To understand a nation, look at its origins.
An American sociologist once said to me “If you want to establish a new nation based on either recusant Protestants or London criminals – pick the second.” Broad brush admittedly, but he had a point. Religion has been one determining factor. And to understand the present, it is wise to examine the origins.
Here are six determinative factors which set the USA on its way and extend their impact to the present day.
- A mercantile colonial foundation
- with ruthless indigenous suppression,
- economically dependent on slavery,
- bolstered by the Calvinism of the Pilgrim Fathers,
- born in by revolution and
- expanded by frequent wars.
The British colonies were often set up with private capital underwriting joint stock companies. It was mercantilism’s day. The Dutch, the French, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese were all in it. Get raw materials from the colonies, value add at home then sell at home and abroad. Getting rich was the objective.
The Virginia Company was chartered in 1606 to establish communities in North America. The early settlement was hard and competitive. The Dutch and French were in the race. Despite difficulties, Virginia advanced to being a colony in 1624. They belonged to England; they dispossessed the indigenous American Indians. They claimed they were entitled to do this. The new culture was immigrant, European and mainly English. Over time they developed the belief that it was their Manifest Destiny to rule from sea to shining sea. American exceptionalism was born.
Slavery was central to mercantile success. After a short experiment with indentured labour, slavery became the main source of labour. Racism was fundamental to seeing black Africans as property. With Emancipation in 1863, racism only intensified. this resulting in an apartheid system of legislation in the formerly slave states – the Jim Crow laws. Racism is endemic.
The Church of England was part of the new political structure of early American colonialism. This changed in 1620 when the Pilgrim Fathers arrived at Plymouth Massachusetts. They were separatists from the Church of England and Calvinistic Protestants. As other migrants arrived so, too, did other post-Reformation religions. Separation of church and state emerged as the solution. Meanwhile, Calvinistic belief in an interventionist God, the Protestant ethic of hard work and frugality, and predestination entered the mainstream culture. Over time, it overwhelmed the weaker religious adherence of earlier settlers.
Since then, religion has been a key cultural factor of America. If adherence waned, along would come a Great Awakening which revived religious enthusiasm. Sin and redemption, presided over by an angry God, were the central message. The revivalist preacher became a regular feature of American life. The Bible was the icon and its interpretation literal and Fundamentalist. A 2017 Gallup Poll shows 40% of USA citizens as creationists.
Revolution brewed in the mid-1700s. Mercantilism and expanding colonialism were making England rich. But there was a price to be paid. The East India Company incurred massive debt. A famine in Bengal triggered a debt and credit crisis which the English government had to bail out – another case of ‘too big to fail’. Colonial taxes were increased and resented by the locals. This became so acute in America that the 13 colonies got together and declared independence in1764.
George III’s government, confronted by rebellion, sent in the troops. This triggered the Revolutionary War which lasted seven years and happened when cash-strapped England struggled to afford it. Against the odds, the revolutionaries won, the 13 colonies federated and became the United States of America. The new nation’s constitution was approved in 1787.
That constitution was hammered into shape by a fortuitous coming together of well-educated men enthused by the Enlightenment and experienced in politics or governing. Its basic assumption was that authority came from the people, not from above. It was not the first flowering of democracy (each of the states already had democratic institutions) but it was the first to be built from the bottom up, systematically structuring a federal government which incorporated democracy, the three arms of government and checks to keep those arms in balance. Its crowning glory was the federation of 13 states to form one nation.
Emboldened by this success the nation looked to expand. First came the French Indian war resulting in cementing the new nation over other rivals – the French and then the Spaniards. This extended the nation to the west. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 added massive territory further to the west. The Mexican War ended in 1848 and fulfilled the “Manifest Destiny” of sea to shining sea. America had become big and strong – but not without a fight. War accompanied the creation of the United States and was the engine of expansion on the North American continent.
But there have been countless overseas wars starting with Jefferson sending a US fleet to fight the Barbara Pirates in 1801. As the hymn of the US Marines goes: From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli – we will fight out country’s battles on the land and on the sea. Sixty years later internal divisions led to the five year long Civil War. And it is not fully over yet as the flag-waving at the recent invasion of the Capitol demonstrated. South America, Europe, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East have been theatres for the US military.
Since its inception the USA has only had 17 years without war.
Today the USA is on the wane. Divisions that have been growing for some time resulted in the election of Donald Trump. His four years as President drew on those divisions and aggravated them to reach a culmination in an angry mob invading the seat of government. Playing on the resentment of those left behind, he enriched the plutocrats. The originating mercantilism was still there for all to see.
