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DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES: LIBERAL PROTESTANTISM AND THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN PLURALISM
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AmyKittelstrom, The Religion of Democracy: Seven Liberals and the American Moral Tradition (New York: Penguin Press, 2015)
TrygveThrontveit, William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)
DavidMislin, Saving Faith: Making Religious Pluralism an American Value at the Dawn of the Secular Age (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2017
Extract
In a recent collection of essays assessing the thought of William James in transatlantic perspective, Berkeley historian emeritus David Hollinger opened his contribution by recounting two memorable exchanges:
The sermon at William James's funeral on 30 August 1910 was preached by the Reverend George A. Gordon, a name recognized today only by religious history specialists, but in 1910 a pulpiteer so prominent that he was sometimes described as “the Matterhorn of the Protestant Alps” . . . Gordon, a close friend of James, was the minister of Boston's Old South Congregational Church. When the great philosopher died on 26 August, his widow immediately selected Gordon to perform the service. Mrs. James made clear to Gordon why she wanted him. You are “a man of faith,” which “is what [William] was.” About this she was firm, apprising Gordon that she wanted at this funeral service “no hesitation or diluted utterance” in speaking about faith.
Mrs. James had good reason to say these things. Her late husband had been candid about his feelings of spiritual solidarity with Gordon. “You and I seem to be working . . . towards the same end (the Kingdom of Heaven, namely),” James had written to his clergyman friend not long before, although [he claimed Gordon did] this “more openly and immediately” than [he did].
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References
1 Hollinger, David A., “William James, Ecumenical Protestantism, and the Dynamics of Secularization,” in Halliwell, Martin and Rasmussen, Joel D. S., eds., William James and the Transatlantic Conversation: Pragmatism, Pluralism, and Philosophy of Religion (Oxford), 31–47, at 31Google Scholar.
2 Hollinger, David, “After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Protestantism and the Modern American Encounter with Diversity,” in Hollinger, , After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Liberalism in American History (Princeton, 2013), 18–55, at 21Google Scholar.
3 Quoted in Witte, John Jr and Nichols, Joel A., Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment, 4th edn (Oxford, 2016), 37Google Scholar.
4 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, ed. Bradley, Phillips (London, 1994) vol. 2, chap. 5, 20–28, at 20Google Scholar.
5 James, William, “Reflex Action and Theism,” in Burkhardt, Frederick, Bowers, Fredson, and Skrupskelis, Ignas K., eds., The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (Cambridge, MA, 1979), 91–114, at 97Google Scholar.
6 Lincoln, Abraham, “The Gettysburg Address,” in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7, ed. Basler, Roy P. (New Brunswick, 1953), 17–23, at 23Google Scholar.
7 Dewey, John, The Public and Its Problems (New York, 1927), 143Google Scholar.
8 Ibid., 143.
9 Dewey, John, “The Ethics of Democracy,” in Menand, Louis, ed., Pragmatism: A Reader (New York, 1997), 182–204, at 204Google Scholar.
10 In this connection, see also Hollinger's After Cloven Tongues of Fire (48–9): “Our narrative of modern American history will be deficient so long as we suppose that ecumenical Protestantism declined because it had less to offer the United States than did its evangelical rival. Much of what ecumenical Protestantism offered now lies beyond the churches, and hence we have been slow to see it.”
11 Arnold, Matthew, Literature and Dogma: An Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible (London, 1873), 13, 89, Arnold's emphasisGoogle Scholar.
12 Ibid., 112.
13 The conversation was conducted in Des Moines, Iowa, on 14 September 2015. “President Obama and Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa,” New York Review of Books, Part I 62/17 (5 Nov. 2015), 4–8, and Part II 62/18 (19 Nov. 2015), 6–8. See also David A. Hollinger, “The Accommodation of Protestant Christianity with the Enlightenment: An Old Drama Still Being Enacted,” in Hollinger, After Cloven Tongues of Fire, 1–17.