Protestantism, political liberty and the American cause
Both Darryl Hart’s A Secular Faith and Nancy Pearcy’s Total Truth – clearly books coming from different world views – emphasized the unique connection between American Protestantism and our republican form of government. This addresses an aspect of the assertion made by conservatives that America is a Christian nation.
Hart writes:
Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville… marveled at the ability of Americans to create a republican and democratic form of government without the anguish that had afflicted his own nation. Christianity, he thought, was among the notable reasons for the United States’ safe arrival as a liberal polity, a conclusion that endears Tocqueville to many American conservatives and may explain the longevity of his book’s appeal. He observed, for instance, that “For Americans the ideas of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of the one without the other.”
… Among historians, Ruth H. Bloch offers a variation on a conventional theme when she addresses the degree to which Puritanism influenced the particular brand of republicanism that informed American independence from England and subsequent constitutional developments. She points out that Calvinistic notions of salvation informed “key” Revolutionary ideas about virtue and liberty. The Protestant doctrine of providence also imbued the American founding with a sense of higher purpose or millennial significance. In addition, the Founding Fathers drew upon older conceptions of a godly community to develop the basic ingredients of American nationalism. Bloch concludes that the historical roots of the American Revolution’s ideology lay in seventeenth-century Puritanism.
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