I am genuinely enjoying Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction. As I have mentioned before, Rodney Clapp is an astute social critic, and many of his insights are really valuable. But there are times, and this chapter is one of them, when the underlying incoherence of his political theology catches up with him, tackles him, and lays down a beat on his head.
This chapter is on guilt and innocence, and Clapp makes an important point about American “exceptionalism,” a point I have tried to make a number of times before. The founders really were exceptional in a lot of ways, and gave us an exceptional form of government. It was exceptional because they knew that Americans could not be trusted with power, not any more than anybody else in history could be, and consequently gave us a government of checks and balances. They did it like this, in Madison’s words, because they knew that men are not angels. The men who were not angels included a bunch of Americans with that lean, hungry look. We needed to be restrained, and our founders gave us a form of government designed, in the first, second, and last place, to restrain Americans tempted by the corruptions of power. They did this because they already saw the lust in our eyes.
But gardens always have serpents in them, and our serpent started up the myth of American innocence, an “exceptionalism” that is grounded in the bloom of youth on our idealistic cheeks, as we gazed out upon a world that needed saving. And it is this kind of crap that we hear non-stop in almost all our political speeches these days. And as soon as we accepted this version of exceptionalism, we became just like every other growing hegemonic collection of rationalizers, just as soon as the whiskey of empire got to the brain cells.
Clapp, to his credit, sees this. “No other nation revels so blatantly in such self-deceptive innocence” (p. 84). “On the other hand, the checks and balances arrangement of American democracy — guarding against concentrated and unaccountable power in any wing or agency of government — is one of its most profoundly Christian institutions” (p. 86). But this is also where the incoherence sets in. He has said earlier in the book that profoundly Christian institutions are to be avoided (e.g. p. xi).
Checks and balances presuppose a biblical doctrine of original sin — a doctrine that Clapp discusses in this chapter. But why should our government presuppose any Christian doctrine? Wouldn’t that also presuppose that the doctrine in question was right? And wouldn’t that threaten our pluralistic set-up? Why should we build institutions based on the doctrine of original sin any more than we would build institution based on the historicity of Christ’s resurrection from the dead?
Clapp spends a bit of time in this chapter discussing America’s guilt, particularly addressing our treatment of blacks as slaves, and our treatment of the native Indians. And he speaks quite fiercely at times, displaying a strong disapproval of what we did back in the day.
But in order for us to have guilt in these or in any other matters, we had to have been violating a standard that actually applied to us, a standard found in the Bible. But Clapp has denied that the standards found in the Bible can or should be adopted by us. They are not authoritative in any way. If they want, Christians can bring their perspective on such things into the public square, and Clapp wants them to, but he also insists that Christians refuse to speak with an authoritative, “Thus saith the Lord.” But here is the problem. When “thus saith the Lord” disappears, so does the guilt.
If the law of God does not apply to America, and to our treatment of blacks and Indians, then what could possibly be wrong with us cooking up our own standards? Such standards might be a little self-serving, but what’s wrong with that? Who cares? Suppose a nineteenth century Christian (with Clapp’s commitment to pluralism) is accompanying a group of mounted cavalrymen who are mounting an attack on a Cherokee village. These Indians have had twenty-three treaties with us, all of them broken straight in a row by us, and the cavalry is about to destroy the village in an unprovoked attack. The Christian wants to protest — “this is not right.” “Right?” somebody wants to know. “What do you mean by right?” In whose name are you speaking?
If the Christian answers that he is speaking in the name of the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, then there goes our pluralism, shot all to hell — which incidentally is where it belongs. But if he speaks with the maximum authority allowed by Clapp, which is the authority we have, in our own name (for we are registered voters), to speak our religious convictions into the democratic maelstrom, the reply to this pencil-neck Christianity will be something along the lines of “Scram, padre. The fighting is about to start and your kind always get underfoot.” Manifest Destiny trumps any pants-wetting scruples we sissy Christians might have. But Manifest Destiny does not trump the Great Commission. Manifest Destiny repents in the presence of the Lord Christ — but only there. Under the system created and maintained by men like Clapp, there is no real reason to repent of anything. And Clapp is nervous about this, because honestly, there are a number of circumstances where repentance seems to be called for. Oh, well.
There is no escape from this dilemma. There is no guilt without theocratic obligations. There are no theocratic obligations without a denial of contemporary pluralistic platitudes. If Jesus Christ is the lawful king of America, and He is, then the concept of corporate guilt before Him is a coherent one. But if He is not the king of America, then not only do the secularists have every right to ignore us on the abortion and homo issues, but they also have every right to slaughter all the Indians and lie about it, to enslave blacks from Africa and lie about it, to pave the planet making sure to kill all the wildlife, and any other thing that soft or hard leftists might find offensive. They have the right to put all homosexuals in stocks in the public square in order to be pelted with vegetables, except for those homosexuals who might find that enjoyable.
In order to condemn America for anything, there has to be a standard that authoritatively applies to America. You cannot deny the existence of such a standard and then mysteriously summon up indignation later on from, presto!, your hat.