opportunity for scholars from a variety of disciplines to meet and discuss the latest work in the field of U.S. intellectual history (broadly defined). It will feature plenary lectures from Michael O’Brien (Cambridge University) and Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen (University of Wisconsin-Madison), along with roundtables on early career publishing and “Ideas and Ideology in American History”.

Registration is FREE, and includes lunch and a wine reception. To register, please email american.ideas@gmail.com with your institutional affiliation and any dietary requirements. To find out more information about the conference, especially accommodation in Nottingham, please visit the conference blog:

http://americanideasincontext.wordpress.com/

We look forward to seeing you in September!

Nick Witham (on behalf of the conference committee)