Beyond Arrogance: Leaving the Puritanical Legacy Behind

“America is the light of the world,” President George W. Bush proclaimed in a 2001 speech. I was reminded of Bush’s words recently when a well-meaning friend insisted on reading the so-called “prophecies” of Kim Clement, a regular on the Christian fundamentalist channel, Trinity Broadcasting Network, to me. I politely sat and listened until she came to the part where he said, “America, America, you are the salt of the earth. America, America, you are the light of the world.” My mouth dropped open, and I must have had a look of undisguised disgust on my face, for I felt disgusted. I reminded her that Jesus said he was the light of the world. I went on to explain Clement had misappropriated a verse in the Bible, and substituted the word “I” for America. Unfortunately, she was nonplussed by my remarks.

Clement is not the first one to think of America as having what I term a ‘divine magnate from God.’ The idea stems from the teachings and theology of a group of English colonists referred to as the Puritans.

The Puritans city on a hill

The first group of Puritans to settle in America came from England via the Netherlands. The Virginia Company brought them to Cape Cod on the Mayflower. They decided to organize themselves into a political body under the English crown, but with local autonomy. The second group of Puritans came directly from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts. In contrast to the first group, they had not separated from the Church of England, but wanted it to be reformed, and seeing no hope for that in England, set sail for America. Both groups had a desire to found communities based upon their religious beliefs. In essence they wanted a theocracy.

The right to vote in Puritan colonies was limited to those who were members of the Puritan Church, which excluded half of the men, and all of the women. (It must be said that no country then allowed women to vote.) The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay made the Congregational Church the official church, and banned members of other denominations from holding worship services. The Congregational Church was supported by taxes.

The Puritans believed that their colony must be a “city on the hill,” a reference to a Bible verse, and for that to occur laws must be based on the Bible. The idea came from a 1630 sermon by John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts colony, in which he told the colonists, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Puritan culture influenced the other non-Puritan colonies, thus influencing American culture. The “city on a hill” morphed into “manifest destiny” in the early 19th century.

Manifest Destiny

On a December day in 1823 the fifth president of the United States declared in his annual congressional address, ”the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” In other words, if Spain tried to assert power in her former colonies the U.S. would intervene.

At first a declaration of foreign policy, President James Monroe’s position later became known as the ‘Monroe Doctrine’ in the 1840s. The Monroe Doctrine seems very benevolent as the U.S. wanted to ensure that the former Spanish colonies remained independent, but internal and external events in America (the annexation of Texas, the acquisition of California, and the Spanish-American War), caused the Monroe Doctrine to be used as justification for American expansionism.

In 1845 many Americans supported the annexation of Texas, then a part of Mexico. Journalist and diplomat John Louis O’Sullivan wrote an editorial in support of annexing Texas for the July/August 1845 edition of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. O’Sullivan proclaimed that America, “the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High,” thus coining the phrase ‘manifest destiny.’ Historian Walter McDougall refers to manifest destiny as a “corollary of the Monroe Doctrine because expansion was necessary for the doctrine to be enforced.

President James Polk used the concept of manifest destiny to support America’s territorial expansion. In Polk’s 1845 State of the Union address he declared that the annexation of Texas occurred because of “the choice of the people themselves to share the blessings of our union.” Polk went on to include the western lands of the U.S. where “Indian title may have been extinguished at the time of settlement,” recommending that the policy of continuing to grant “preemptions in its most liberal extent to all those who have settled or may hereafter settle on the public lands.” In other words, immigrants of European descent would be allowed to settle on land owned by Native American tribes.

Modern Day Puritans

Puritanical theology never truly disappears from American Christianity. It lingers like a slithering rattle snake, waiting to bite. Gary Bauer of the American Values group has an essay on his website titled, “Culture and Religion” in which secularization is considered the root of all that is evil in America: “We realize that one of the main underlying causes of all of these problems is the secularization of our country.”

Bauer fails to mention that our founding fathers, the creators of the constitution, created a secular government as a response to the abuses of the Puritans and their descendants. Perhaps one of the most telling remarks on Bauer’s website is this one: “We can once again be ‘the shining city upon a hill’ that our founders envisioned.”

The former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips pointed out in his book American Theocracy that “the belief that America has been elected by God for a special destiny in the world” has taken on the stature of “motivational myth.” As Americans we continue to cling to the myth that our country is the greatest in the world. It is little wonder the rest of the world thinks we are arrogant.

Beyond Arrogance

In 1967 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed, “And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.” King went on to tell his listeners, “God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, ‘You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God.’”

Whether this country will finally listen to the warnings of Rev. King or continue to believe in the motivational myth remains to be seen. Let everyone with ears to hear heed the warning.