Hooker cited the biblical passage, ?“Take ye wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you?” (Deuteronomy 1:13). This he interpreted to mean ?“that the choice of public magistrate belongs unto the people, by God?’s own allowance. . . . The foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.?”
Hooker?’s interpretation was hardly novel or eccentric. Many preachers knew and believed the same thing. In 1780, roughly a century and a half after Hooker?’s epoch-making sermon, with the Revolutionary War under way, Pastor Simeon Howard of Boston was pondering the new nation?’s government. He too decided?—on the basis of this same passage, and of the classical Jewish historian Josephus?—that America should be a democratic republic.
Howard?’s advice was as radical as it was straightforward, as avant-garde as it was Puritan, Bible-centered, and godly. ?“In compliance with the advice of Jethro,?” he preached,
Moses chose able men, and made them rulers [over the Israelites in the desert]; but it is generally supposed that they were chosen by the people [emphasis added]. This is asserted by Josephus, and plainly intimated by Moses in his recapitulary discourse, recorded in the first chapter of Deuteronomy.
Historians have pointed out that the clergy wielded far more influence over the colonial public than a Tom Paine or John Locke did. In 1776, three-quarters of American citizens were Puritan. Puritans have long been classified as strait-laced, dour, and joyless, far from passionate revolutionaries or radical democrats. Like nearly all stereotypes, these are partly true?—but they are a long way from the whole truth.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that not even a third of American journalists have ?“a great deal of confidence?” that the American electorate makes correct choices at the polls. The Puritans thought otherwise, and so did Abraham Lincoln. The historian William Wolf cites Lincoln?’s belief ?“that God?’s will is ultimately to be known through the people.?” Lincoln said: ?“I must trust in that Supreme Being who has never forsaken this favored land, through the instrumentality of this great and intelligent people.?” What chance is there that American journalists or professors or school-teachers would describe Americans today as ?“this great and intelligent people?”?
VI
We can go further. To sum up Americanism?’s creed as freedom, equality, and democracy for all is to state only half the case. The other half deals with a promised land, a chosen people, and a universal, divinely ordained mission. This part of Americanism is the American version of biblical Zionism: in short, American Zionism.
The relation between Americanism and American Zionism is something like the relation between Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholicism. Anglo-Catholicism is Anglicanism, but the name was invented to underline the closeness between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism. The term ?“American Zionism?” similarly underlines the closeness between Americanism and the biblical idea of a divinely chosen people and promised land.
By Sam Adams of Braintree
Hooker?’s interpretation was hardly novel or eccentric. Many preachers knew and believed the same thing. In 1780, roughly a century and a half after Hooker?’s epoch-making sermon, with the Revolutionary War under way, Pastor Simeon Howard of Boston was pondering the new nation?’s government. He too decided?—on the basis of this same passage, and of the classical Jewish historian Josephus?—that America should be a democratic republic.
Howard?’s advice was as radical as it was straightforward, as avant-garde as it was Puritan, Bible-centered, and godly. ?“In compliance with the advice of Jethro,?” he preached,
Moses chose able men, and made them rulers [over the Israelites in the desert]; but it is generally supposed that they were chosen by the people [emphasis added]. This is asserted by Josephus, and plainly intimated by Moses in his recapitulary discourse, recorded in the first chapter of Deuteronomy.
Historians have pointed out that the clergy wielded far more influence over the colonial public than a Tom Paine or John Locke did. In 1776, three-quarters of American citizens were Puritan. Puritans have long been classified as strait-laced, dour, and joyless, far from passionate revolutionaries or radical democrats. Like nearly all stereotypes, these are partly true?—but they are a long way from the whole truth.
A recent Pew Research Center survey found that not even a third of American journalists have ?“a great deal of confidence?” that the American electorate makes correct choices at the polls. The Puritans thought otherwise, and so did Abraham Lincoln. The historian William Wolf cites Lincoln?’s belief ?“that God?’s will is ultimately to be known through the people.?” Lincoln said: ?“I must trust in that Supreme Being who has never forsaken this favored land, through the instrumentality of this great and intelligent people.?” What chance is there that American journalists or professors or school-teachers would describe Americans today as ?“this great and intelligent people?”?
VI
We can go further. To sum up Americanism?’s creed as freedom, equality, and democracy for all is to state only half the case. The other half deals with a promised land, a chosen people, and a universal, divinely ordained mission. This part of Americanism is the American version of biblical Zionism: in short, American Zionism.
The relation between Americanism and American Zionism is something like the relation between Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholicism. Anglo-Catholicism is Anglicanism, but the name was invented to underline the closeness between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism. The term ?“American Zionism?” similarly underlines the closeness between Americanism and the biblical idea of a divinely chosen people and promised land.
By Sam Adams of Braintree
