I enjoyed getting to meet Darryl Hart at the Auburn Avenue conference last year, and also enjoyed our discussion on the Federal Vision over at De Regno Christi. He’s a good guy, and has many valuable things to offer the church, particularly in the realm of historical analysis. But in our discussion at DRC, the …
Beams, Motes, and American Eyes
How can Christians learn to stand against the emerging empire without becoming either cranks on the right, or closing ranks with the envious on the left — those who would have no problem with such immense power being wielded, just so long as it was not being wielded by America? In virtually all political discourse, …
A New Perspective on Ron Paul
From my comments on this blog thus far, it should have been gathered that I have more than a little sympathy for Ron Paul. I far prefer him to the standard-issue Republican candidate, who would not recognize the Constitution if a copy were to be set on fire on his front lawn. And so I …
Garlanding the Bull
Chapter 7 of Gelernter’s book is on “The Emergence of Modern Americanism,” basically covering the period of the Second World War and the Cold War that followed. As in all his chapters, he is full of interesting and useful information, but he applies it in wildly skewed ways. If Americanism is a religion (and he …
No Unique Logres
I want to begin this next section of my review of Gelernter’s Americanism with a healthy reminder from C.S. Lewis. This comes from That Hideous Strength. “So that, meanwhile, is England,” said Mother Dimble. “Just this swaying to and fro between Logres and Britain?” “Yes,” said her husband. “Don’t you feel it? The very quality …
Monsters or Sinners?
Chapter Five is where David Gelernter and I part company most drastically, for reasons easily anticipated. In this chapter, Gelernter tackles the subject of Abraham Lincoln, “America’s last and greatest founding father.” As usual, Gelernter is uncannily accurate in his description, and flies wide of the mark in his evaluation. Lincoln was the great founder …
A Busy-Pants Foreign Policy
In his fourth chapter, Gelernter addresses the rise and development of the American religion in the course of our war for independence. “The American Creed [liberty, equality, democracy] combined with American Zionism [residue of postmillennialism] yielded a full-blown American belief system. These beliefs would be refined further; they would eventually supersede Puritanism and become the …
American Zionism and the Creed
David Gelernter really celebrates the Puritans “To understand America and Americanism, you must understand those Puritans. They are a difficult proposition, an intellectual handful. They were religious fanatics. But their intolerance gave birth to toleration; their quest for religious freedom yielded freedom in general; and their devotion to the Bible and the biblical idea of …
Blame America First?
Blame America First? One of the charges frequently leveled against leftists of various stripes is that they have a natural and instinctive desire to “blame America first” in any discussion of an incident or conflict anywhere in the world. I think it was Jeanne Kirkpatrick who first used the “blame America first crowd” as a …
America Sins at Dan and Bethel
Gelernter’s second chapter is quite valuable — in it he shows how American history is marinated in the Bible, and particularly in the cadences of the King James Bible. Back in the first chapter, he had noted what he means by the phrase “biblical republic.” “That’s what I mean by ‘biblical republic’: not a theocracy; …