The dispossession of the indigenous Indians was one of the first issues taken up by the first President – George Washington and is still not satisfactorily solved.
The racism which accompanied African slavery has been an engine of division and discrimination. It mutated after emancipation, becoming worse under Jim Crow apartheid. It became ritualised by the Ku Klux Klan and was still there for all to see in the deadly liturgy of the Charleston rally.
Freedom of religion was a founding necessity. But it, too, has been politicised and become a vehicle of division. Concern for the poor, disadvantaged and politically powerless has been discarded and replaced with a Prosperity Gospel that rationalises the policy of poor social welfare. Self-justification takes the form of taking the high moral ground on totemic issues like abortion and “family values” which justify discrimination against homosexuality and gender dysphoria.
Whether my American sociologist friend, quoted at the beginning, is right is a matter for discussion. But his underlying assumption is correct. An emerging nation can never escape its origins.
Eric Hodgens is a retired Catholic Priest with a life-long interest in the US.
Eric Hodgens is a Catholic Priest living in retirement. He writes for P&I, International Lo Croix and The Swag.
Comments
18 responses to “Understanding today’s USA”
Recusant Protestants (Puritans) versus London criminals – a fair summary of the basic difference between the settler societies of America and Australia. The former will kill the natives (and anyone else) while clutching a Bible, spouting idealism and good intentions; the latter will do it on command or for fun or whatever, no deep thought required; they are scum and they know it. Common to both are greed, fear and a marked absence of scruple about murder. No wonder they are the best of mates, on that level anyway. The war in Vietnam was the closest they have come to a joint effort: look how that turned out.
And then again, Bernard, the US was also set up from the mid-17th century in ways not dissimilar to Sydney-Town/NSW from the end of the 18th- to mid-19th century (give or take). The “American” colonies were sent convicts (the term used was different – indentured servants?) who were sent to serve seven or more years’ terms and “hired out”/used as indentured workers. My own great x 3 grand-parents were sentenced to seven and 14-year terms to the American colonies – it just so happened that an ending to the US War of Independence was being signed at the time of their sentencing and so a few years later they became part of an invading/colonising fleet to these Australian shores – arriving on a date which will surely be abandoned as the so-called National Day which rubs in the faces of those of us who consider honesty and justice and reconciliation are worthy pursuits for our national soul that unholy fact.
A fine summation of the US, Eric. I’d also like to put in a top word for Peter Carey’s “Parrot and Olivier in America” another way to read the US – a fictional weaving of the Report of Alexis de Tocqueville – from his trips there in the 1830s: The two-volume publication (appearing in 1835 and 1840) “Democracy in America.”
Or, of course – read the original report!!!
I was born at the Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, Iowa, and grew up in the prosperous Mid-West where small farmers tilled their fertile fields. My Dad, a West Australian, loved his vegetable garden and waxed lyrical about Iowa’s 80 feet of black, volcanic topsoil. With my mother I attended the Episcopal Church, an unpretentious white-painted timber building on a street corner in town. The sociological/historical academic view is interesting but the more important factors governing what we see today are economic. Michael Hudson writes about the destruction wrought by financialised capitalism as against industrial capitalism. We should take heed. Similar trends are evident here.
Yes, very worthwhile to read what Michael Hudson has to say.
Here’s the book (400 pages): https://libcom.org/files/Michael%20Hudson%20-%20Super%20Imperialism%20-%20New%20Edition_%20The%20Origin%20and%20Fundamentals%20of%20U.S.%20World%20Dominance%20(2003).compressed.pdf
I am a great admirer of Eric Hodgens, a courageous and perceptive commentator. But, as a Protestant myself, I can’t really go along with the basic thesis that the Protestant origins of the US are a problem. No question that it is a fundamental fact in US origins, but in my view generally for the good. Can’t excuse slavery, but Catholics and Protestants alike were into that, though we owe the term “human rights” to a Catholic opponent of Catholic exploitation of the Americas in the 16th century. But it took Catholics much longer to accept hugely important principles such as freedom of conscience – not that the Puritan founders of the early colonies were great exponents either. What America did avoid is what Eric has long acknowledged is a huge problem within his own church, that of clericalism and its attendant evils.
