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America's “Mythique” as Redeemer Nation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

William A. Clebsch
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The Good Gallic adjective “mystique” has been transmogrified into a not uncommon American noun. Why? Because we needed a name for those sets of transcendental or mystical beliefs and attitudes that attach to certain elusive ideas, persons, institutions, objects, events, and so on that fascinate us. We need just as badly a name for those complexes of legendary or mythical stories and meanings that express certain, equally elusive and fascinating things, ideas, experiences, and expressions. We need a name for the sense of American destiny and identity—a sense that first seized the Puritans and that their successors have changed and recombined into the stuff of a patriotic tradition. This paper will explore two systems within that mythical complex, stories about American destiny and about American identity, tales that tell us where we are going and who we are who are going wherever we are going.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 4 , October 1979 , pp. 79 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

NOTES

1. In forming this eclectic definition and for pregnant ideas about myth and mythique, I am dependent first on Voegelin, Eric, The Ecumenic Age, vol. 4 of Order and History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1974)Google Scholar, and also on Frei, Hans W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Geertz, Clifford E., The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar. With reference to American myths of identity, I am indebted to Bercovitch, Sacvan, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1975)Google Scholar; and with reference to American myths of destiny, to Tuveson, Ernest Lee, Redeemer Nation, The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and to Cherry, Conrad. God's New Israel, Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971)Google Scholar. This paper prospered from discussions of it at Pomona College, Syracuse University, Yale University, and Stanford University. Critics whose gratings on various points left the author most grateful include Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Sacvan Bercovitch, Will T. Jones, Patricia O'Connell Killen, Amanda Porterfield, and David Stannard.

2. Campbell, Donald T., “On the Conflicts Between Biological and Social Evolution and Between Psychology and Moral Tradition,” American Psychologist. 30 (12 1975), 1103–26; see especially p. 1116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Voegelin, Eric, “Response to Professor Altizer's ‘A New History and a New but Ancient God?’” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 43, No. 4 (12 1975), 766.Google Scholar

4. Berkeley, George, “America or the Muse's Refuge, A Prophecy,” The Works of George Berkeley of Cloyne, 7 vols., eds., Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E. (London: Thomas Nelson, 1955), VII, 370Google Scholar. The variant of the final line is “Time's noblest offspring is the last.”

5. Winthrop, John, “A Model of Christian Charity,” quoted in Miller, Perry, ed., The American Puritans, Their Prose and Poetry (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956), p. 82.Google Scholar

6. Hamilton, Alexander, Madison, James, and Jay, John, The Federalist Papers, No. 51, ed., Rossiter, Clinton (New York: New American Library, 1961), p. 324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Cherry, , God's New Israel, pp. 67–105.Google Scholar

8. The Tea Party was predicted in Isaiah 33:21: “But there the Lord in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams where no galley with oars can go, nor stately ship can pass.” Isaiah 49:12 foretold the Chinese immigration: “Lo, these shall come from afar, and lo, these from the north and from the west, and these from the land of Syene (AV: ‘Sinim’).” See Clebsch, William A., From Sacred to Profane America, The Role of Religion in American History (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), pp. 189–90Google Scholar, quoting Phillips, George S., The American Republic and Human Liberty Foreshadowed in Scripture (1864), pp. 130, 163Google Scholar; also Clebsch, , p. 191Google Scholar, citing Phillips, pp. 174, 217, 232, 236.

9. Sumner, Charles, His Complete Works, introduction by Hoar, George Frisbie (Boston, 1900), XV, p. 280Google Scholar. For the recollection by Adams, see also Strong, Josiah, Our Country (New York, 1885), p. 166Google Scholar; and Adams, John to Rush, Benjamin, 05 23, 1807Google Scholar, in The Works of John Adams, 10 vols., ed., Adams, Charles Francis (Boston, 1851–1865), IX, pp. 599–600Google Scholar, both cited in Clebsch, , From Sacred to Profane America, pp. 40, 221.Google Scholar

10. Beveridge, Albert J., The Meaning of the Times and Other Speeches (1908), pp. 118–43Google Scholar, quoted in Cherry, , God's New Israel, pp. 153, 151.Google Scholar

Turner denied the Puritan and also the southern modeling of the American character, emphasizing the composite nationality of Americans and the tolerant pluralism of the middle region. See Turner, Frederick Jackson, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, ed., Simonson, Harold P. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1963), p. 49Google Scholar. I am arguing that the two myths of American destiny, one Puritan and characteristic of New England, the other rationalist and characteristic of the middle colonies, blended into a composite national mythique.

The stanza is, of course, from the familiar hymn sung at Christmastide and Epiphanytide, written by John Henry Hopkins, Jr., in 1857 and first published in his Carols, Hymns, and Songs (1863)Google Scholar. It can be found in many hymnals and songbooks, e.g., The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America 1940 (New York: Church Pension Fund, 1943), No. 51.Google Scholar

11. Heer, Friedrich, Europe, Mother of Revolutions (1964), trans., Kessler, Charles and Adcock, Jennetta (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1971), pp 153, 169.Google Scholar

12. Bradford, William, History of Plimouth Plantation (1630)Google Scholar, quoted in Living Ideas in America, ed., Commager, Henry Steele (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 14.Google Scholar

13. Mather, Cotton, Magnolia Christi Americana or The Ecclesiastical History of New England, ed. and abr., Cunningham, Raymond J. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1970), p. 15.Google Scholar

14. Cherry, , God's New Israel, p. 65Google Scholar, quoting “Great Seal of the United State,” Encyclopedia Americana (1967), XIII, p. 362.Google Scholar

15. Quoted in “Declaration of Independence,” World Book Encyclopedia (1976), VI, p. 66.Google Scholar

16. Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, 2 vols., ed., Bradley, Phillips (New York: Vintage Books, 1954), I, p. 3.Google Scholar

17. Tyler, Alice Felt, Freedom's Ferment (New York: Harper & Bros., 1962), pp. 375, 385.Google Scholar

18. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, English Traits (1856)Google Scholar, reprinted in The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed., Atkinson, Brooks (New York: Modern Library, 1950), pp. 545–46, 547, 554, 553, 558.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 596

20. Ibid., pp. 689–90.

21. Baird, Robert, Religion in America (1843, 1844; rev. ed. 1856), ed. and abr., Bowden, Henry Warner (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), pp. 26–28.Google Scholar

22. Bercovitch, , The Puritan Origins, p. 139.Google Scholar

23. See Peterson, Thomas V., “The Myth of Ham Among White, Antebellum Southerners,” Diss. Stanford Univ., 1975, especially pp. 143–45.Google Scholar

24. Clebsch, , From Sacred to Profane America, p. 202.Google Scholar

25. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, “Nature” (1836)Google Scholar, reprinted in The Complete Essays, p. 3.Google Scholar