Barney, I can’t pretend to know much about the religious aspects, but this a pretty damning summation of what America is about, isn’t it? Out of 200+ years, only 17 without wars, dispossession of indigenous still not resolved from 1776, from slavery to the deadly liturgy of the Charleston rally, Prosperity Gospel that rationalises the policy of poor social welfare, discrimination against homosexuality and gender dysphoria… . You said ‘Can’t excuse slavery…’. I say this is a real indictment of the real America, not the Hollywood junk.
If America is already seriously bad for Americans, the rest of the world should welcome its demise as the world hegemon.
Organised religion really is just another form of tribalism (make up any pet story, plebs will believe anything) used as a non-violent method to distribute resources within believers and extract resources from those outside the tribe.
It’s dangerous as it displaces rationalism, a flawed assumption of neo-liberalism which will prove fatal to the West.
Barney is in the well, it is hard for him to climb out of the well and see it from outside in. He is essentially arguing “not my tribe”.
Therefore… is this the most dangerous person in Australia?
https://www.google.com/search?q=scott+morrison+praying+at+pentecostal+church&sxsrf=ALeKk02G0WF-puiXrrcxDTT7VEHcbXSV_Q:1613458037886&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjrl9TJ5-3uAhWbyzgGHY6tDX8Q_AUoAXoECAgQAw&biw=2560&bih=1249
lol touché!
Sorry for the delay in replying – for some reason I seem to have stopped getting Disqus emails alerting me.
Another possibility Meeple is that you just have a tin ear for the spiritual. You are certainly swift to condemn (“plebs will believe anything”). When did you join the aristocracy? Or are you, in fact, a pleb who will believe anything? I rather prefer Chesterton who observed that when you give up belief in God it’s not that you believe nothing, it’s that you believe anything.
I entered “the well” as an adult after years as a reasonably convinced atheist. People like Dawkins (and perhaps you) define faith as belief contrary to reason or evidence. I have written often against this shallow understanding. But it’s probably a little complex to discuss here.
I have no problems if you believe in talking snakes and virgin births in the 21th century. Does that mean all the other religion/tribes are just illegitimate? All these fantasy fiction can’t be all factual in one’s mind at the same time surely?
As I said, my tribe vs your tribe. But now lets put a story around it. Same sh!t different label.
AS with Meeple below, sorry for the delay in replying. I seem not to be getting Disqus emails updating me.
The prosperity gospel is one of the greatest abominations to have perverted Christianity in the past century. There has always been a strand within Christianity that thinks people are rich/poor because they deserve it, but people who argue that cannot have read the New Testament. The prosperity gospel treats God as a vending machine – donations in, richness or other benefits out. Suffering, not riches, is the human condition for most people for most of history. Christianity has spoken profoundly to them.
Slavery is a more complicated issue than generally recognised. It has been part of the world throughout recorded history, and the first (that I know of) to speak against it were Christians in the fourth century, after they became part of the power structure. Christians have certainly been complicit in selling, buying and owning slaves but they were also the agents behind banning it as lawful. They did so because they recognised that slaves too were created in the image of God and of eternal spiritual value – ie a theological response. So too for those Christians in Australia – and there were many – who worked to save Aborigines from the genocide unfolding before them. Roy Williams has written brilliantly on this.
The US is unique in its determined rejection of “socialism” which is to us just good social policy, eg universal health care. Conservative church leaders advocating for Trump have caused me great distress, even rage – church leaders may advocate for policies, eg poverty is bad, but they may not be political partisans. I can’t believe Jesus would embrace either Democrats or Republicans.
You raise so many points that I cannot reply to them all, but I think you would agree that in many aspects the truth (as with China) is always more nuanced.
Another fundamental factor in the formation of America is the form of education they adopted. John Dewey the architect of the current American education system, following Jean-Jacques Russeau believed that all children needed was experiences to learn and self confidence but not too much thinking for themselves.
Rousas Rushdoony in his book The Messianic Character of American Education says, “Dewey believed you learned through your senses and you learned by doing. Thus, the past has no value. He couldn’t see a need for the study of history, Latin, Greek, or even English. By fostering the idea that all education should rest on experience, he minimized the significance of book learning.”
So it is not surprising that critical thinking or understanding the story of civilization are not prominent features of the American mind.
Fundamentalism, anti intellectualism,unfounded arguments, inflated self confidence and hyper individualism find their ways back to Dewey.
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Very interesting comment, thank you. But I’m not sure Rushdoony and the Reconstructionists have had much of an influence on anything in the US. I don’t know enough about Dewey to comment on that.
Great comment.